This week marks the premiere of the eighth installment of the most successful series in movie history. As such, it offers a useful comparison in the differences between what makes a successful summer blockbuster in Hollywood and what makes for one in Washington, DC.  Here are the top ten:

10. Too Few House Elves in Washington (Too Many House Death Eaters)
Oh Dobby, Dobby, if only there were a man in Washington of your stature. Poor Dobby who died, according to his epitaph, "a free elf" was cranky and even less photogenic than Anthony Weiner, but he had heart and courage and took risks for those he served in ways that none on Capitol Hill seem to even comprehend. Meanwhile, there are far too many Death Eaters up there on the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue, swirling around in service of He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken (Grover Norquist) regardless of the pain it may bring to those who actually elected them. (Norquist may succeed with anti-tax religion in doing what the leadership of the Soviet Union could not -- bankrupting and thus breaking America.)

9. Even Hollywood Accounting is Better Than How They Do Math in DC
Hollywood is famous for skimming and double-entry book-keeping but even they know it takes both revenues and sensible spending to balance a budget. And they sure have their focused fixed securely on the bottom line on ways that would be revolutionary in DC. Meanwhile back in our nation's capital it would take a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with more gifts than Mad Eye Moody to combat the trickery that has in just over a decade transformed a budget surplus into a $1.6 trillion annual deficit. (Face it: Threats to downgrade U.S. debt aside, the real story is that Moody's and S&P haven't trash-canned America's Triple A rating yet. America is ... very lucky ... to still coasting on the reputation of past generations of leaders.)

Read the full list here.

Note to editors and producers: While I only attended journalism school for a few months before developing a career-ending allergy to carbon paper, I did learn a few things that you seem to have forgotten. Like for example, the definition of news …

For example, this week the two leading stories in the United States are that men are dogs and that politicians are dumb. Or, to put it another way, the stop-the-presses revelations of the week are that sex makes men stupid while going into politics tends to do the same to people regardless of gender.

How is any of this news? Did it take a Twitter scandal to persuade people that Anthony Weiner had personality issues? Did it take a misstatement about Paul Revere to convince the U.S. public that Sarah Palin was not going to give David McCullough a run for his money as the country's top historian?

As far as I can tell, the Weiner scandal is the third major sex scandal to impact a high-profile political figure in the U.S. in the past three weeks. (See Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn for variations on this age-old theme.) It's the fourth if you count the on-going saga of John Edwards. As for Palin's remarks, it's not only not the first evidence that she is not what you would call an intellectual heavy-weight, but it is part of a torrent of mangled views of history emanating recently from Republican presidential candidates. (See also Michele Bachmann on the location of the battles of Lexington and Concord and Santorum on the idea that U.S. troops landed in Normandy to fight against Obamacare.)

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The tsunami and earthquake that tragically struck Japan today could not come at a worse moment for the Japanese. The economy has been struggling for almost two decades to recover and seemed poised to make progress, but now has suffered yet another bitter blow. The costs of rebuilding will add to already high deficits and high anxiety. It is only fortunate that there is perhaps no other country in the world as well prepared to deal with earthquakes and their consequences as Japan.

That said, the disaster also resonates in many ways with what is happening elsewhere in the world. It reminds us that "black swans" are not rare events. Indeed, the first few months of this year have demonstrated yet again that nothing in this world is as commonplace as the unexpected. That is no doubt more a commentary on the way we arrive at expectations than it is on the nature of life on the planet.  In just the past 10 weeks alone, we have seen revolutions, earthquakes, major economies downgraded by credit ratings agencies, spiking energy and food prices, and the usual accompanying market roller coaster rides that bespeak the fact that we are collectively spun around by events more often than your average weathervane is by the daily breeze.

Another way the tsunami resonates is with the images we have already seen on the television of it sweeping ashore -- a great black wave of destruction -- causing havoc and then retreating to the sea. As I watched I couldn't help but wonder if that was not how we were ultimately going to view the upheaval that has rocked the Middle East this year. There came a wave and great drama and then, almost as quickly, the wave withdrew and was forgotten.

Certainly, we are at risk of such an outcome at the moment. If Qaddafi succeeds in pushing back the rebels during the next couple of days, the world may well conclude -- if it has not done so already -- that supporting the Libyan opposition may be a losing proposition. And if Qaddafi wins and reestablishes his control on the country through brutality, it will send a strong message to other regimes across the region that the right response to rebellion is to be both ferocious and merciless.

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It is clear that the memo that went out to the media from Echo Chamber Central Command this morning was "the visit of President Hu to Washington will be presented in terms of China's growing threat."

In paper after paper headlines blared and reporting backed up the message. Some of the stories focused on the nature of the economic threat. Notable among these were the Financial Times's front page piece on how China's influence was being enhanced by dramatic increases in its lending to the developing world -- lending that now surpassed that of the World Bank. Inside the FT there was more including a well-researched and compelling piece by Geoff Dyer, David Pilling and my long-ago colleague from Institutional Investor Magazine, Henny Sender called "A strategy to straddle the planet." The thrust of the piece was also that China is using its trade flows to build links and leverage worldwide in an effort to shape the rules and set the priorities for the international economy. There was also an excellent accompanying piece on the potency and problems associated with China's almost $3 trillion in hard currency reserves. The Washington Post had an in-depth look at the frustrating times that Wisconsin's Manitowoc Company was having in its dealings in China… echoing a piece in the New York Times about the uncomfortable deals trading technology for market access that General Electric has embarked on. In both cases the point was: while China is an appealing market, the Chinese are hard to deal with and seem likely to pose long-term threats as an economic rival.

