Cryptofascist warblog The Politico has won the long weekend (and, by retroactive default, the Revolutionary War) with their crucial SCOOP on Obama’s weird obsession with pronouncing proper nouns—names of places he’s visiting, names of people he’s speaking to, that sort of thing—in the way in which they are actually intended to be pronounced. Quoth Politico’s Carol “Robert” E. Lee:  “In Obama’s view, pronouncing someone’s name or hometown correctly is a simple way of showing respect.” This is called Obamanomics, and it’s foreclosing America’s jobs. MORE »

It Is Back: Screen on the Green is back! DCers were devastated when it was canceled.  There were riots in the streets, people were twittering like mad, there may have been hearings on Capitol Hill, and who knows what other displays of unnecessary emotion all due to the demise of an outdoor film festival, even though the entire economy IS ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE.  But all the bitching, complaining, and crying paid off, because IT’S BACK! MORE »

Tuesday, May 26 through Sunday, May 31: There’s no musical that screams young white suburban angst like RENT. It managed to make AIDS the hit disease that all the teen-aged girls wanted, as did it make hating your parents and wanting to live in abject poverty the coolest things ever!! MORE »

• Cheney and his daughter bounced all around Manhattan the other day, trying to convince everyone to let him bomb Iran by noting that there’s a “giant conspiracy” (furtive conspiracy code name: “facts”) that’s in place to keep him from doing so. [Ben Smith]
• RAUCOUS INFIGHTING right now, at the Corner, as Jerry Taylor is standing athwart K-Lo pleasuring Rush Limbaugh and shouting “Stop!”… or something. [Matt Yglesias]
• Remember those torture photos Obama promised to release? The graphic novel accompaniment to Dick Cheney’s recent tween novel sensation Waterboarding Towards Bethlehem: A Nationbuildingsroman? So right, never mind about those. [Andrew Sullivan]
• Republicans blocked Obama’s second choice for deputy secretary of the interior department, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is so sad! [The Caucus]
• Obama is trying to make sure that the Olympics go to Chicago in 2016 because according to history as personified by Nate Silver, this is good news for the incumbent president. [538]

You may have read on the Internet that this week’s big movie release is the “new” original Star Trek movie, and it is going to make millions of dollars. It is the latest manifestation of Hollywood studios’ race to abandon all creativity: after a popular movie series like Batman or Superman has run its course, just start over and make the first one again. Critics then praise the director’s “new vision,” and political writers note that all of the characters are famous politicians, secretly, in real life. Everyone remembers last year’s important Wall Street Journal column, “George Bush Jr. Is The Bat Man.” This year’s version? “Barack Obama is the Spock.” Steady yourself… MORE »

Slate! That’s technically a magazine. Yes, yes, magazine by a hair. Okay, here we go, let’s take a look at which articles this week everyone will be referencing in conversation as if they did not just about read these things in Slate. As in: Q: “Oh, did you know so-and-so fun fact about so-and-so marginal aspect of bee-keeping or children’s literature or the economy of Idaho or whatever?” A: “Yes, yes. In fact, bee-keeping or children’s literature or the economy of Idaho is currently experiencing this sort of trend and here is an unconventional rationale regarding why everything will eventually be fine!” Knowledge! MORE »

• That guy, Obama, is still as popular as ever, despite the global pandemic and personally orchestrating 9/11 2: 2 Fast 2 Furious. [Andrew Sullivan]
• Recalled children’s toy Michael Steele has been  walking around mumbling that Specter’s “mama didn’t raise him” in a certain way. [CNN Political Ticker]
• If Texas were to undergo some sort of retarded mitosis and split into five states, here’s what comedies that particular future might bring about. [FiveThirtyEight]
• Meanwhile, in Virginia, Bill Clinton continues to campaign for Terry McAuliffe by screaming “Who cares!”, apropos of nothing, and reminding everyone he is an ex-president. McAuliffe/Specter 2016! [The Caucus]
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the slogan “Yes We Can” in his re-electionc campaign. Obama will be so jealous, that Ahmadinejad gets to yell “Yes We Can” in Farsi, the way it was intended to be yelled. [Ben Smith]

