So now, Teh Leader is getting Pooty-Poot all in an uproar because he wants to deploy a misssle shield in Europe, which Russia opposes. Which you can understand why; if you and I are former adversaries and possible future adversaries and I have a shield and you don’t have a shield, why, then, I can take a poke at you and your toughest response becomes invalid.

So long as the missle shield works, of course. And given that we live in an era where suitcase nukes are a far bigger threat than an ICBM, it gets even more ludicrous.

But worse yet, is anyone asking what deploying this missle shield is going to cost the United States at a time of economic crisis? The AP story doesn’t even touch on cost; we have to go over to the Boston Globe to find this:

For 2009, the White House is requesting $12.3 billion to develop ballistic missile defense. This is on top of the more than $120 billion taxpayers have already spent since 1985 to develop a system that still has yet to be realistically tested and may never be operationally effective.

Bernanke’s on the TeeVee this morning saying we’ve got a “possible” recession on the way. So this is how the United States is going to spend taxpayers’ hard-earned money?

I await some conservative defense of this sublime folly. I expect even the usual suspects won’t take this bait.