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Bill Maher had a warning for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who seems all too willing to push his luck with the United States given the fact that our country has been addicted to war for far too long. Maher also told his audience that it's time that we "start defining peace as strength" instead:

In the last part of his weekly “New Rules” segment, Maher lambasted “Kim Jong Pugsley of North Korea” for his threats of war with the U.S. and the West.

“Have you seen a North Korean rocket test?” he asked. “They don’t even look like real rockets. They look more like that thing the Russian kosmonauts were in when they crashed on to ‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.” [...]

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

“And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”

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Last week, it was Mike Huckabee comparing the latest trumped up non-scandal to Watergate and suggesting that President Obama should be impeached over the handling of the embassy attack in Libya. Now we've got flamethrower Rep. Marsh Blackburn making the same comparison -- Republican Lawmaker: Obama’s Handling Of Libya Is ‘Worse Than Watergate’:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined the chorus of Republicans criticizing President Obama’s response to the violence in Libya on Monday, going so far as to suggest that the administration’s handling of the situation is worse than Watergate — the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon:

BLACKBURN: I think this is an issue — Benghazi-gate is the right term for this. This is very, very serious, probably more serious than Watergate. And to call this a response to a video when it was obviously a terrorist attack — and when you read some of the documentation on this, and you know that there has been other sites and locations that have bind attack in Libya, when you know that the Libyan government felt there was something getting ready to transpire.

Fox News, Republican lawmakers, and conservative pundits have for weeks criticized U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for initially characterizing the attack as a “spontaneous reaction” to a movie trailer disparaging the Prophet Muhammed. Since then, however, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and even White House Spokesperson Jay Carney have all used the word “terrorist” to describe the attack. Obama himself attributed the violence to terrorism during a September 12 address at the Rose Garden.

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly has more on how this is part of the Romney campaign's new strategy that they think is going to turn the election around for them -- Benghazi Truthers:

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After taking a shot at Harry Reid last week for going after Mitt Romney for tax avoidance and refusing to release his tax returns, it appears The Daily Show's Jon Stewart may be having a change of heart over whether that criticism was deserved. He went after Mittens tonight for having his business practices being too shady for Italy.

Here's more on that from Bloomberg: Romney Persona Non Grata in Italy for Bain’s Deal Skirting Taxes:

Mitt Romney skipped Italy on his swing through Europe. That was probably prudent.

That’s because Bain Capital, under Romney as chief executive officer, made about $1 billion in a leveraged buyout 12 years ago that remains controversial in Italy to this day. Bain was part of a group that bought a telephone-directory company from the Italian government and then sold it about two years later, at the peak of the technology bubble, for about 25 times what it paid.

Bain funneled profits through subsidiaries in Luxembourg, a common corporate strategy for avoiding income taxes in other European countries, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The buyer, Italy’s biggest telephone company, now has a total market value less than what it paid Bain and other investors for the directory business.

In Italy, the deals have spurred at least three books, separate legal and regulatory probes and newspaper columns alleging investors made a fortune at the expense of Italian taxpayers. Boston-based Bain wasn’t a subject of the inquiries, which didn’t result in any charges.

The sale of the government’s directory business is “a dark chapter in the country’s privatization history, one that has hurt Italians deeply,” said Bernardo Bortolotti, an economics professor at Turin University who advised the Italian Treasury on asset sales from 2002 through 2005. “It was a mistake from the start, damaged by a lack of transparency and the use of offshore funds.”

Personally Involved

While few ordinary Italians realize the link between Romney and the investor group, the deal symbolizes Italy’s economic woes and government futility as the nation struggles to convince investors that it can repay Europe’s second-largest debt without a bailout. The economy is in its fourth recession since 2001 and unemployment is at a 13-year high.

Romney himself probably earned more than $50 million, and possibly as much as $60 million from the Italian directory sale of Seat Pagine Gialle SpA, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal turned into one of the biggest windfalls of his tenure.

“With this investment, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, with its consortium partners, partnered with a new management team to transform this company, and grow it into a tremendous success,” said Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for Romney’s presidential campaign. “Mitt Romney is running for President to put that experience to work.” Read on...