On the security threat posed by China, we had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal called "The New Era of U.S. China Rivalry" by Princeton professor Aaron Friedberg. The conclusion of the article: "Hu Jintao's visit may mark the end of an era of relatively smooth relations between the U.S. and China." The lead editorial in the Journal: "Dealing With an Assertive China." In the Times, Helene Cooper had a good piece (and not just because it quoted me) on the tougher posture adopted by the Obama administration called "For Chinese President's Visit, U.S. to Take a Bolder Tack" and another lead editorial which echoed that of the Journal in concluding, "State dinners and 21-gun salutes are ephemeral. What will earn China respect as a major power is if it behaves responsibly. That must be Mr. Obama's fundamental message."

The guts of the piece included statements like "(China's) overconfidence is clear. It has been aggressively pressing its claims to disputed islands in the East and South China Seas. The military's rising influence is troubling." And in the next paragraph: "For a country that claims to be a global power, it is still shirking its responsibilities. … For a major player, it can also be remarkably petulant."

It may seem unremarkable to Mr. Hu's delegation that the Journal and the Times are so aligned in their views. Americans who know them often to be polar opposites know better. (The Washington Post also had its lead editorial in roughly the same place:

China's would-be reformers face an ugly contrary current, seemingly centered in the military, that has been pushing a belligerent foreign policy, including toward the United States… Mr. Hu's visit offers the opportunity for the United States to make clear that a liberalizing China will be far more welcome as it rises as a world power than one that continues to deny its citizens freedom and the rule of law."

While normally such a convergence of views in the press should be a warning sign, this is one of those rare cases in which even the experts believe what they are reading. Oh sure, there are debates about the tone with which one should address the threat (there is still a school-marmish quality to some of the pieces advocating that the United States lecture the Chinese) or whether or not the United States is in a position to do that any longer (Francis Fukuyama's piece in the FT suggests we've lost ground). But in my conversations with diplomats from around the region during the past couple of weeks, there has been a recurring theme that China is engaged in a sweeping, systematic effort to extend its influence and flex its muscles.

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The subtitle of this blog has been "How the World is Really Run" since the day it was launched, an editor's play on the title of a book I wrote. But I am today inclined to lend that subtitle out to the publishers of the most recent tidal wave of information from WikiLeaks. Because the 250,000 State Department cables contained in the release offer up no single revelation as striking as the overall message they contain: The dark shadowy world of diplomacy and international intrigue is working just about precisely as you suspect it is.

Behind the scenes, diplomats are sending private assessments of foreign leaders back to their bosses. Those assessments are often not entirely flattering. But what would you expect? Further, of all the assessments revealed among the WikiLeaks documents, none fly against perceptions that have long been public. Sarkozy thin-skinned? Berlusconi vain and partying way too hard for an old man? Putin and his cronies collaborating with the mob? The Karzai family corrupt? Saudis financing terror? Other Gulf leaders looking the other way? If you are surprised, then you have not been paying attention.

It is even less surprising, if such thing is possible, that those diplomats are busy trying to collect information on foreign leaders or that behind the scenes they are sometimes saying things that are at odds with their public statements. Does it make sense that Yemen's leaders would rather it look as though they were the ones striking against terror threats within their borders rather than letting the United States do it? Or that Arab leaders might take a tougher line on Iran behind closed doors? Or that the United States might be critical even of its allies from time to time? The real shock would be if these things were not true.

The landscape described by WikiLeaks is vivid, adding details that are colorful, sometimes embarrassing, and, occasionally, even thought-provoking. In the colorful department of course, we have everything from suggestions of inappropriate behavior from a member of the British Royal family (wouldn't we be more shocked by revelations of appropriate behavior from them at this point?) to descriptions by top diplomats of the Chechen president dancing at a Dagestani wedding with a gold-plated automatic shoved into his belt. In the embarrassing department we have vignettes as diverse as one featuring the Afghan vice president arriving in the United Arab Emirates with a suitcase full of illicit cash, or another featuring the White House auctioning off meetings with President Obama in exchange for countries taking in prisoners from Guantanamo.

What is thought-provoking is that it seems virtually every country that is a neighbor of Iran seems to be more inclined to see action taken against the Iranian nuclear program than is the United States… although frankly given the history and cultural fault lines in the region, this may actually be an argument for giving the U.S. approach more credence and support. Also emerging from the documents is a picture of just how dangerously immature China's foreign policy remains. The country is clearly continuing to be too inclined to cosset and support rogue regimes, an approach that is clearly out of sync with China's broadening international interests or its desire to be treated seriously as a leading nation. Finally, in this category, these documents make clear yet again -- from the repeated mentions of corruption in Afghanistan to deeply unsettling perspectives on the vulnerability and risks associated with the Pakistani nuclear program -- that the United States' involvement in that part of the world has us tied up with very bad actors and is likely to end up producing very unsatisfactory and possibly even tragic outcomes.

There is one other subtext that runs through all this, one well highlighted in a very good analytical piece on the releases by Timothy Garton Ash in the British newspaper the Guardian. The cables not only reveal that the world is run much as you expect it would be but for all the venality, hypocrisy, callousness and irresponsibility that is part and parcel of such assumptions, from time to time elements of it run precisely as you actually would hope they would run. For example, there is repeatedly revealed within the U.S. state department a high degree of professionalism, competence and courage. The best U.S. diplomats -- like Bill Burns, now undersecretary of state for political affairs, or ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson -- provide dependable insights in their communications and show no hesitation to send back assessments that will surely ruffle feathers back in Washington.

