• Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao had the best conversation ever, according to the brief, detail-less talking points Obama gave to reporters right afterward. [New York Times]
• If you are a lady over 40 and/or a lady over 50, there have been important changes re: scheduling your no-longer-annual mammogram! [Washington Post]
• Obama says that he and Russian president Dmitry “Vladimir Putin” Medvedev are THISCLOSE to drafting a new nuclear nonproliferation treaty. [The Hill]
• The nuisancey and frankly a bit boring Somali Pirates obnoxiously and predictably seized a chemical tanker and its North Korean crew off the coast of Seychelles. [CNN]
• Non-Bill Gates Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen began a course of chemo for his non-Hodgkins lymphoma. [WSJ]
• The UN and Iran have been having secret meetings, at which everyone whispered secret suggestions during a dramatic game of telephone about how Iranians can keep enriching uranium but only if they’re friendly to weapons inspectors. [Times Online]

• Someone accidentally left a document detailing ongoing Congressional ethics violations investigations on a public computer network. The Word paperclip would have advised against this. [Washington Post]
• The deposed president of Honduras has been temporarily undeposed by the de facto government. Legitimacy has been totally restored to government there, clearly. [New York Times]
• The Philadelphia-based (and Boston-based, for that matter) sports enthusiasts did not enjoy last night nearly as much as they did Wednesday night. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
• This Russian tycoon who was forbidden from visiting the US apparently came here twice last year as the personal secret guest of the FBI. [WSJ]
• A Coast Guard plane and a Marine helicopter crashed into each other off the coast of California this morning. Despite this being the exact fantasy of every toy-owning toddler, rescue authorities are concerned.  [AP]
• Rhymey former French president Jacques Chirac will be stand trial for corruption and defend some corrupt-seeming things he did while mayor of Paris. [Times Online]

• JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion profits for the third quarter. This is one of those folkloric “good economic news” stories! [New York Times]
• Now that Obama (& Olympia Snowe!) have defeated Chuck Grassley, Baucus, etc., he must now combat Big Health Insurance Lobby. [Washington Post]
• There’s a second gold rush, except it’s a rare minerals rush, happening right now in California’s Mojave Desert. Go west, young man. [Los Angeles Times]
• Hillary Clinton yelled at America and Russia for running around like this is still the Cold War. It’s not, apparently, was her point. [CNN]
• Exciting job opening! Lots of potential for growth: Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida has quit and taken a job at Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation.
• McChrystal is worried that all corruption in Afghanistan might basically cancel out the work that new troops could (will) be doing over there. [AP]

• In March, Obama will be sending 13,000 more mostly non-combat troops—in addition to the original plan of 21,000 combat troops—to Afghanistan. This is the stuff of surges, people! [Washington Post]
• Big changes afoot at your local mall, as Disney will be looking to revamp its store there, I Thought That Closed. [New York Times]
• Russia admitted that while yes, diplomacy is important, not having sanctions with Iran is perhaps even more important, and therefore more diplomatic? In a way? Like dialectically maybe? [AP]
• Do not miss the crucial deadline of this Thursday if you have yet to tell the government about your illicit off-shore banking goings-on! [Los Angeles Times]
• Switzerland is rethinking its whole neutrality schtick. You see, being so relied on is so boring. [WSJ]

• Happy New Year (or “Rosh Hashanah”) to all Wonkette’s Jewish friends! Traditionally one rings in the new year by dipping apples in honey and telling one’s parents that of course, one is absolutely going to synagogue tonight. [Washington Post]
• An alternative way to celebrate: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced earlier today that the Holocaust was a myth. Ok! [New York Times]
• And speaking of Iran, Obama is going back on all Reagan’s Cold War/Star Wars missile defense plans in favor of sending a signal to Israel and the Arabs that the US is well aware of what a bad scene Iran is. [New York Times]
• Max Baucus will do exactly whatever his new friend Olympia Snowe would like him to do to his health care bill, so long as it does not alienate his old group of friends, the Democrats, in the process. [Wall Street Journal]
• Apparently nostalgic for a time when people cared about this, the House and the Senate easily passed some crucial legislation BANNING the ACORNs from receiving federal money. [Los Angeles Times]
• Kim Jong-Il told some Chinese guy, an envoy, that no one had anything to worry about re: North Korea nuking the planet maybe. Despite this, for whatever reason, people are still worried. [Reuters]

