Iran has launched a rocket containing a rodent, turtles and worms to 500 kilometres above the Earth.

Iranian TV reports that the Kavoshgar-3 rocket carries an “experimental capsule” holding the creatures and other experiments, which will send data back to Earth. It is the first Iranian rocket to carry animals.

Such scientific experiments will help Iran break the “global domineering system” of Western nations, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejadis reported to have said on state TV. “The scientific arena is where we could defeat the [West's] domination.”

Rest assured, comrades, this experiment is in no way intended to develop long-range warhead delivery capability, any more than acquisition of nuclear material and centrifuges is meant for anything other than peaceful energy development.

NewScientist: Iran Launches Animals Into Orbit

Ken Lewis, Capitalist Boss Defeated by Pay Czar

‘Pay Czar’ Kenneth Feinberg today made use of a Constitutional ‘cheat code’ discovered by the Obama Administration, similar to those used to subvert rules in videogames to accomplish certain objectives. The exact syntax of the cheat code is classified, but it is reputed to be in the vein of “ALL YOUR WEALTHS ARE BELONG TO THE GOVERNMENT”

The cheat code was used to convince Bank of America Corp Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis to forgo pay and benefits for his last year of work at the company.

From the Guardian:

Kenneth Feinberg, the US treasury department official who is scrutinising pay packages at bailed-out banks, said that Lewis – besieged by regulatory investigations and lambasted by shareholders – should get no salary or bonus for the year. Lewis agreed.

He will pay back about $1m (£612,000) he has received so far out of a $1.5m annual salary. But the ruling does not apply to his previously negotiated retirement package, estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Constitutional Cheat Code

Mark Lloyd, Mr. Obama’s Diversity Czar, is reported to be working on a variation of the classic “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A” code for leftist South American leaders. Such a code may be used by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Manuel Zelaya to gain extra lives and become impervious to Contra-style constitutional democracy.

Update:
Constitutional Cheat Codes featured on The People’s Cube

Barack Obama and His Medals

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize today. He was selected over Sima Samir, Afghan women’s rights activist, and both Hu Jia and Wei Jingsheng, who have served time in prison for criticizing communism in China. While the others were nominated for accomplishments in the real actual world, the Nobel Committee took note of Mr. Obama’s speeches, handshakes, bowing skills, Hopeychangeyness, ability to convice a crowd they could lower sea levels, and not being George W. Bush.

We have taken the liberty of projecting Mr. Obama’s second and third Nobel Prizes, as demonstrated in the following headlines from the future:

2013: Barack H. Obama Awarded Second Nobel Peace Prize. Cited were his accomplishments in installing Taliban government in Afghanistan. Sima Samir, who could not be identified in sea of burquas, was unable to comment.

2019: Barack H. Obama Awarded Third Nobel Peace Prize, for being a former U.S. President not named George W. Bush. This comes on the heels of the 10th annual U.S. celebration of Chinese Communism ascendancy, which began in his watch. Also notable is the 30th anniversary of the Tianenmen Square massacre. Hu Jia, still in prison for criticizing the Chinese government, was unable to comment. Also unable to comment was Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who is currently in prison for crimes of criticizing income redistribution and failure to enroll in a healthcare plan, both of which became crimes in Mr. Obama’s Presidency.

Ed Driscoll: Woody Allen Was Wrong – Showing up is 100% of Success

Hugh Hewitt: Congratulations, Mr. President, but…

Jonah Goldberg: Hilarious and Sad

Mark Steyn: Nobel Peace Bribe

Roundup from Glenn Reynolds – InstaPundit

Times Online: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize

John Podhoretz: Barack Obama is the Michael Moore of Oslo

Full Flap from NY Post

UPDATE: Capitalist Coffee is in the running for $33.18 in endowments from Iowahawk!

See Entry #11.

Update: Robert Sloan, former president of Baylor University: Does Michael Moore greedily demand exclusive intellectual property rights?