The WikiLeaks cables shine light on dark corners of international affairs only to reveal that for the most part, what is going on is what we thought was going on. The light enables us to see details, many fascinating, some disturbing, that also helps us better understand the nature of the world in which we are living and the risks we are facing. As a consequence, on a net basis, the newspapers that first broke the release -- the New York Times, the Guardian, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde -- performed a useful service and did so with seemingly admirable restraint and judgment if their descriptions of their dialogue with officials regarding the releases are accurate.

That said, it must be acknowledged that yet another dimension of how the world is really run that is revealed through these releases is the means by which they were made public in the first place. If the U.S. continues to see fit to grant security clearances to three million individuals and all the information in these leaks can be as easily transferred as they were first to a fake Lady Gaga CD and then to the Internet or a thumb drive then we must expect that just like intrigue, deception, bad policies, and earnest public officials trying to advance their national interests, breaches of security like these will become a permanent part of the landscape of international affairs. If such leaks are really as odious and dangerous as many in the United States government are now asserting (a view with which I am sympathetic) then the place they ought to begin assigning blame is on themselves for allowing the creation of a system in which one more widely understood fact of the way the world works is that most secrets are very hard to keep.

The Drudge Report linked to a story over the weekend in which someone named Sam Rubin condemned CNN for not explicitly firing Rick Sanchez for his anti-Semitism. Rubin, writing a column called "My Truth" on the KTLA website, argues that this demonstrates what is wrong with CNN.

In so doing, he mentions but skims over the real reason that CNN should have fired Rick Sanchez, the reason regularly cited by Jon Stewart: the fact that Sanchez was dumb as a box of rocks. In fact, even in Anchorland where a man is no better than his haircut, Sanchez was an embarrassment long before he decided to wear his bigotry like a big ugly soup stain on one of his Brioni ties.

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News from around the world this weekend:

In Israel, during a sermon, 89 year-old Rabbi Ovadia Yousef, spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas political party, attacked the Palestinian people and their President Mahmoud Abbas, calling them "enemies and haters." Then, he went on to call for their deaths, saying, "May they vanish from the world, may God smite them with the plague, them and the Palestinians, evil-doers and Israelhaters." The Israeli government soon after issued a statement asserting that "These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu nor the position of the government of Israel." This distancing from a key player in a party that is an important part of the current coalition government, holding four seats in the Israeli cabinet, seems pallid in the face of such repugnant remarks that were clearly designed to cast a shadow over the imminent resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. As one Israeli Knesset member argued, "If God forbid a Muslim religious leader would express similar sentiments toward Jews, he would immediately be arrested."

In Afghanistan, five campaign workers supporting the efforts of a female candidate for the country's parliament, were gunned down. The murders, in Andraskan district of Herat province, followed the kidnapping of the five men on Thursday.

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Does your media experience leave you feeling empty? Are you still hungry after your usual breakfast of three newspapers, a side of Drudge, and a big steaming mug of Morning Joe? (The Washington equivalent of a Denny's Grand Slam with none of the nutritional value, restraint, or fiber.) 

Is it the vapidity of cage match programming? The emotion-focused, sound-bite oriented Oprah-ization of the interviews? The sense you have that all the really big world-changing stories aren't being reported? (How could they be if you don't speak Chinese?)

All these are contributors, of course. But a big piece of it is what is known to insiders as the non-story. These are pieces -- often with big headlines, an anchor flown in to do the stand-up in front of the flaming wreckage, a chorus of loudly flapping columnists punditerizing in the background -- that look like stories, sound like stories and quack like stories but are not actually stories.

To help you identify these before they actually suck you in (and then begin to eat up valuable grey cells, filling your limited memory with non-facts, non-insights and non-essentials not worth knowing), let me provide you with four examples from this past week of non-stories. Each is an archetype. Once you learn them, try to spot the equivalents or other examples of this all too common, rapidly proliferating form of intellectual pollution.

Type A: The "You've Been Played" Non-Story

Of all the non-stories of the past year, one of the most grotesque, bizarre and difficult to understand is the story of LeBron James "big decision." In this story, America held its breath as a seemingly friendly but over-large and uneducated 25 year-old who has never won a single truly big game as a professional basketball player gazed deep into his own navel deciding where he would cash his next obscenely large check. Wait a minute. He's a professional basketball player? He is a man who plays the one sport that is by acclamation agreed to be vastly more interesting when it is played at the college level because the pros are so self-indulgent, slow and generally loathsome? And we care? We actually played into his hands and helped him hype himself further while what he was doing was offering his young fans a lesson in how their heroes will sell them out for money or glory?

Yes, we did. Yes, we allowed the sheep-like non-journalist flacks for the sports marketers to sell this decision about where this man who is the world's most overpaid sneaker model would like to spend the next few years bouncing a little orange ball like it was a presidential election. Wait a minute ... we bought a story that covered a rich athlete behaving selfishly while he basks in the limelight of a charmed life as though it were news, all the while selling more LeBron T-shirts and posters? I apologize to the non-journalists who cover sports. They're not the sheep. They're just cogs in the machine. We're the sheep. We're the ones who buy into the whole idea of entertainment "news" as though it were not marketing but news. 

Which brings us to example number two...

