1.) Obama says words about Afghanistan — It’s always interesting when Obama says words, because then you can compare those words to reality. TheDC’s Neil Munro reports: “President Barack Obama is gambling that his gradual military withdrawal from Afghanistan won’t prompt the tribal country to spin out of control in the next 12 months and will help him run as a jobs-and-growth candidate in 2012. ‘America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home,’ Obama declared in his prime-time announcement from the White House.” Nation building, or bilking? Munro continues: “There were 32,000 troops in Afghanistan when Obama was inaugurated in January 2008. He sent 20,000 troops there in early 2009, and announced an extra surge of 33,000 troops in December 2009. In his speech, Obama said he would withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of the year, and another 33,000 by September 2012. Most of the remaining 66,000 U.S. troops will then be withdrawn by year end 2014, he said… Obama’s retreat from Afghanistan before the Islamic Taliban is defeated is militarily risky, because it may embolden Taliban attackers and fracture the central government’s shaky coalition. If additional U.S. troops are killed, or the country is split by war in the fall before the 2012 election, Republicans will likely pin the blame on the president.” Which won’t be fair, because… um… George Bush!
2.) GM = Goodbye, Money — Remember the thing just now about Obama’s words and how they relate to reality? TheDC’s Matthew Boyle reports: “New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid ‘intervening in the day-to-day management’ of General Motors post-auto bailout. These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions. Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy… In 2009 congressional testimony, senior Obama administration official Ron Bloom said the president told the Treasury Department to stay out of the management of these companies and downplayed any administration intervention… But the emails TheDC obtained show high-ranking Treasury Department officials, including Matthew Feldman of Treasury’s Auto Task Force, corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.” Just because Obama said he wasn’t running GM doesn’t mean he hasn’t been running GM. It was a metaphor. You’re just not smart enough to get it.
3.) It’s okay to be sexist, Matt Taibbi, as long as she’s a Republican — Liberals are all about the empowerment of women, as long as the women don’t say things liberals don’t like. TheDC’s Jeff Poor writes: “So he’s not exactly Hunter S. Thompson, who filed so many stories covering presidential campaigns for Rolling Stone magazine over the years. But if his latest story about Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is any indication of what’s to come this election cycle, Matt Taibbi’s reporting will have an edge to it. In an appearance promoting the Bachmann piece on Wednesday’s ‘Imus in the Morning’ program on the Fox Business Network, Taibbi offered one reason he was rooting for a Bachmann Republican presidential nomination – the porn films it would inspire. ‘Actually, yeah, I’m actually kind of rooting for her to win the nomination, because I can’t wait to see the porn movies that they make,’ Taibbi said. ‘Bachmann-inspired films are going to be great.'” Well, as long as Taibbi is bringing it up… has there ever been a porn film inspired by, say, Hillary Clinton? Michelle Obama? Nancy Pelosi? If so, how much money did it lose?
4.) Al Gore writes 7,000-word thing in Rolling Stone — Can you guess what Gore wrote about? You might be surprised. Here’s the opening paragraph: “The first time I remember hearing the question ‘is it real?’ was when I went as a young boy to see a traveling show put on by ‘professional wrestlers’ one summer evening in the gym of the Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood, Tennessee.” That’s right: Al Gore is finally revealing how he lost his virginity. No, wait, it looks like he just typed up the same old stuff about global warming: Take Al Gore’s word for it despite any evidence to the contrary, science means listening to the scientists who back you up and ignoring the ones who don’t, we’re all gonna die, shut up, etc. Hey, who was that other old guy who predicted the end of the world recently? Do you think HE could get anything published in Rolling Stone? Do you think anybody would be more likely to read the whole thing?
5.) Get Whitey — The LA Times reports: “Legendary Boston crime boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, who has been on the run for more than a decade, was arrested Wednesday in Santa Monica, multiple law enforcement sources told The Times. Bulger, 81, has been the subject of several books and was the inspiration for ‘The Departed,’ a 2006 Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 as federal agents were about to arrest him in connection with 21 killings, racketeering and other crimes that spanned the early 1970s to the mid-1980s.” So that’s two whitey bulgers caught this month.
6.) Today’s words of wisdom from Alec Baldwin’s Twitter feed — “That girl re the photo ‘spweeted’ on me. That’s when you spit on someone using twitter.”
VIDEO: Obama finally convinces someone to shut up
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