• Obama told Chinese teenagers about the uncensored Internet, a mediocre collection of re-purposed AP articles and some videos that generally people only like when it’s not available.  [New York Times]
• Over at some United Nations summit, everyone bonded about how much they hate hunger but declined to throw any money at the problem. [AP]
• Starting in January, GM will start giving the US $1 billion per quarter to pay off the company’s debt. [Washington Post]
• Late Friday, when no one was paying attention, Robert Gates whispered in the Supreme Court’s ear that the Pentagon is forbidding the release of those US military-terror suspect photos. [CNN]
• Some Democrats are working on a bill that would compensate everyone whose hours were cut so their companies wouldn’t go out of business immediately. Wonkette Games: what will Democrats and Republicans do to convince everyone on Earth to hate this idea in just a few weeks? [The Hill]
• Palestinians might ask the UN for their own state because they are very frustrated with the US, Israel, and not having their own state. [WSJ]

By the Comics Curmudgeon

Look, one of the things we namby-pamby liberals get critiqued for is our inability to just stand up and show some moral courage, to say that some things are right and some are wrong. Usually we’re all like “Oh, there’s context” or “It’s society’s fault” or “Who are we to judge” or whatever. But sometimes, even the most consensus-addicted hippie has to take a stand. Today, your faithful Comics Curmudgeon will identify five cartoons that are simply incorrect. MORE »

• HOORAY! Says the CEO of the now-bankrupt General Motors: “The GM you knew, the GM that let so many of you down, is history.” Stocks are just cold going nuts, Dow up 215+ at the moment. [Marketwatch]

Wow it’s morning so that means Barack Obama is giving televised remarks about the latest failed giant business he’s buying us for Ramadan. General Motors! “The collapse of these companies would’ve been devastating to America,” etc., yes we know, “and it would be good for American workers and American manufacturing and good for America’s economy” if, heh heh, GM didn’t have to pay all its debts. Let’s live-blog this by liveblogging, now! MORE »

It’s the post you’ve been waiting for, the one where we point out that the acronym for a certain fanciful robot-car for lazy urban dorks is the same as the acronym for bitterly disenfranchised Hillary Clinton voters, har! Mark Penn is obviously behind this microtrend, called “Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility,” or “Party Unity My Ass,” for short. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
If you asked the average American in olden times (1960) what glories would await them, auto-wise, in the Mysterious Future Year of 2009, they would be all like “flying cars” and “nuclear-powered cars” and “cars operated by intelligent ro-bots.” They certainly would not say “cars made in Japan, because American automakers have entered creative, moral, and actual bankruptcy (in that order).” MORE »

When Richard Cohen was a child — back in the good old days when people stoically died of everything, and our best days (The Beatles/Civil Rights) were still ahead, and there were bookstores filled not with these Blackberries, but real books, the kind a person could read without a telephone, or a pager, or such things — his psychotic father would push him outside in the middle of the night, on a primitive bicycle (no Prius for him!), its basket loaded with the printed, rubber-banded stacks of wood-pulp produced by our nation’s best newspaper publishers, a torrent of cold rain pounding upon the child’s prematurely white hair, a deadly pothole concealed by a puddle of dirty street water, and then BLAM!, the morning’s papers sinking to the bottom of the asphalt crater, the wood pulp thirstily soaking up the rain juice, the work of America’s better journalists blurring into inky clouds of failure. The elder Cohen, snarling with rage, grabs little Richard and begins lashing him with whatever’s at hand — a garden hose, a dog leash, and finally, savagely, the bicycle chain. This is why GM should fail. MORE »

Ever get the feeling that your country has become one of those places where this kind of thing is always making it to the nightly news in rich countries? [Political IQ]

Hmm, so this auto bailout problem, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Good, because the government should continue to withhold money from GM and Chrysler until they get their acts together. Bad, because GM and Chrysler cannot get their acts together without money, plus the demise of the manufacturing sector etc. President Obama assures us, however, that no matter what happens “we will not let our auto industry simply vanish.” This is liberal socialist code for “we will raise taxes on the wealthy and give everyone a free Geo Metro.” [Washington Post]

Turns out there are some occasional consequences to keeping your failed industry afloat on a sea of free money from the government. General Motors’ CEO Richard Wagoner found out about that, today, when he was fired — excuse us, “resigned.” Barack Obama went on some teevee talky show this morning to complain about Detroit and the auto bailout, and by tonight Wagoner was out, the end. [Washington Post]

Back when George Bush was the 36th best president of the United States, he suggested that the incoming administration appoint a Benevolent Despot Emperor of Automobiles, colloquially known as a “car czar,” to tend to the heaping pile of unsold inventory and feces that is the American automotive industry. And it seemed like Barack Obama would appoint this czar, in deference to tradition. MORE »