Type B:  The "News from Nowhere" Non-Story

Combining the emptiness of "entertainment news" with the shock value of a sunrise is another brand of non-news: the kind that doesn't creep over even the lowest threshold for newsworthiness because it is so utterly predictable. We've had at least two excellent examples this week. In one such story, as it turns out, Mel Gibson is a reprehensible jerk. In another, as it turns out, Lindsay Lohan is a lying, self-deluding, drug-abusing skank. Mel, not content to be remembered as a misogynistic, alcoholic, anti-Semite, goes the extra yard by allegedly beating up his Russian mail-order mistress. And throwing in a few choice racist epithets for good measure. Lindsay, sporting the latest in obscene nail decoration, breaks down in court when she is told that there are actually consequences for repeatedly breaking the law, lying to the police, lying to the courts, lying to herself, and generally flushing what was a promising career down the toilet over which she was just bent while hoovering line after line of mysterious white powder up her button nose.

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While we here at FP don't recommend eating disorders as an effective weight control technique, sometimes it's hard to pass up the canapés at those fancy Washington parties -- like GQ's "50 Most Powerful People in DC" cocktail blast at 701 last night. 

Of course, GQ's party had its own built-in trigger of the gag reflex for most Washingtonians: their names weren't on the list. (I talked with one of GQ's writers as she was working on the list, a conversation I enjoyed right up until the moment it was clear they didn't think I was list-worthy. As for the final product's, um, curiosities see FP's earlier take. But, Leon Panetta ahead of Hillary Clinton? Tom Donilon on the list, but his boss Jim Jones off it? Various worthy but random journalists and bloggers and not Tom Friedman or David Sanger? The Sidwell admissions director ahead of the GDS admissions director? Insiders know the truth ... even as they all hungrily pour over the list looking for their own names and those of their allies, enemies and worst of all, their friends.)

But when a glossy, man-perfume scented equivalent of a long hairy finger down your throat isn't readily available, then knowledgeable Washingtonians know there is always another place they can turn, the Capital's naturally produced form of Serum of Ipecac. Just follow the news until you develop the acute reaction to hypocrisy that is certain to launch away your own indiscretions in one or two turbulent but satisfying moments.

For example, here's a recipe for Capitulimia drawn from just what's going on around town today:

Take just one dose of insurance companies trying to suggest in print and broadcast advertisements that after years of making indefensible profits from literally killing people and destroying families with their policies (the one's they didn't actually deny to those who needed them), it is they who are actually looking out for the interests of Americans in need of health care.

Add one 30 second American Petroleum Institute commercial in which they actually argue that the pending climate bill might hurt consumers by producing more highly priced gasoline? After their record? While they should actually all be hovering in their basements waiting for the class action suit from the planet for selling a product they have known for years was destroying it?

Then sit down and take a listen to say, Rush Limbaugh complaining the media is making spurious, emotional, and uninformed attacks against him ... and that "the media" has too much power. The media? Who is he? Where does his power and obscene wealth come from? Appearances to the contrary, he is not a manatee sunning on a rock. 

If that hasn't done it, listen to one-time supporters of the havoc wreaked by the Great Decider's impulsive and catastrophic policies in Iraq or his ineffective blundering in Afghanistan as they criticize President Obama for actually taking some time to work out a sensible adjustment to tackling the mind-boggling challenges posed in the AfPak region ... challenges that were altered by the recent elections embarrassment in Afghanistan.

Or listen to Republican legislators responsible for the biggest deficits in American history and the collapse of the American economy, attack President Obama for doing what had to be done to clean up their mess.

Not there yet, go to Amazon.com and pre-order not only the Sarah Palin book but the upcoming books from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson, and Karl Rove. Then think about the millions that will be generated by these books. (In New York State, I seem to recall once upon a time in the days of "The Son of Sam" they passed a law blocking criminals from writing books allowing them to profit from retelling the tales of their wrong-doing. These aren't criminals, of course ... well, not all of them ... but what are we to make of millionaires who gutted the American economy making millions from telling us all how they did it?)

Still on the verge of relief but not quite cleansed? Well, pick up a paper and read about the fact that roughly $140 billion in compensation will be paid out on Wall Street this year, a record beating out the last peak year of 2007. (And while you're at it, flip back to the FT from a day or two ago and read Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's call for more industry reform and ask yourself: was placing this oped at the time the bonuses were going to be announced just a little cynical? Do they really think we're going to fall for that kind of grade-school spinning -- even if he did make a number of good points.)

There, that ought to do it. Feeling better now? Lighter on your feet? Angry but empty? No need to thank me. Just another public service from your virtual friends here on the Internet who will always do what we can to ensure our Washington readers are ready for another day of making the rounds from the Four Seasons to the Palm to the usual receptions sponsored by the likes of the American Foot Odor Institute and the National Alliance for Getting Children to Make Their Beds. And for the rest of you outside the beltway, with America's health care system unlikely to be high functioning any time soon, it's probably a good idea to drop a few pounds and get into better shape. 

And here's our hint for turning what could be an eating disorder into a sustainable diet: just keep watching those headlines -- they're the world's most effective non-addictive appetite suppressant. If you follow Washington without losing your appetite, you're not paying attention.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

I think for a lot of Americans, particularly those of a more liberal inclination, like Michael Moore or my mother, there was a kind of flickering hope earlier in the week that America might be on the verge of exiting the Middle East once and for all.

The loud tick tick tick of the withdrawal timeline has been audible throughout Iraq for months. And with the debate triggered by the McChrystal Report and the pushback calls for more troops seemed to be generating from Vice President Biden and others within the administration, it seemed we might be moving toward a decision by the President that would have us narrowing the mission in Afghanistan. This argued many ... including conservatives like George Will, for that matter ... could only reasonably lead to our withdrawal from that misbegotten place.

And they may even hoped, the United States might finally be ready to pressure the Israelis into backing down on settlements as a way of getting to serious talks about a peace agreement with the Palestinians. No Jewish settlements equals lasting peace settlement, seems to be the calculus there.

