• Total body count was 13—with another 30 injured—at Ft. Hood yesterday. The gunman survived after being shot four times. [New York Times]
• Speaking of the gunman, Army psychiatrist,  Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, here is a lengthy biographical portrait. [Washington Post]
• An important Afghan governor and his militia and their rocket launchers are challenging the legitimacy of new president Hamid Karzai.  [WSJ]
• British PM Gordon Brown—and his soldiers and their implied rocket launchers—also threatened Afghanistan to just, you know, it’s enough already with the corruption. [AP]
• The Pakistani Army invaded a Taliban alcove in lawless, mountainy South Waziristan, presumably also a stop on Sarah Palin’s book tour. [Reuters]
• So apparently a giant wall (of symbolism?) was blocking everyone’s view at the Jay-Z/Beyonce/U2 performance at the Brandenburg Gate at last night’s fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall-themed concert. [Daily Mail]

• Big Oil and Big Natural Gas are fighting, like they always do! It’s about energy policy, like it always is! [New York Times]
• David Axelrod and all his friends are preemptively very offended—on behalf of America—by Wall St.’s big bonuses. [Washington Post]
• Pakistan soldiers cornered a bunch of Taliban people in South Waziristan, which is a place they really wanted to be for whatever reason. [WSJ]
• A suicide bomber interrupted a meeting between Shiite and Sunni tribesman in Iraq by blowing it up and killing six military commanders. [Los Angeles Times]
• The sheriff who has jurisdiction in Evil Balloon County, Colorado, confirmed the hoax and will now be doing everyone on Earth a favor by pressing charges against the hellish Balloon Parents. [CNN]
• Three people died of non-Detroit-related reasons while running the Detroit Marathon. [Detroit Free Press]

Barbara Boxer sees Brad Woodhouse’s “Republicans = Taliban” and raises him a “Republicans, namely Michael Steele = Taliban + Hamas,” which is true, but not really because of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. MORE »

• This new tax credit thing for businesses that make up new jobs is not entirely despised by everyone in Congress. Even Eric Cantor is like, whatever! [New York Times]
• But speaking of “entirely despised by everyone in Congress”: Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. [Washington Post]
• NASA has discovered an enormous invisible (?) ring around Saturn that’s the size of 1 billion Earths. Next step will be for them to make the case for why we need to blow it up. [CNN]
• The Taliban in Afghanistan say they have no interest in killing Westerners. Swear to god you guys! [Reuters]
• The Supreme Court will now decide whether YouTube videos of animal cruelty count as free speech or whether they should be banned forever. [WSJ]
• And two more Americas (+ 1 Israeli) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for something about ribosomes, which sounds suspiciously like that thing the Medicine people did. [LA Times]

• Democrats and Republicans continue to compete over who can cater more to Big Senior re: possible Medicare cuts. [AP]
• Obama spent all day yesterday begging the U.N. to agree to a resolution that would get Iran and North Korea and others like them in such big trouble if they crossed their fingers behind their backs while signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [Wall Street Journal]
• You really have to give the Taliban credit for taking advantage of their semester abroad in Pakistan, huh! They are now heading into to Afghanistan stronger, savvier and fightier than ever. [New York Times]
• Ahmadinejad is apparently not yet bored of his old tricks, namely, calling Israel and the U.S. racist, accusing everyone he’s ever met of genocide, and throwing in some noncommittal “Iran is pretty great, actually!”s for good measure. [New York Times]
• India will be doing a bit of role-playing this week, as it does its part to pretend to care about doing something that will curb carbon emissions. Going clockwise, soo… China: you’re next. [Washington Post]
• American women, GETTING HYSTERICAL and whining about affording to feed and educate their children, might not be into having so many anymore! [Reuters]

Libyan President Whatever-the-hell delivered a real barnburner at the United Nations today, in his first speech to the General Assembly. Here he is being like, “Little known fact about the Taliban: they’re pretty great!” In his allotted 15 minutes — which somehow became 60-plus minutes — he also demanded $7.7 trillion in reparations from the West for colonizing the African continent for centuries (a steal of a price, to be honest), blamed the UN for failing to stop or prevent 65 wars, and said he loved Barack Obama and wants him to be president for life, aww. [AP]

• Obama’s interference in governors’ races is upsetting to those who think that Obama’s desire to keep Democrats in power is soo partisan. [New York Times]
• Internet service providers are terribly angry with the FCC, which wants “net neutrality,” a concept of unimaginable injustice that would prohibit these Internet service companies from purposely slowing down connections and blocking access to their competitors’ content. [WSJ]
• Fewer troops in Afghanistan will be fighting in deserted actual desert areas and will concern themselves more with defending cities and humans. Except N.B. to the Taliban: this is not because America is weak! [Washington Post]
• Here are your MacArthur Genius Grant winners!  [Los Angeles Times]
• Bank of America just cold refuses to tell Congress all about its consensual hook-up with Merrill Lynch. The SEC is THISCLOSE to just subpoenaing the bank, the judicial equivalent of correctly guessing its Gmail password. [Reuters]
• Nancy Pelosi is going to send a health care bill to the floor by the end of the week. She’s like, “Fucking bet me.” [The Hill]

Which island paradise will this “lucky ducky” get to retire to, now that a judge has issued a ruling — with exclamation points! (!!!) — demanding that he be released? Abd al Rahim Abdul Rassak was captured by US forces in 2002 and held at Guantanamo for years, even though before he went to Guanatanamo he was held and tortured by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Obviously, American authorities were concerned that he was still loyal to Al Qaeda because you never forget your first captor. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Most people think that bunnies are cute and fuzzy and cuddly and lovable (like beloved Wonkette commenter Naked Bunny With A Whip). Most people are wrong. Within the heart of your run-of-the-mill, carrot-munching rabbit lies a monstrous carnivore that wants nothing more than to tear off your flesh with its razor-sharp incisors and then trample your bones with its unusually large feet. This week in Cartoon Violence, you’ll learn the truth about the rabbits, aka “nature’s terrorists,” and also about nuclear AIDS. MORE »

Texas GOP clown Pete Sessions last made the news when he suggested the doomed Republicans become more like the Taliban. As the modern Republican is already a fundamentalist nut who buggers little boys, hates science, fears women and constantly fantasizes about being killed for/by God, the only thing left was for the remaining wingnuts to move into caves, with their tea bags and their goats. And this may well have happened, as only 21% of Americans reachable by telephone now admit to being Republican. Anyway, now Pete Sessions is saying Obama is intentionally (and magically) causing both unemployment and a decline in the stock markets. True, maybe?! MORE »

So we were flipping through Christianity Today — we read it for the articles! — and saw that the Religious Right doesn’t want to be called the Religious Right anymore, because they are losers, and they have failed, finally. What to call these Trans-fat Taliban of the Unemployed American Heartland? Let’s have a fun poll! MORE »