Obama's State of the Nation: Curing Cancer, Eating Baconnaise, and Slapping Down Bobby Jindal

We tried our best to offer an insightful analysis of President Obama's speech on Tuesday night, but I think we have to put our hands up before the incisive, surreal, and downright weird perspective of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart has a bit of fun with the Messiah who is Barack Obama --- "What are you, a wizard?!" --- in the second clip below. First, however, witness the decimation of wannabe Republican challenger Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana into children's TV icon Mr Rogers, "the besweatered friend of the trolley people" (and, oh yes, don't forget the Baconnaise):

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Bobby Jindal's Republican Response

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Optimist Prime

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Gaza Threat Alert: Rockets with Macaroni Warheads

Really. McClatchy News Service reports:

For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel's recent devastating 22-day military operation.

Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly.

On Wednesday, days after American lawmakers raised pointed questions about the macaroni ban, Israeli authorities said that they were preparing to give the pasta a green light.

At first, Israeli officials said that they wanted to make sure that the macaroni wasn't destined for a Hamas charity. Then they said macaroni was banned because they didn't consider it an essential food item.

Representative Brian Baird, who just visited Gaza, offered the key military challenge: ""Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?"

Here are other items that pose imminent danger and thus have been blocked by Israel:

Lentils
Paper
Crayons
Tomato Paste

Readers with far more scientific minds than mind can design weapons of mass destribution from this list. However, there might be a more prosaic political explanation Israel's continued economic stranglehold on Gaza:

"We want to make sure that reconstruction for the people of Gaza is not reconstruction for the Hamas regime," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Our Daily Drama: What Exactly is Dennis Ross in Charge Of?

Yesterday we brought you the second installment in our running series on the appointment of Dennis Ross to be Not an Envoy but a Special Advisor Advising on Something, Somewhere.

Hours later, State Department spokesman Robert Wood and unnamed journalists starred in the next episode. Like all good soap operas, there were no conclusions, only more cliffhangers:

QUESTION: Have your ace geographers been able to determine what Southwest Asia is and thereby figure out what exactly Dennis Ross’s mandate is?

MR. WOOD: I’m so shocked that you asked that question. Let me give you my best – our best read of this. From our standpoint, the countries that make up areas of the Gulf and Southwest Asia include Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and those are the countries.

QUESTION: Not – not Afghanistan and Pakistan?

MR. WOOD: Look, Ambassador Ross will look at the entire region, should he be asked to, including Afghanistan. But this is something that would be worked out. You were – you asked the question yesterday about Ambassador Holbrooke and whether there was going to be some kind of, I don’t know, conflict over who is working in – on that particular issues in that country.

Look, Ambassador Ross and Ambassador Holbrooke will work together where necessary if they need to, if there’s some kind of overlap. But that’s, in essence, the State Department’s geographical breakdown of Southwest Asia.

QUESTION: Okay. So it does not – it is not the same breakdown as the military uses?

MR. WOOD: No, the military uses a different breakdown, but I’d have to refer you to them for their specific breakdown. ...

QUESTION:QUESTION: Okay. But on Iran, like for instance, if someone – if the United States wanted to engage Iran on, for instance, Afghanistan, and you’ve said before from this podium that Afghanistan could play – Iran, sorry, could play a helpful role in Afghanistan – who would be kind of handling that? Would that be the special advisor for Southwest Asia in Iran, or would it be the special advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan? Because Ambassador Holbrooke has said that he thought Iran could play a helpful role, and that suggests that he might be handling that kind of dialogue.

MR. WOOD: Well, this is—again, this is speculation. You know, we’ll have to see what happens if, indeed, we get to that point about who handles an issue with regard to Iran. It really depends on, you know, a variety of factors. I can’t – it’s hypothetical, so I just can’t give you an answer specifically on that. ...

QUESTION: Yes. You know, I’m a little confused because in your statement to announce Dennis Ross’s appointment as the Southwest Asia person, you referred to two wars in the region. So which is the other war? Iraq – was Afghanistan part of that and then you took it away because of Holbrooke’s complaints or --....Just a wee bit confused here.

MR. WOOD: No, there are two wars that are raging in that region, and I’m talking about the larger region.

QUESTION: But that was included within the Southwest Asia that you demarcated in the statement.

MR. WOOD: Right. Like I said, Afghanistan is one of those issues where you have a lot of individuals who have some interests and equities in dealing with it. And as I said, if we get to a point where there is a need to have both Ambassador Ross and Ambassador Holbrooke engaging on different elements of it, they will. And they will certainly – you know, they’ll do that. But we are very clear in that statement, I think, in terms of where we see wars raging and the need to have appropriate people working on these issues.

QUESTION: Because in the CIA fact book, a book which a lot of people use, Southwest Asia does include Afghanistan....

MR. WOOD: Well, that’s the CIA. I’m giving you – again, I gave you what the State Department’s position is on the region.

QUESTION: Well, it sounds like you – it sounds like you have a turf battle brewing, if not already begun. Maybe you should lock Holbrooke and Ross up in a room and fight it out?

MR. WOOD: That’s your characterization. There’s no turf war going on here.

QUESTION: Well, no, Robert, because I believe that originally, Afghanistan was included in this – in Dennis’s (inaudible) here, and it’s interesting that it’s been taken out, so --...So was it removed, though, because – with the wars referring to the war in Afghanistan? I mean, was it removed because --

MR. WOOD: I just spelled this out for you. I don’t have anything more to say on it.

Scott Lucas in Iranian Newspaper Payvand

Earlier this week I spoke at length with the Islamic Republic News Agency about US-Iran relations. Part of the conversation has appeared in the English-language edition Payvand. The headline, "Iran nuclear issue used by US as pawn in bigger game: American professor", is a somewhat incomplete account of my views, but the full article does reflect my "cautious optimism" over the future of the US-Iranian engagement and focused on the diplomatic process. It even included my view that "there may have been some very quiet discussions behind the scene privately already taking place between US and Iranian intermediaries".

Read the article....

Afghanistan Latest: Three British Soldiers Killed

Three troops from Britain's 1st Battalion, The Rifles have died in an explosion in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Eleven British personnel, most of them from 1st Battalion, have lost their lives in action in the country this year.

Ten US and coalition soldiers have been killed since last Friday.