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Many differences of opinion mark the divide between real Americans and the sort of decadent, elitist sex-crazed weirdos who read this site. Perhaps one of the easiest ways to tell which category you fall into is to examine your attitude towards the Foreigns and sex perverts. Do you believe that America is a bastion of virtue and everything outside its borders is a giant orgy? Or do you believe that foreigners have a healthy attitude towards sexuality, and that it’s Americans who are all twisted up inside when it comes to sexual matters? As is so often the case in these disagreements, each side is right: both foreigners and Americans are filthy perverts. But only Americans are also furries. MORE »

Hey, we tried to make the headline concise, but these daily health care reform games are just nuts. Okay, so, TODAY’S INTERNET HEALTH CARE BABBLE RECAP: Rahm Emanuel told a newspaper that the White House would be open to the lamers’ version of health care reform, and then progressives went nuts, and then Obama released a statement from inside Lenin’s coffin supposedly “walking back” Rahm’s statement, and this is when the Halperins of the world started paying attention because it allowed them to write simple “Rahm vs. Obama” narratives, and then progressives actually read Obama’s “walk back” statement closely and saw that it was worded rather sneakily and wasn’t that different from what Rahm said in the first place, and now no one will ever be able to see a doctor again and we’ll all die and go to Hell, where this debate will presumably resume in another 10 to 20 years. MORE »

• Michelle Obama is the spokeswoman for the new and groovy United We Serve initiative. But consider this: first we were asked to “stand” united and now the government wants us to “serve” united? That’s a big leap there, going from just standing around to “cleaning up a neighborhood park”, united. Baby steps Michelle, baby steps. [The Caucus]
• What? Matt Taibbi has posted some sort of odd video from Russia, which he claims is very funny if you are like him and understand Russian. But wait, before you assume Taibbi is some sort of bilingual Tolstoy-reading Cossack genius: he posted the video at 1:02 a.m.! Yeah okay Matt, everyone speaks fluent Russian — when they’re drunk! This is so unlike you. [Matt Taibbi]
• Some poor immigrant family had their door kicked in at 4:00 a.m by a SWAT team, which then proceeded to handcuff all the teenage girls in the room. Whoops, wrong door! And then Montgomery County generously offered the distraught family “a couple of movies passes” as compensation. And then the ACLU laughed and laughed and laughed. And laughed. [Hit & Run]
• RedState has expensive-looking Venn diagrams to show how every state is debt-ridden and practically foreclosed! Oh no, does this mean Mexico gets California back? [RedState]
• Every night our cultured, worldly President cooks a big pot of traditional Pakistani tuna casserole and then reads mystical Urdu poetry until it’s time for bed. Jesus Obama, why don’t you and Taibbi get married so you can speak Russian together? The rest of us will be watching television, like normal red white and blue-blooded Americans. [Politico]

• 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]

SPACE DISASTER SOMEHOW DIDN’T INVOLVE NASA: Some old broken-ass Russian military satellite smashed into an Iridium satellite and now they are both tiny bits of space debris that will eventually cause the Apocalypse — the Russian satellite had a nuclear reactor. [Wall Street Journal]

A wingnut jesus-freak lady from our favorite online newspaper, World Net Daily, would like to share something with you — something she withheld from the American Public throughout the presidential campaign, even though she knew it was true, because she got some forwarded email saying it was true: At a business dinner in 1992, some Russian capitalist’s wife said the Communists had picked a new American president, a black guy from Hawaii/Africa named Barack! MORE »