You overdid it holmes, you in the danger zone

For those of you not watching or reading the news this week, I'll give you a rundown:

- Iran fopnapped 15 British sailors who were supposedly in Iranian waters
- Sailors are safe and healthy, in cigarette and Earl Gray withdrawal
- Tony Blair is pissed
- Anna Nicole Smith overdosed

This is really an incredibly story, because if this happened five years ago, George Bush would be displaying President Ahmadinejad's head on a platter at the White House. Today? We just don't have the mojo. Iran knows that Britain and the US don't have the capabilities very well invade or take truly drastic measures, so it might as well take the opportunity to flex nuts, get some press, fire up the hardliners, and tweek Blair and Bush.

So, this crisis will go on for a week, much like the Chinese showdown in 2001, and eventually result in the British getting their soldiers back, safe and sound, because even Mahmoud is not stupid enough to kill them. Perfect timing for the Iranians, though; the UN decides on sanctions just as this whole affair is shaking out, and they get to say to the world that they still hold some power.

However, Mahmoud could be horribly wrong and the US and Britain could launch strikes on Tehran, ultimately invade and then plunge Iran into a religious and cultural civil war, the likes of which we have not seen in the Middle East since.... March 19, 2003. But what are the odds of that?

I wondered if my name had changed into something more productive

I'm back!

So the hits just keep on a comin' from the crazy crazy world of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where this week a senior aide argued that Adolph Hitler's parents were both Jews, his mother a prostitute, and that his father actually changed his name to Hitler, presumably from something less dictatorial, possibly Khan.


Besides the generally hilarious idea of a Jewish prostitute, which is the basis for the next Mel Brooks movie, tentatively titled 25 Krone And You Want to Put it Where? I don't think so, the aide also suggested that along with leading the Holocaust, Hitler was also behind the founding of Israel, sort of in the same vein as OJ's "I loved her so much that I had to kill her" philosophy.

Leave it to the Iranians to not only suggest that Hitler's mother was a Jewish prostitute and that his mistress was also Jewish, but that his mother's promiscuity actually led to his hatred of Jews and eventually the holocaust. So, it's all the Jews' fault because in the early 1900's there was a slutty Jewish woman parading around Austria. I'm guessing somewhere in Murray Hill our next great tyrant is about to be conceived?

IIll tell them what the smile on my face meant

"Don't touch the hair! Also, the holocaust never happened. What what?"

Iran finished up its Holocaust conference yesterday, and just in time, because I can't wait to hear what conclusions they reached!!! Gas chambers? Nah, just steam baths. Medical experiments? That was just universal health care. Starvation? Physical fitness. Mass graves? Ok, those were mass graves, but the Nazis needed a place to bury all the people who died happy deaths after all the physical fitness, universal health care, and steam baths.

It was a veritable who's who of Holocaust deniers at Ahmadinejad's meet and greet, including Mahmoud, former Louisiana state rep and nutjob David Duke, and a French guy and an Austrian guy who have been arrested for continually denying the holocaust. Unfortunately, Pat Buchanan couldn't deliver the keynote address because he was busy murdering illegal immigrants.

Every world leader practically knocked each over to deliver the most outraged statement, with Tony Snow calling the conference "an affront to the entire civilized world", Tony Blair recoiling he was shocked "beyond belief", and Saddam Hussein saying, "Ha ha. Good choice on that whole invasion thing."

Uh oh