Who needs to know the countries of the world?

McCain obviously is following Rumsfeld's lead and not giving a shit.



They're ALL ferriners! McCain flubs yet again as he refers to Czechoslovakia instead of to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He's now mixed up Somalia and the Sudan; Sunni and Shiite; Iran and al-Qaeda, and thinks Pakistan and Iraq share a border.

I guess it doesn't matter whether or not you know these countries if you plan to deal with your 3am phone call by screaming,"Just bomb them all!"

Here's the top ten list for the week.

One of the mines being laid for Obama

Is the idiotic Star Wars missile defense which has irritated Russia. Only the Czech Republic signed on:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed a deal to base part of Washington's controversial missile defence system in the Czech Republic.

The deal, signed in Prague, allows a tracking radar base to be set up.

The plans remain unpopular in the Czech Republic and the US has also failed to reach agreement with Poland on housing other parts of the system there.

A senior Russian official has been quoted as saying the deal "complicates" global security.

Moscow has previously threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic.

But wait! Condi says it's Iran that we should be afraid of!

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, although Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.

The next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, Rice said, adding that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.

Then ... it's not Russia that we're trying to contain? Then why aren't we setting up missile defenses in Iraq, Turkey and Armenia if it's Iran we're focusing on? Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan? India? Saudi Arabia? Why not Israel, which is about the only hostile country Iran can reach with its missiles.

But the Czech Republic? And ... Poland? The neocons sure do miss the Cold War days, don't they? Life was simple then, men were men and bad guys spoke in Russian accents.

Could this happen in reverse?

You fall over a Segway perhaps and you lose the ability to speak your native language?

A CZECH speedway driver knocked unconscious in a crash stunned ambulance drivers when he woke up speaking perfect English.

18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent.

The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”.

[snip]

"Matej didn't have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn't even know he was Czech.

"It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English."

Unfortunately, the speedway driver's new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English.

He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: "It's unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.

"Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I'll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.

"There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I'll be able to pick it up quickly next time."

I mean... It would explain a lot....

Update 9/22: It happened again, although this time it was just the accent:

A 10-year-old boy has woken up with a posh English accent after undergoing life-saving brain surgery.

William McCartney-Moore's usual northern England accent was replaced with a much more refined tones complete with elongated vowels after he had an operation to remove fluid on his brain.

William, who is from York, needed the surgery after falling ill with a rare strain of meningitis last March.

"He survived the operation and the most amazing thing is that he came out of surgery with a completely different accent,'' his mother Ruth McCartney-Moore told the York Press newspaper.

"He went in with a York accent and he came out all posh.

"He no longer had short 'a' and 'u' vowel sounds. They were all long.''

Mrs McCartney-Moore said doctors initially thought her son was going to die.

He lost everything, she said, including his ability to read, write and recognise different objects.

But William began to recover after the operation and was out of hospital in about a month.

"We went on a family holiday to Northumberland and he was playing on the beach and he said,
'Look, I've made a sand castle' but really stretched the vowels, which made him sound really posh,'' Mrs McCartney-Moore said.

The Diplomatercizer

Looking for soulful eyes and not finding them:

Polls show more than 60 percent of Czechs are against plans to station a radar system southwest of Prague, and surveys in Poland — where 10 interceptor missiles would be based — show strong opposition there as well. Both countries are still negotiating with the U.S. over whether to host the shield.

Bush sought to play down Russia's response, which has overshadowed his European trip.

"The Cold War is over. It ended," Bush said at the medieval Prague Castle, where he met with Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.

"My message will be: 'Vladimir — I call him Vladimir — you shouldn't fear a missile defense system. As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defense system?'" Bush said.

C'mon, Vlad! It'll be cool! Mah missile defense guys will make a buttload of money an' it won't work anyhow! Whatcha so steamed up about? Ain't we friends? Vlad?



No... no, I said you smell and your MOTHER not your brother dresses you funny:

The Germans are unimpressed with our super duper deflector shield

And the moat with sharks with lazers on their foreheads:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging the US government to engage in a broader discussion about the missile defense shield it plans to erect in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect it from enemy missiles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the US to refrain from acting unilaterally with its plans to erect a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

"We should always make sure that we discuss everything in a spirit of trust to avoid rifts," Merkel said in a speech to a conference on trans-Atlantic economic cooperation in Berlin. "No one can master the new challenges on their own." She said that applied to the European Union as well as the United States. The German chancellor was in Poland on Friday and Saturday to press its leaders to back a broader discussion on the missile shield within NATO.

I think she's just cautious about being in a contained area with Georgie....