Then, reality crept back into the picture. First, it was hinted at when Obama ... at least temporarily ... backed down on pressuring the Israelis on the settlements. But then it came roaring back into focus with a vengeance thanks to the "news" of Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility. Never mind that Obama was briefed on this facility before he became president, that allied intelligence services had known about it for years and that everyone knew Iran was lying about its existence all along. There comes a moment in these things when their lying and our willingness to lie to ourselves or at least to our publics slip out of whack. And that's when the truth creeps out and spoils the party.

And so as the week draws to a close, the picture now looks somewhat different. Iran is revealed again to be a liar and immediately responds by saying "we won't back down." America, Britain, and France make statements condemning Iran, but they range from bland and process oriented (Obama) to bold but toothless (Sarkozy and Brown). Meanwhile, Angela Merkel (who my sources tell me is not one of Obama's faves in Europe to begin with) and the Russians and the Chinese can't or won't make it to the "shocked, shocked" photo op.

Russia and China are the "or" and the "else" of any international threat to Iran. Absent them, countries like the United States and our European allies can only stomp their feet or introduce sanctions that will be largely ineffective. So this problem festers on and looks very likely to get much worse before it gets better.

Meanwhile, days after the Untied States votes to triple aid to Pakistan, the Washington Post runs a story today about the growing anti-Americanism in that country and how it threatens our goals there. Given that Pakistan is where our real enemies are, this reminds us that this is the AfPak War and regardless of what we want to do in Afghanistan, we will for many years be grappling with the much, much bigger problems associated with nuclear Pakistan.

And on top of it all, the Iran revelation makes Bibi Netanyahu (see today's other post) one of the big winners of this week, proving that while Ahmadinejad lies about the Holocaust and nukes, Netanyahu has been accurately characterizing the Iranian threat. Further, it is becoming clearer and clearer to the Obama team that however difficult the Israelis may be, they are matched step for step by the Palestinians.

In short, for those of you who thought we might have been on the verge of getting the heck out of Dodge, reconsider. We can draw down troops in Iraq, but there will be 50,000 there when Obama's successor arrives in office. We can narrow the focus in Afghanistan, but there will be U.S. military dealing with threats in AfPak when Obama's successor arrives in office. We can extend the "unclenched fist" to Iran, but they will spit in it and represent a deep and lasting threat to regional security for many years, certain well past whenever Obama's successor arrives in office. And Israel and Palestine may make peace ... although that seems a long way off...but the volatility in the region will ensure that sooner or later everyone will be clear that they are not the lynchpin of the region's stability issues.  (Although they are certainly an important one.)

The decisions Obama makes about Afghanistan, about dealing with a difficult ally in Pakistan, about how to forge an effective international coalition to contain Iran (which will involve coming up with credible, meaningful consequences if they fail to fall into line), and about just how to get two difficult parties to accept the peace they both need and want, will play a large role in determining whether Obama is around for another 3 or another 7 years. But it seems clear that almost regardless of which path he chooses, his successor will face many of the same problems.

A week that began with murmurs of hope among those who would like to see America disengaged from the region -- a group with which I am very sympathetic not to mention one that includes plenty of my relatives -- is distressingly ending with a slightly different tone, better characterized by the shrieks of noted foreign policy observer Mathew Broderick at the climactic moment of "The Producers." "No way out!" he cries, "No way out!"

I'm not always a pessimist. But I am right now.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Yes, "Morning Joe" thought the hot story out of the Venice Film Festival was the footage of an exuberant gay Italian man stripping down and begging for a kiss from George Clooney. But they missed the bigger story. Perhaps they were too dazzled by the flashbulbs or their reporter was unable to make his way through the fawning, screeching crowds of fans. But there, upstaging the canals and the pigeons of St. Marks was Hollywood's newest hunk, Hugo Chavez. And just like Clooney, he had his retinue of crazed admirers. In Chavez's case however, the heavy-breathing was coming from director Oliver Stone, who was in town to promote his latest labor of love, a valentine to Chavez called "South of the Border." 

And you thought George W. Bush was Yale's most embarrassing graduate... 

This new film -- which is not, incidentally, named after the South Carolina roadside tourist trap of the same name -- builds on Stone's unwitting reputation as a master of historical fiction. Whereas some filmmakers are known for their camera work or story-telling, Stone is best known for his inability to separate fact from fairy-tale. First, came JFK, which provided the same view of the Kennedy assassination you would get after huffing glue while watching the Zapruder film. Other fantasies made their way into his movies on Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Appropriately, therefore, the best of all summaries of his worldview came in the description of his "single plane theory" of the 9/11 attacks as reported by the Onion. (Given Stone's track record, the fact that it is completely made up is precisely the reason it should be treated as the truth.) 

Here's an excerpt of Time's review of the film:

Every step of the way, Stone is by, and on, on the President's side. He raises no tough issues, some of which are summarized in Amnesty International's 2009 report on Venezuela: "Attacks on journalists were widespread. Human-rights defenders continued to suffer harassment. Prison conditions provoked hunger strikes in facilities across the country." Referring to the 2006 election in which Chávez won a third term, Stone tells viewers that "90% of the media was opposed to him," and yet he prevailed. "There is a lesson to be learned," Stone says. Yes: support the man in power, or your newspaper, radio station or TV network may be in jeopardy.

According to Variety, Stone said, ""You can't get a fair hearing for Chavez. It's an outrageous caricature they've drawn of him in the Western press."