It’s great that the poor little lonely Obama girls finally got a nice dog that won’t make allergy-prone Malia sick with its dog hair, because it is a special hairless breed. NO WAIT. It is an outrage that the Obama girls were given this dog because it isn’t LEGALLY a “rescue dog.” (Did you know “rescue dog” is a legal term? READ THE CONSTITUTION.) And guess what organization is demanding that Barack Obama personally slice off this dog’s nuts? MORE »

• K-Lo (who we’ll remind you is now a Serious Artist and would like to be called by her Christian name, “Jennifer Lopez”) is terribly upset that Obama is speaking at Notre Dame’s commencement because Obama is pro-choice and is therefore incapable of reciting vaguely inspirational pleasantries for 25 minutes. [Firedoglake]
• Ditto Newt Gingrich, a non-Cathlolic, who doesn’t think Obama, also a non-Catholic, is Catholic enough. [Media Matters]
• Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton tried to give the Russians a red button with the word “reset” on it, for friendship (?), except of course obviously the state department was incapable of correctly translating this single word. [Daily Intel]
• Here is Meghan McCain, wearing her old costume from Phoenix Senior High’s freshman-and-sophomores-only production of Chicago, talking about how she can’t add. You know, with numbers. Meghan McCain for Notre Dame commencement speaker! [The XX Factor]
• Some Washington middle schoolers got to hang out with Obama today and watch him hang out with space astronauts and talk about Tang, for such is their wont. [The Caucus]

Now that Obama has closed down the evil Gitmo prison camp, he’s left with 250 detainees that need to either be released or criminally prosecuted – of course, there’s that tiny little problem of Where, How and Why. MORE »

• Tina Brown’s new Recovery.com, a popular new Internet Web-site in which users upload pictures of their cats and categorize them according to their appeal, is quite popular, making it all the more frustrating that America is not paid per pageview. [Top of the Ticket]
• Professor Obama will now give banks little “stress tests” that will determine their instability and whether or not the banks have been doing their secondary reading despite not participating in the seminar discussion.  [The Atlantic]
• More Americans think Barry is going to handle this economy thing okay, thanks to his big convincing speech and probably the comparatively spectacular failure of weird Bobby Jindal. [Daily Beast]
• There is literally nothing that displeases Republicans more than children with working parents receiving health insurance—watch their stillness conceal the hatred. Dusty old robot Ronald Reagan stayed still too, in his grave.  [Daily Kos]
• Congress’ own Uncle Junior, John McCain, boozily rolled out from underneath some umbrella in the Arizona desert to criticize the war effort in Afghanistan. [CNN Political Ticker]

What’s happenin’ everyone? Besides America’s anniversary with its first wife, George Washington, we mean. Books, books are what’s happening. Lots of books about the military and its history, if that is your “thing.” Also some meta-novel about moving to Europe, and another new book that proves, with Science, that Obama is nothing more than an Hawaiian Hugo Chavez. Plus, poetry! MORE »

• House Republican Eric Cantor responded to some of his critics with the most verboten of language, a sinful technical foul of our Constitution that just last month forced beloved Rod Blagoveich to perform for mercy on the David Letterman program. [HuffPost]
• Another reprehensible instance of GOTCHA!-prepared-statement-giving-to-the-editorial-board-of-a-newspaper from the so-called “MSM”: Steve Austria, the Republican Kaiser of Ohio, blames America’s original great depression (”The Great Depression”) on FDR, despite FDR taking office four years after its start. [Matthew Yglesias]
• Barack Obama has now taken to ambiguously insulting Joe Biden — incidentally and in an off-puttingly earnest way — in public. All this is to avenge Justice Roberts’ honor. [Los Angeles Times]
• About half of America believes that a bunch of possible random names selected from the phone book — a group that in all likelihood would consist solely local mid-priced Italian restaurants — could do a better job in Congress than actual Congress. [Hit & Run]
• George W. Bush: kind of hot in high school. Andrew Sullivan prefers Dick Cheney though, which, ew. [Daily Dish]