After knuckling under to House Republican demands in the debt-ceiling debate, Barack Obama climaxed one of the roughest stretches of his presidency by turning 50 yesterday. (Ouch.) He marked this milestone with family and friends at a low-key White House birthday dinner. After the jump is the menu, at least as Representative Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO), coiner of the phrase “sugar-coated Satan sandwich,” might have imagined it. One hopes the meal didn’t leave too bitter an aftertaste . . .
Newt Gingrich’s recent whining about his Twitter popularity respective to other 2012 candidates may have had a point, buried beneath the tiresome sense of entitlement and misunderstanding of the 24-hour news cycle. It’s time for the media to pay closer attention to the online presence of Republicans running for president. Herewith, an analysis of each G.O.P. contender’s Twitter. Coming soon: Facebook pages!
A deleted tweet, lost to the ages.By now surely you’ve heard of a scandal that has envelopedTwitter.com/NewtGingrich: Gawker, going on a tip from an anonymous source, reported that the novelty presidential candidate “hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse.” Our generation’s Watergate investigation was prompted by Gingrich’s whining a few days earlier that he had more Twitter followers, but less of a command of the news cycle, than, say, someone much more relevant to the current decade like Michele Bachmann.
Vanity Fair contributing editor David Rose reveals for the first time that in 1999 the Taliban had granted license to an American company, Afghan Wireless Communications, to construct a cell-phone, and, Internet system in Afghanistan. Had the secret deal, named Operation Foxden, been completed, the U.S. would have had complete access to al-Qaeda and Taliban calls and e-mails in a matter of months. “The capability we would have had would have been very good,” a former N.S.A. official tells Rose. “Had this network been built with the technology that existed in 2000, it would have been a priceless intelligence asset.” But, as Rose reports, “at the critical moment, the Clinton administration put the project on hold, while rival U.S. agencies—the F.B.I., the N.S.A., and the C.I.A.—bickered over who should control it.” This “was one tool we could have put in Afghanistan that could have made a difference,” says a former C.I.A. official. “Why didn’t we put it in? Because we couldn’t fucking agree.”
According to Rose, Ehsan Bayat, an Afghan-American telecommunications entrepreneur, who was also a counterterrorism source working for the F.B.I., had built close relationships with senior Taliban officials, including foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil. Bayat was in the habit of giving his Taliban friends satellite phones as gifts—phones that Rose believes may even have been used by Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Through his connections, and with the aide of British partners, Bayat brokered a deal to set up a company called Afghan Wireless. The Afghan Ministry of Communications would hold 20 percent of the company and Bayat would retain the majority share. According to details of the deal outlined in Vanity Fair, “not only would the new phone company be the sole cell and landline provider in Afghanistan, it would also control the “gateways” out of the country—all voice and data traffic, including that carried by satellite phones and the Internet.”
Photo by Pete Souza.Like many of you at home, 2012 Republican presidential candidates hated the debt-ceiling compromise—but how advantageously did they hate it? Below, our textual analysis of statements by four hopefuls and Sarah Palin.
Mitt Romney
“President Obama’s leadership failure has pushed the economy to the brink at the eleventh hour and 59th minute. While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama’s lack of leadership has placed Republican members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal. As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced—not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table.” Objections raised: President Obama’s fecklessness; the demise of the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. Clichés: “To the brink,” “eleventh hour and 59th minute,” “opens the door” “puts … on the table.” G.O.P. Speech-o-Matic Buzzwords: “Cup, capped, and balanced,” “higher taxes,” “defense cuts.” Points won: The Sarah Palin Award and Scholarship for Mixed Metaphors
Tomorrow is the president’s birthday! Photo by Pete Souza.Barack Obama slammed down his game of Angry Birds. He was angry, too, and he had far more powerful weaponry at his disposal than unhatched aerodynamic eggs. It was almost midnight, and he was half a minute away from being half a century old.
Bill Daley opened the door to the Oval.
“Everything O.K.?” he asked. “I heard a noise that sounded like you slamming your iPad on the desk after losing a game of Angry Birds.”
Obama sighed. He felt as if everyone was holding him back—as if every time happiness, or a helmet-wearing pig, came within reach, something happened to make it go away again. He was sick of everything: tired of the whining, sick of the press corps, annoyed with stupid Billy Daley who was all, “Meeting meeting boring boring do this do that.”
“I’m going for a walk,” Obama said and swiveled away from his desk, tucking his iPad in his messenger bag, which he had affixed with an Allman Brothers sticker earlier that evening.