Yes. Outrageous. Let's just take a few items of Chavez news from around the world that have crossed the wires in just the past couple days and draw our own conclusions, shall we?

Let's start with the mildly comic. In Belarus, Chavez met with President Alexander Lukashenko (the White Russian version of a caudillo). There, according to AFP:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday boasted of his good ties with fellow Western critic Belarus, even suggesting the two countries could become part of a Soviet-style union.

Chavez held talks in Minsk with his Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko marked by a chummy bonhomie that saw the pair also propose they travel the length and breadth of Venezuela in the near future.

"We need to create a new union of republics," Chavez told Lukashenko, according to a statement from the Belarussian presidency.

Today, in moves that are not so laughable, Chavez will meet with Russian officials where he is expected to discuss further arms sales, military cooperation and energy deals.

More ominously, today Chavez also stirred up a torrent of controversy when he accused Israel of genocide.

The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They're doing it openly," Chavez said in an interview with Le Figaro published on Wednesday.

The Venezuelan president, who has just completed a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries, brushed aside Israeli assertions that its attack on Gaza was a response to rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas which rules the coastal enclave.

"What was it if not genocide? ... The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians," Chavez said, adding that sanctions should have been slapped on Israel.

While perhaps Stone would agree with these rants (and while he might disagree with Elliott Abrams's excellent piece in yesterday's Washington Post taking former President Jimmy Carter to task for his similarly one-sided, overstated and distorted views), his past record of using and abusing the truth like other directors do starlets suggests that he might not dig far enough into the facts to recognize that his film's hero is deeply in bed with some of the very worst of the Middle East's bad actors. 

Fortunately for the rest of us, there is the very thoughtful and profoundly disturbing column by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in yesterday's Wall Street Journal detailing a growing case that Chavez and the Iranians are up to the worst kind of no good in this neighborhood. (Connecting the dots between Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Chavez's views is very easy when you do a little more research than Stone did.) Morgenthau writes:

Why is Hugo Chávez willing to open up his country to a foreign nation with little shared history or culture? I believe it is because his regime is bent on becoming a regional power, and is fanatical in its approach to dealing with the U.S. The diplomatic overture of President Barack Obama in shaking Mr. Chávez's hand in April at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago is no reason to assume the threat has diminished. In fact, with the groundwork laid years ago, we are entering a period where the fruits of the Iran-Venezuela bond will begin to ripen.

That means two of the world's most dangerous regimes, the self-described "axis of unity," will be acting together in our backyard on the development of nuclear and missile technology. And it seems that terrorist groups have found the perfect operating ground for training and planning, and financing their activities through narco-trafficking.

His theory is supported not only by the evidence outlined in his article but also by statements earlier this week that Chavez intended to provide oil to Iran in the event the world's leading powers attempt to impose an embargo on the country should it continue to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions. The Iranian intransigence could put the U.S. on a collision course not only with Tehran but with suppliers like Chavez -- a fact which could delay his getting a star on Hollywood's walk of fame indefinitely as well as causing a real foreign policy headache for the Obama administration.

However, there are always two sides to every story (at least ... around the dinner table in my house growing up there were typically many more than that). And as dark as is the picture of Iranian-Venezuelan cooperation painted by Morgenthau there will always be someone who sees the happy Hollywood ending to such collaborations. And of course, for that we can always turn to Stone. Because according to The Guardian, Chavez's Leni Riefenstahl is currently planning as an encore "an interview film with Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Update: We just heard from Willie Geist of "Morning Joe" who noted that they did their takedown of Chavez and Stone earlier this week. I should have known that Geist, who has one of television's best B.S. detectors and, even rarer, a great sense of humor, would never have let this story slip through the cracks.

FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

When I was just out of college, one of my pals from school landed a plum job as a production assistant at ABC News. Sometimes, we would meet his pals from the ABC News room for a drink near their studios in the West 60s in Manhattan. One of them was a terrific guy named Tom Capra, son of filmmaker Frank Capra, and I vividly remember him going into a rant over a beer about Ted Turner's hare-brained new 24-hour news operation which Tom and all his colleagues referred to derisively as the "Chicken Noodle Network." 

At the time, CNN's aspirations and shenanigans and low salaries seemed beneath the serious work that was done by the likes of their Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner and the other big stars of evening news. Back then those other stars were people like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor, a mostly male group who traced their journalistic DNA back to Edward R. Murrow and that CBS operation that was kind of the Olduvai Gorge of broadcast news.

Now most of those stars are dead and oddly, the Chicken Noodle Network which rose up, revolutionized television and in fact, modern society, has in fact recently transformed itself into the Cadaver News Network. Between its non-stop coverage of Michael Jackson's demise (that was a guy who really knew how to make an exit), the 24/7 coverage of the death of Teddy Kennedy that has now (probably temporarily) usurped it and the age of most of its commentators and viewers, CNN is one of those ideas I feel as though I have seen gone through its full life cycle -- from laughing stock to parody of itself.

Candidly, it's hard to imagine the world without CNN and when global crises strike -- as most recently in the case of the Iranian uprisings -- it can roll out its really good journalists and provide the sort of coverage that revolutionized the business. But it has never really figured out in almost three decades of existence what to do the rest of the time. Some of its answers to that question, like Larry King, are both superannuated and intoxicated with sheer trivia (otherwise how do you explain the appearance of Kate Gosselin, a woman who any respectable news organization ought to treat like intellectual ebola virus, something that once in your system pretty much dooms your credibility to bleed out through every orifice?)

