The President, the Pirates & the Price of Bread

Here's three of today's the biggest news subjects boiled down to two simple graphs:

Barack Obama and pirates…

Pirates and the economy…

I'm really shocked that I haven't yet found one about pirates and gay marriage.

As soon as I do, I'll make sure to update.

Update: Courtesy of Cube.

Conservative Cat Fight! Rush Limbaugh, Jonah Goldberg and Pirates

Apparently, The Corner's Jonah Goldberg and the Sizzler down the street's all-you-can-eat-buffet's Rush Limbaugh are in the middle of some kind of slap fight about whether or not Barack Obama derserves any credit for the U.S. Navy Seals' heroic take down of Captain Hook, Long John Silver and Willie Stargell last night.

From what I can gather, Goldberg thinks Obama deserves a tiny bit of credit for "approv[ing] the rescue" instead of threatening to sell the U.S. citizen hostage to his pirate captives as a peace gesture.

Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand, believes that Obama doesn't deserve any credit at all. And that this in fact proves Obama's a bad president somehow or other. And that the Sizzler waitress should bring him another pitcher of gravy for him to drink.

For the record, I think that they're both partially correct.

Obama deserves only a tiny bit of credit for doing the job we elected him to do. And Limbaugh should get some more gravy before he starts eating his fellow patrons.

The Blog Hole: Kill All Pirates, Amazon Hates On Gays and America Challenged

Iran Should Be Our Nuclear BFF: Columnist Sonni Efron suggests the best way to control Iran's nuclear ambitions is to help them obtain nuclear energy. What!? Are you crazy, Sonni Efron? Maybe she is crazy…  like a fox.  [latimes.com]

USA! USA! USA!  Everybody dumps on America, until of course, they need America's big, awesome, swinging firepower. David Paul Kuhn says the world still needs America's might. [realclearpolitics.com]

Death To Johnny Depp: According to Fred C. Iklé, there is only one way to deal with pirates, and that's to bake them a delicious bunt cake. No, actually, the only way to deal with pirates is to kill them dead. Kill them twice, actually. [washingtonpost.com]

Book Seller Burns Books: Amazon.com is navigating a lil' bit of a public relations nightmare, having been accused of "de-ranking" sex writers of all stripes. Mitch Wagner puts the breaks on the snowballing controversy. [informationweek.com]

The Blog Hole: Obama's Passover, More About Pirates and Internet Trolls

Sympathy For Idiot Commenters: Those of you who comment on blogs might be hysterical, jeering, mentally-ill bigots, but Doug Feaver thinks you're pretty special. [washingtonpost.com]

Word Monkey Bailout Please: Newspapers are important because they are "objective," whatever that means. They're also, like, total dinosaurs. Rosa Brooks thinks the government should step in and save them, the way they saved the pyramid scheme industry. [latimes]

The Very First White House Seder: Does it strike anyone as odd that no US President has ever celebrated a Seder? Weird. Swamp Land's Amy Sullivan gives Obama props for his pioneering Passover. [time.com]

And Now, It's Pirates Versus The US Navy: It's been 200 years since pirates boarded a vessel with a US flag. And now the Navy is in "Let's string up some swashbucklers" mode. Mathias Gebauer wants the Navy to know the pirates might be ready for them.  [spiegel.de]

The Bad News: Pirates, Mass Murder and Zombies!

Hackers All Up In Electricity Grid Grill!  National security experts claim that foreign spies have penetrated the American electrical infrastructure, looking for ways to sabotage it. This is bad news. [wsj.com]

Recession To Blame For Recent Massacres! Even more bad news: experts link recent mass murders and rising violent crime to the cratering economy, and that both trends could continue. [washingtonpost.com]

Non-Disney Pirates Kidnap Americans! Piracy off the coast of the anarchist paradise of Somalia is still a recession-proof boom industry — 20 Americans have just been taken hostage. [reuters.com]

Dead Man Elected Mayor! He was popular in life, and now, recently-deceased Harry Stonebraker is mayor of Winfield, Missouri. He would be Missouri's second Zombie-American elected to office. [stltoday.com]