Biden and Obama take a pensive walk.Photo by Pete Souza.Glory be Moody’s and Fitch, who have permitted America, despite its bad behavior, to keep its AAA rating. In the case of Moody’s, the score came with a stern warning: the investor service “lowered its outlook to negative,” ABC News reports. It’d be so much easier to hear that Moody’s was furious, but lowering its outlook to negative stings in a much deeper way.
For the first time as a member of the British royal family, Kate Middleton makes her way onto the International Best-Dressed List—her inaugural appearance came in 2008, and a whirlwind of fashion successes since has earned her a nod this year. She’s captivated the world with her signature mix of high and low fashion. (For a look at Kate’s particularly fetching travel attire, see our slide show.) Michelle and Barack Obama also make their first appearance together on the Best-Dressed Couples list. Michelle has been among the best-dressed ladies for the past four years, while the president has only earned a spot once, back in 2009. (Other politicos: French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy makes the grade for the fourth time, but her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, does not. And other royals include Princess Charlene of Monaco, the King of Bhutan, Princess Alexandra of Greece, Countess Matilde Borromeo, Prince Antonius von Fürstenberg, Her Highness Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser of Qatar, and Nicolas Mirzayantz of Greece.)
Meanwhile, from Hollywood’s royal ranks come actors Justin Timberlake, Colin Firth, and Armie Hammer—all first-time entrants—while actresses Carey Mulligan and Tilda Swinton are second-timers. (Swinton returns after a three-year hiatus.) Among the fashion originals, Lady Gaga (her second recognition) is joined by Janelle Monáe—and NBC News anchor Brian Williams enters the illustrious ranks of the list’s Hall of Fame.
After cruising through the Senate this afternoon, America’s most celebrated legislation, the debt-ceiling compromise, turned into a butterfly law this afternoon. President Obama addressed the nation from the White House Rose Garden after signing the bill. The new law is “an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means,” Obama said. “This is, however, just the first step. This compromise requires that both parties work together on a larger plan to cut the deficit.” That’s right: the structure of the bill ensures that this summer’s bitter, protracted budget fight will play out in various iterations within our new Super Congress.
In her new novel, This Beautiful Life (Harper), author and journalist Helen Schulman—whose fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The Paris Review, among other publications—examines one family’s fictional, yet increasingly familiar, digital–age drama that all begins with one click of the mouse. The Bergamonts, a household of four who relocate from low-key Ithaca to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, face a fallout after an unchaperoned private-school party for their 15–year old son, a sexually explicit video sent to him by an 8th-grade admirer, and an impulsive email to his friends set off an immediate and viral reaction. Below, Schulman depicts their domestic routine: pre-party, pre-provocation.
He’s so harmless!During one of many closed-door meetings with Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden reportedly referred to the Tea Party as “terrorists,” as in, a group with whom one prefers not to negotiate. “They have acted like terrorists,” Biden said, according to Politico. “What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists. I never said that they were terrorists or weren't terrorists, I just let them vent,” Biden explained, and denied using the term himself. This episode is not even one of the more amusing Biden gaffes, but as you can imagine, the alleged remark precipitated a cavalcade of wooden condemnations from Tea Partiers and their sympathizers.
There are few historical figures dearer to this blogger’s heart than the dog who participated in the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Until now, the public knew next to nothing about this mysterious hero. We at this blog knew enough, however, to produce a computer-generated rendering (above) of what this dog must have looked like based on descriptions of his appearance and accessories.
This week’s New Yorker contains a dizzyingly detailed tick-tock of the Navy SEAL raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound. (Fun fact: Abbottabad is named for British soldier Joseph Abbott, the city’s founder.) The piece reveals several interesting things about the SEAL dog: he is a member of the Belgian Malinois breed—so far our illustration requires no corrections—and his purpose on the trip was that he “could be sent into the house to search for false walls or hidden doors.”
“That was my biggest dream, and I really worked hard at it. We both did,” Jennifer Lopez tells Vanity Fair in her first interview since announcing that she and Marc Anthony are divorcing. “Sometimes it doesn’t work—and that’s sad. But I remain an eternal optimist about love. I believe in love,” Lopez says. “It’s still my biggest dream. I am positive—determined to move forward with my life, bring up my babies, and do the best job I can as a mother, entertainer, and person. I now look forward to new challenges. I feel strong.”
Blindingly bedecked beauties! A dozen fashionable photos of U.K. V.F.’s favored babes, all draped in heat-quelling ice from the diamond closet—you have one of those, don’t you?
Photo illustration by Alexandra Beggs.
Newt Gingrich’s 
Illustration by Barry Blitt.
By Mark Large/Getty Images.
In her new novel, 
There are few historical figures dearer to this blogger’s heart than 