Part of its solution to the issue of what to do when there is no news is, of course, a sort of repetition of recycled headlines and clips that I believe will ultimately be revealed to be one of the torture techniques used by the CIA in its interrogation of detainees. But another element of it has been their pioneering of the coverage of world events ... and particularly those in Washington ... as a kind of reality television show. 

What they do is put together a cast of people who are certain to fight with one another and then they toss a story in the middle of them and watch them tear at it like hyenas with a tasty piece of wildebeest. In these sessions, the news is no longer central, it is just a catalyst to generate more intense inter-personal drama, the precise equivalent of the latest bit of Tyra Mail or Gordon Ramsay's latest challenge for his chefs on "Hell's Kitchen." It's Real World DC and we're just waiting for Bill Bennett to give it good to Donna Brazile. Of course, when they move into funereal mode the terms of the interactions are more muted but that is more than made up for by the stately soundtrack and dramatic graphics that are the shiny wrappers crying out that this is "new and improved" version of the same old story. Want more filler? Let's see what our viewers are emailing into us about us. Or let's see how the Internet is covering the same damn thing we are.

At the end of the day, it all calls to mind the Saturday Night Live bit that only slightly pre-dated my conversations with Tom Capra, the one in which Chevy Chase would periodically announce "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." I don't say this to minimize stories of real importance ... nor do I say it out of some misplaced nostalgia for "the golden age" of news. We live in the golden age of news. The way it is delivered on the web trumps everything every done before in history whether you are looking for ultra-local news on whose cat got caught in whose tree or you want 1000 perspectives on the latest election in Cameroon. 

CNN played a big role in triggering the transformation that has brought us to where we are today. But now, they as well as MSNBC and Fox seem to have lost their way. What they do best is cover breaking stories. They should recognize that stately music and somber logos do not dignity make just as fights among their contract commentators are neither newsworthy nor, for the most part, terribly interesting. They should also recognize that repeating things over and over again and having the otherwise excellent Wolf Blitzer say, as he too often does, that something is "historic" does not actually make an event bigger than it is. It only makes their already dragged-out coverage longer. There must be a better way ... more focused on hard news coverage and taut analysis. There has got to be a programming choice other than that between dead air and dead people.

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Welcome to my life: My wife and I are padding around the bedroom this morning trying to avoid stepping on the little piles of clothing and half-assembled alebrijes that are the residue of a recent trip she made to Mexico. (She is a big fan of the Oaxacan wood carvings and our house, as a result, is full of them. Of course, those from the most recent trip came not only as contorted and fanciful as usual but each carrying a different strain of swine flu which makes them even more frightening than usual for our big, stupid cats.)

The bed is unmade. The blinds are down in the full blackout position that produces the crypt-like conditions my wife demands in order to sleep. (Although as I write this I wonder if sleeping with me is what has led her to require conditions that would have a bat demanding a nightlight and calling for his mommy.) Morning Joe is burbling in the background, the inside-the-beltway equivalent of one of those Sharper Image white noise machines.

So are we discussing her trip? The day? Her upcoming visit to the eye-doctor to have her faulty laser surgery fixed? How nice I look in my running shorts and polo shirt that still features remnants of last night's delicious dinner of Lean Pockets?

No, we're discussing blogging, bane of my existence. She was dead-set against it at the outset. But now she loves it. She says it is because people she meets talk about the blog all the time but that is implausible unless she travels in an even smaller, weirder circle than I thought. Instead, I am pretty sure it is because that when she does meet the odd Joe (or Jane) who reads the blog, she immediately gets waves of sympathy from them for having to put up with such a deranged curmudgeon. ("Do you really have to pretend to laugh at the jokes around the house?! You poor muffin...")

So I say, "I'm thinking of doing the blog today about Uribe." Yesterday there was a vote in the Colombian legislature that rekindled the prospect of President Uribe running for a third term. While I happen to think Uribe has done a pretty terrific job, all things considered, in one of the world's toughest jobs, I don't think it will enhance his legacy or Colombian democracy for him to run again. There are plenty of other talented Colombians and plenty of ways for him to continue to play a leading and constructive role.

She responds that many of my Colombian friends will be angry with me for this position because they think so highly of Uribe. She also notes that other people have made the point before and in so doing I might inflame discussions here that have some folks on Capitol Hill arguing we should go even slower on the approving the Colombia free trade deal if Uribe makes the decision to run again. Admittedly, she is the head of the Western Hemisphere Department at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, although she is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, she is also one of those old-fashioned advocates of free trade that you used to read about in business magazines before they were all forced to go underground and live in basements and practice their secret rituals of promoting global government and worshipping a border-free globe in secrecy. (Ok, I'll admit it. Me too) But she makes a good point. And she is my wife who brought home many beautiful alebrijes. So I drop the idea.

Instead, she suggests, I should do the piece on the insanity of the vetting and approval process that has left us with scores of gaps across the top levels of the U.S. government here in late August of the first year of the Obama presidency. As she puts it, we've got "local Kentucky politics" resulting in not having senior officials in place to deal with vital issues. "Here we are in the middle of a crisis and some of the most important jobs in the whole government are vacant for no good reason," she says while slathering herself in some strange cream that although it makes her look temporarily like a creature from a Roger Corman film actually smells pretty good and seemingly makes her immune to the effects of time, gravity and continental drift.

