• Hamid Karzai’s brother, a prominent opium dealer (!), has been receiving CIA paychecks for eight years. He will now be fired and replaced by a teenager and an iPhone app. Recession!  [New York Times]
• A car bomb killed 86 people in Peshawar a couple hours after Hillary Clinton left Peshawar. [AP]
• At least six UN-related people died in a bombing in Kabul. Predictably, the Taliban has claimed responsibility, for such is their schtick. [Washington Post]
• Those pilots who appeared to have totally forgotten to land the plane for an entire hour after they were supposed to have done so have lost their licenses. [CNN]
• “Consumer confidence”—evidently an actual metric and not something people just say—is up for the first time since 2007. [Reuters]
• It’s looking like Iran might outsource its uranium enrichment needs, which is exactly what Obama wanted. [Reuters]

TODAY’S OFFERING FROM… A CERTAIN “COHEN, RICHARD”: Celebrated Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wants Obama to GET REAL now. You’re President, for the love of fuck — bomb Iran already! etc. etc. And it really was just a matter of time before Richard Cohen used this line, wasn’t it: “These Persians lie like a rug.” Amazing. [Washington Post]

Great photo here from Pittsburgh, the growing & thriving American business city! Huh? Oh, nevermind, 1958 ended a while ago. Tomorrow Pittsburgh will host the latest G20 conference, but NO FOREIGNS ALLOWED. [Flickr]

Like many proud leaders of the Grand Old Party, Texas Sen. John Cornyn recently said something inappropriate and terrible and damaging to his country while defending something expensive, war-related, and unnecessary. Last week he argued against curtailing the Pentagon’s F-22 program on the grounds that we will need those bad boys to bomb various countries in the future. He then listed four countries that the United States currently has no intention of bombing, one of which was INDIA — the American ally — what with the “increased exercise of their military power.” Ha ha, eat an ICBM of dicks, India! But this was all just a misunderstanding, according to Cornyn’s spokesman. He meant to say that we need F-22s to bomb China soon. China. This just clears everything up! Cornyn/Santelli 2012… MORE »

Nomadic “lightning rod conservative” pundit Bill Kristol sees your North Korea and raises you a BOMB NORTH KOREA. Bomb what? Where? What in North Korea? Just bomb it? Yes! UPDATE: Oh look Sara already posted about this! Well this video is bigger. [Media Matters via Matt Yglesias]