1. There is no nation in which the ‘chasm’ is narrower, that has a higher standard of living among the poor. This is true because there simply is no other nation that has a higher standard of living among those we call poor. In no other country is obesity a major problem among the poor (and filmmakers).
Charity is important to help the truly poor, but it is not charitable to undermine the economic freedom that gives us enough wealth to be charitable with.

2. The chasm between rich and poor in America is due to a great deal of people making use of the phenomenal opportunities presented by capitalism (grossly obese filmmakers included). The poor are not becoming poorer. The true blight on the poor in this country has been the welfare state, which has converted millions of the working poor into dependent wards of the state.

3. What wages and healthcare plans do the lowliest members of Michael’s film crew make, in relation to Michael?

4. There is no other nation with enough excess wealth to make entertainers fabulously wealthy (grossly obese filmmakers included)

5. Michael Moore – fantastically wealthy, grossly obese. The socialist propagandists of old could hardly have come up with a better cartoon of the excesses of capitalism.

Apparently, President Obama is working out the details of his newer, more smarter plan to defend our European allies:

Obamiwan protects Poland

Couldn’t they have given POTUS one of the cooler toy lightsabers instead of the goofy plastic one?

If you printed the internet, it would weigh 1.2 billion pounds. I wonder if I could get a Kindle version of that.

Indiana Jones 5? Please, take away the whip and just let him ride in the sidecar this time.

As someone who tends to like Sarah Palin, I’m glad the whole ‘Community Organizer vs. Pontius Pilate’ equation seems to be balancing itself out.

9/12 rally, Acorn pimp, Kanye West… In all the hubbub, the mysterious Gollum creature from MoveOn.org still roams free.

Liberals boycott North Carolina on account of Joe Wilson. So, the elites are singling out a particular piece of flyover country they are really not going to stoop to visit.

Dick Durbin voted ‘No’ on de-funding Acorn? I guess they would have had to make a pimp stand in a cold room for hours to get up his ire.

In the parallel universe where Hillary Clinton was elected President, we’re hearing that 2 million HillaryCare protestors are SEXIST, Joe Wilson said ‘you lie’ because he’s a SEXIST, and Newsweek is reporting that babies are born SEXIST. Jimmy Carter also weighed in with some important observations on sexism.

On the Boob Czar: Somehow, somewhere, Teddy Kennedy is pondering the ‘Advice & Consent’ clause of such a thing.

Joe Wilson fails to hold back a visceral reaction to a snake oil sales pitch…BOOO! Harry Reid tells schoolchildren George W. Bush is a ‘loser’…. YAAY!

Sad thing is, to a lefty, a dangerous radical being driven from an important American institution is more like… John Stossel Leaving ABC for Fox News

Wowsers – AP fact-checks Obama, calls him out on false statements, fuzzy math. In other news, Beelzebub reporting global cooling in Hades.

Thomas Friedman scratches chin, wonders if China has a superior system. Apparently, it hasn’t occured to Tom that in China, there are no EconoPundits with the freedom to question whether the US might have a better system.

My response to Maureen Dowd and Hank Johnson comes from Wikipedia: Definition of Race-baiting Update: Apply also to Jimmy Carter

From Dear Leader: “That ‘taking over the Internet’ thing was just a security measure, to protect against dangerous blog posts by bitter clingers. ”

To a Twitter friend talking about fishing: Be careful, John Holdren could file suit against you on behalf of both the fish AND the bait.

Apparently Twitter’s Fail Whale has been replaced by the Fail RobotCatBirdCloud. I liked the whale better.

After Barry’s speech to our school children, somebody said he should have sent Biden out there, for some amusement at least. My response: If he’d sent old Joe out there, he’d have told some poor kid with no arms to pull his finger. ‘Aw, God love ya. Everybody pull my finger for little Bobby!’

Kudos to Others

Jim Geraghty suggests race relations have taken a bad turn – Donald from ‘Fat Albert’ has joined the Klan:

(Click for head-gear)

Randy Bish Cartoon via John Sykes:

You Lie! Cartoon

Schoolhouse Rock! Weren’t these great when we were kids…