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It appears Fox doesn't want to let their viewers know why Hillary Clinton was met with protests in Egypt if this interview with Neil Cavuto and Fox regular, KT McFarland is any indication. Cavuto was discussing the fact that Hillary Clinton's motorcade was met with demonstrators a little over a week ago and they managed to get in a little fearmongering over the Muslim Brotherhood's future role in Egypt's government. What they somehow managed to fail to mention is Michele Bachmann and her cohorts' role in causing the protests. Imagine that?

For a reminder of what set things off, here's more from Think Progress: Bachmann’s Islamophobic Conspiracy Theory Fuels Egyptians’ Anti-Clinton Protest:

Egyptian protesters threw shoes and tomatoes at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade in Alexandria this week. The New York Times reported that their demonstration “delighted conservative bloggers in the United States” but “what has attracted less attention” is why they were protesting: a conspiracy theory cooked up by Islamophobes in the U.S. that the Obama administration is working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood:

Pressed by American reporters to explain where they got the idea that their new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, had been foisted on them through a U.S. plot, rather than the will of the majority, several Egyptians cited information gathered from American blogs or news sites.

An Egyptian-American Christian who met Mrs. Clinton on Sunday cited a recent assertion by Representative Michele Bachmann, a Republican, “that the Obama Administration is pursuing a closeted pro-Muslim agenda,” in a conversation with Time magazine’s correspondent, Abigail Hauslohner.

Rumors that the Obama administration has provided the Muslim Brotherhood with billions of dollars in aid remain an article of faith with many Egyptians who are convinced that Mr. Morsi’s victory was a sham, despite repeated efforts by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to correct the record on Twitter.

That’s right — Bachmann’s ludicrous allegation that the Muslim Brotherhood has “penetrated” the United States government convinced anti-Islamist Egyptians that the U.S. is backing their domestic Islamist opponents. The source for Bachmann’s ravings is Frank Gaffney, a conspiracy theorist who claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the government and that shari’a law is coming to the U.S.

It seems Cavuto and McFarland are more concerned with protecting Michele Bachmann and her fellow wingnuts who are all regular guests on Fox than letting the viewers know they were the cause of Clinton's "really awful" treatment in Egypt. I'm sure not wanting anything to get in the way of their fearmongering about the Muslim Brotherhood has something to do with it as well.

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Another Sunday, another gazillionth appearance by Sen. John McCain on a Sunday show. And he's calling for more military intervention by the United States in Syria. What a shock. Can anyone think of a time this man was ever calling for restraint, instead of beating the war drums at every opportunity?

Even House Speaker John Boehner said he disagrees with McCain earlier this week: Boehner Sides With Obama Over McCain On Syria Intervention:

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH) said his positions on whether or not to intervene militarily in Syria were closer to the Obama administration’s than to fellow Congressional Republicans.

While the Obama administration has reportedly given some support to regional allies’ efforts to arm rebels, as well as some other support, the U.S. has eschewed direct military involvement in the intensifying civil war. Right-wing hawks in Congress, led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have called on the administration to directly arm rebels and even carry out U.S. air strikes. [...]

Boehners position puts him in line with U.S. public opinion. A CNN poll last month found that, overall, six in ten Americans don’t want to get militarily involved in the civil war. According to those results, Boehner is also in line with adherents of his own party. 58 percent of Republicans agreed that the U.S. shouldn’t get involved.

That didn't deter McCain one iota: McCain blasts Obama handling of Syria, warns of chemical weapons threat:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted the Obama administration Sunday for failing to do more to help rebel fighters in Syria.

McCain urged the president to move swiftly to provide U.S. arms and equipment to rebels.

“We need to get some equipment to them, we need to establish a buffer zone,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union”.

He warned the Obama administration’s decision not to intervene more actively could allow Hezbollah to acquire chemical weapons or lead to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad using such weapons against his own people.

He said Israeli security officials are particularly concerned about the prospect of Hezbollah obtaining chemical weapons as a result of the conflict.

Full transcript below the fold.

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