• Eight soldiers were killed on Saturday in a region of Afghanistan that the U.S. was kinda already supposed to have left. [Washington Post]
• Obama has said NO THANK YOU to hanging out with the Dalai Lama. He will do this to impress his new popular friends, the Chinese, who hate the Dalai Lama like so much. [Washington Post]
• …and China will attempt to become better friends with North Korea. You see, they have communism in common! [Reuters]
• The socialists have won Greece’s national elections! Technically, now, Barack Obama is the first black president of Greece. [WSJ]
• October 25th is the big day for some U.N. inspectors, who will go to Iran and get to visit the newly un-secret underground weapons cave thing! [Los Angeles Times]
• Pay-per-minute telephone psychic Alan Greenspan says the following: unemployment will reach 10% in the third quarter, but the economy overall will grow 3%. [CNN]

Here is insane Florida death-monster Jim Greer, the famous state Republican party chair who last week shouted these important words, at America: “The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.” But then he read the speech and… and… and it was okay BUT NOT WHAT OBAMA ORIGINALLY WANTED TO TELL THE YOUNGS, which was probably “Free cocksucking for all.” MORE »

This one goes out to all the readers with attention spans, because what we’ve got here is an informative ten-minute video about public policy. There must be at least three or four humans out there who… like to learn about policies before making up their minds on them?? It’s a gamble. But what a lovely video! Some teabaggers in Minnesota were apparently seeking to “ambush” Al Franken at a Minnesota fair recently, probably assuming he would just shout liberal rape jokes back at them, because HE WAS A COMEDIAN, AND NOW HE’S A SENATOR?? WACKY. But the confrontation goes much differently, and America is saved forever. [Dusty Trice]

We have no idea what’s going on behind closed doors on Capitol Hill or in the White House (just kidding, we know it all and will never tell you!), but it seems obvious that the Republican leadership has invested so much (all) of its energy into shouting “GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF HEALTHCARE” at the prospect of any legislation that simply removing the small, imaginary basis for this shouting — a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers on a new health insurance exchange — would not change anything. And guess what! The RNC released a statement this afternoon saying that, indeed, co-ops are also evil socialistic government-run health care systems from the U.S.S.R. programmed to kill your white grandparents and children. MORE »

Finally, we have an Arts Writer to tell us what that weird “SOCIALISMS & BARACK OBAMA AS HEATH LEDGER’S JOKER” poster means. We would summarize, but the article is nearly 1,000 words long! Read it and find out! Or click the clicky to find out what two of your editors thought of the poster in a secret high-level editorial discussion on Monday. MORE »

Think Progress has a pretty good roundup of angry wingnuts attempting to harass their elected legislators to death over healthcare, but this clip is particularly entertaining. What is it with these creeps and the Pledge of Allegiance? (Answer: it is the only piece of “poetry” they know besides the dosage directions on their diabeetus meds.) [Think Progress]

Jesus fuck is this even America anymore? First we elect a black president, and now the Twitter is shut off in the White House? And we don’t want to hear any of this “Security concerns” balderdash, because when we last had a real American president (that fat white sack of shit Dick Cheney), and he needed to get around the “law” or whatever, he just ran his own private email servers with Karl Rove from some Tennessee pedophile listserv. [The Hill]

Well, that’s what this dingus gets for not carrying around a pocket-sized copy of The Communist Manifesto, which was pretty clearly published in 1848, MANY MOONS after the drafting of the Constitution. At a recent appearance in Wausau, Wisconsin, he said that the Founding Fathers “knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.” On the other hand, the Founding Fathers knew two things did work: leeching, and slavery. [Wausau Daily Herald]

WHY DOES MICHELLE OBAMA HATE OUR NATION’S PROVIDERS OF TELEVISION ENTERTAINMENT? “She said that she had instituted what she called ‘Camp Obama’ at the White House, which means that the TV and computer stay off all day until after dinner and before bedtime, adding that bed time was early.” It is terribly unpatriotic to prevent one’s children from watching television 16 hours a day in the summer. How else are they going to learn English? [First Read]

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 »

The first thing wrong with this video is it shows a mixed-race couple, which must still be illegal somewhere in the “Real America,” maybe Alabama or Texas? But the rest teaches our children a valuable lesson about why they can’t have nice things: Because that’s socialist! So if you want to go to the beach, try the “American way” and earn millions of dollars, and buy some beachfront property, and shoot any mixed-race couples you catch trying to use your beach, the end. [YouTube via Wonkette tipster Curt]