You don't argue with a woman who seemingly has discovered a cure for physics. And again, her argument has, as my old boss Kissinger used to say, the added benefit of being right. She lists a group of ambassadors, assistant secretaries, deputy U.S. trade representatives and others who are cooling their heels while Congress is at the beach or out trying to scare old people with "death panels." I jump on her bandwagon by reminding her of the story of the very smart, capable and talented Lael Brainard who is still in limbo despite the fact that:

• She has been nominated to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for International, one of the most important jobs in government in the best of times and even more important in times like these, which are not (you may have noticed) the best of times.
• She has already served with distinction at a high level in the government before.
• And, as noted in the Washington Post earlier this week, her husband with whom she shares a tax return, has already been confirmed as an assistant secretary of state. In other words, her tax returns have already been confirmed by the Senate but somehow she has been left behind.

That's it, I think, I'll write a "Free Lael Brainard!" piece. But then my wife reminds me the Post did that a couple days ago and I would look like a copycat. So that idea is also ditched.

What about doing a decline of America piece based on the quote I saw while reading U.S. News during a private moment this morning, I suggest? She says I shouldn't mention that I read the story anywhere in the vicinity of the loo because that would be tasteless. I promise not to. Then, I get to the thrust of the story which was a quote from former West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton, a good guy I spent some time with once on some Clinton foreign mission somewhere who has since gone on to even greater power as head of the College Board. His observation was something to the effect that about a quarter of SAT-takers in 1989 said they had a GPA in the A range (A plus, A or A minus) but that today that number has climbed to well over 40 percent.

No wonder we've got problems, I thought. But then I thought the last time I wrote a piece about some of the intellectually-challenged citizens of America I got accused of being elitist and anti-American and a traitor and a Jew. And two of those things aren't true, one I feel bad about and the fourth one would probably be disputed by my rabbi who hasn't seen me since my youngest daughter's bat mitzvah. I've taken enough abuse this week and it's Friday, so maybe I'll just...and then I looked up and noticed my wife had quietly, like a Blackwater assassin going after an al Qaeda target, gone to work. So I decided not to write a post for the blog today. It's a summer weekend. And if I wrote all this stuff it would probably be way too long anyway. Why not give the readers a day off.

Flickr/Praziquantel

The New York Times is getting beat up regularly these days. So, let's take a minute and comment on the continuing high quality of its reporting in Pakistan. There could be few more important stories. There could be few places where it is tougher to report. And yet, week after week, they produce insightful pieces that offer valuable insights into this nation that is ally, warzone, and threat all blended together.

Today's example is the story "70 Murders Yet Close to Going Free in Pakistan" by Sabrina Tavernise and Waqar Gillani. It uses the story of how one of Pakistan's most dangerous extremist leaders is likely to escape multiple murder charges scot-free to illustrate the deep flaws within the Pakistani justice system and the perverse partnership between Pakistani authorities and some very dangerous characters and organizations. (Jane Perlez's story from earlier last month, on how hard a time the United States was having getting its aid dollars distributed in conjunction with our very unappreciative seeming Pakistani "allies," is another such example. And there are plenty of others.)

These stories drive home the message that Pakistani society is hugely complex and deeply conflicted, that this is a largely dysfunctional country in which a modicum of political unrest is the best one can hope for during the foreseeable future. They remind us why it has been conventional wisdom for several years now that this is the most dangerous country in the world. 

They also underscore the absolute fallacy that every nation is "entitled" to its own nuclear program. (And they underscore why we will someday look to the Bush administration's complete caving on sanctioning Pakistan for developing its nuclear program in order to win a strategic advantage in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban, a mirage at best, as perhaps the biggest of all its big foreign policy errors.) No society allows everyone access to firearms ... even the gun promiscuous USA. We deny weapons to minors, criminals, and the mentally unstable. We limit their ownership to people who have "proven" they can manage them. And look how that's working for us. Not so well. Is it really reasonable that there should be a lower standard for "permitting" the development of nuclear programs? 

The threat of Pakistan is primarily a regional one, unless a portion of its nuclear arsenal falls into the wrong hands. That would create a potential catastrophe to be sure. It's a high-risk scenario with an outcome that should have the United States on guard. But is Pakistan really the most dangerous country in the world?

It comes to mind as one of the other countries that I think is among the world's most dangerous, Russia, has been rattling its rusty sabers more frequently recently. There was the story the other day about its submarines off the U.S. coast, the not so comforting rebuttal today by one of its top generals, its recent naval exercises with the Iranians, its generally non-constructive attitude toward dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem, its belligerent rumblings throughout its near abroad ... the list goes on. And this is a country that has the ability, as the submarine (and earlier strategic bomber readiness) stories suggest, to project force anywhere in the world. It is also a country that has the political clout and through its natural resources the economic clout to become something between a difficult rival for the U.S. and a permanent spanner in the works of the international system. (For a very good take on Russia, see today's op-ed by one of our best experts on the country, Steve Sestanovich, in the Washington Post.)

Despite a new State Department intel estimate saying that the Russian military is less capable of projecting force than it was and is moving toward a "smaller more technical force", it still has a vastly more potent nuclear capability than all but one countries and a vastly more potent military than all but a tiny handful. Such assessments need to therefore be taken in context and always capabilities need to be multiplied by the will to use them in risk calculations.

Russia also has, as Joe Biden impoliticly noted, some problems that could be complicating factors. In short, the bear has the wolf at its door-demographically and economically. Biden interpreted these as factors that might weaken Russia. But they are also the kind of factors that often inspire leaders to dangerous postures and strategies. What is weakening Russia is simultaneously making the country more dangerous.

I know this is not a popular view. But it seems very likely to me that on more fronts and in bigger ways, Russia could be a bigger problem for the U.S. and for the world at large over the next decade or two than Pakistan.

Which begs the question: Which is the most dangerous country in the world? I'll try to answer that tomorrow.

A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images