“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Source: Robert McCloskey

Dr. Kevin Barrett, adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been hired to teach a course, Islam: Religion and Culture, at the university.

Some people are upset, according to CNN: University instructor likens Bush to Hitler

“Like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies,” he wrote.

Barrett said Tuesday he was comparing the attacks to the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, in 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

“That’s not comparing them as people, that’s comparing the Reichstag fire to the demolition of the World Trade Center, and that’s an accurate comparison that I would stand by,” he said.

He added: “Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an insult to Hitler.”

That last bit has to sting. Hitler was also a decorated combat veteran [World War I] and an accomplished public speaker, so there is no real basis for a comparison between the two men.

When John McCain claims that the problems with North Korea are Clinton’s fault, it isn’t political hyperbole, it isn’t a misunderstanding, it’s a lie.

Unlike the Shrubbery, Clinton briefed Congress. As a retired Naval Captain, McCain had access to briefings that other members of Congress never get. McCain has the experience and clearances to know exactly what happened, so he is lying now.

McCain would have been briefed on everything in Fred Kaplan’s 2004 Washington Monthly article, Rolling Blunder, [Via Digby], so he, of all people, can’t claim he didn’t know.

Senator, look at Katherine Harris. Look at what they have done to her. I don’t care what they promised you, they don’t keep their promises. Their loyalty is all one way. Stop lying, that’s not what they taught you at Annapolis.

Update: Steve Bates and Josh Marshall both riff on this chord.

The North Korean blew up something underground, but the size of the explosion was not what would normally be expected for a first test of a nuclear device. Now we have to wait to find out if it was truly a nuclear explosion.

South Korea has already obtained a SAUNA [Swedish Automatic Noble Gas Analyser] and there will be upper atmosphere sampling missions with a WB-57 or similar aircraft looking for the traces of the noble gases, usually argon-37 and xenon-133, that indicate a nuclear event.

It could take a couple of months for the confirmation, so for now we have to accept the word of Kim Jong Il that he did it. [You can stop laughing now. Look at how many people believe the Shrubbery.]