In his farewell speech to the NATO Council in Brussels today, outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates shared his feelings about the intergovernmental military alliance. Gates described NATO as a “two-tiered” alliance poorly equipped to deal with challenges and with members either unable or unwilling to carry out missions in Afghanistan and Libya. Gates illustrated the contrast between members “willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership … but don’t want to share the risks and the costs.” —-
Gates called for urgent action to ”avoid the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance,” something Gates said “is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today, and it is unacceptable.”
“The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress … to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense,” he said.
Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign is back to bare bones after every one of his top aides resigned yesterday. “I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring,” the Gingrich said in a posting to his Facebook page shortly after the 16 aides resigned. “The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.” Rick Tylerr, Gingrich’s spokesman, said that he, campaign manager Rob Johnson and senior strategists had all quit, along with aides in the early primary and caucus states. Other officials said Gingrich was informed that his entire high command was quitting in a meeting at Gingrich’s headquarters in Washington, citing differences over the direction of the campaign. “We had a different vision for victory,” Tyler told the AP. “And since we couldn’t resolve that difference, I didn’t feel I could be useful in serving him.”
Rush Limbaugh has been talking wiener non-stop since the news broke about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter scandal. Well someone called in to Limbaugh’s radio show to remind Rush about his own 2006 arrest. Oh, you forgot? U.S. Customs detained Limbaugh for more than three hours after returning from the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra without a prescription, something a caller equated with Weiner and another women consensually trading pictures of their naughty places. Limbaugh proceeded to go off on a tangent about “false victories,” “genuine, decent citizenship” and when you get old and your willy doesn’t work you’ll need help from the blue pill fairy too.
Sarah Palin’s fans freaked the “F” out when she used “WTF” on one of her Facebook posts yesterday. Palin reportedly wrote, “Another ‘WTF’ Obama Foreign Policy Moment*” regarding the presiden’s current relationship with Russia. Palin told her fans to STFU, because “WTF” means “Winning The Future.” Editors are changing the meaning of WTF on Wikipedia as we speak.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2011.