We will never finish cleaning up after the Dear Leader:

US soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan’s predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show.

Military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram were also filmed with bibles printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.

If you can tell me something that pisses Muslims off more than telling them their god sucks, I’d like to hear it.

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We just discovered these cool CDC Social Media Tools from Barry’s new Twitter feed, and… and…

Shit. It’s like the Internet just bought a leisure suit.

White House joins Facebook, MySpace, Twitter [USA Today]

From the AP:

Eight years later, after serving a term as President George H.W. Bush’s housing secretary, he made it onto the national ticket as Bob Dole’s running-mate.

With that loss, the Republican bowed out of political office, but not out of politics. In speaking engagements and a syndicated column, he continued to advocate for the tax reform and supply-side policies — the idea that the more taxes are cut the more the economy will grow — that he pioneered.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I will.  Benjamin Disraeli said it best:

“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”

Discuss.

Title: Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir

Author: Christopher Buckley

Rank: 40

Blurb: “As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes readers on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan.”

Review: “It’s too damn bad his poor parents can’t disinherit from the grave!”

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So last year around this time we were chatting about some important issue of the day, and then somebody said Look! Horsies!, and then we thought, well, this might be interesting, and then we wondered what the hell happened, it was over so fast.

Which is as good excuse as anything to declare it a tradition.

And so with no point other than the joy of inventing legends on the fly, we welcome you to the Second Annual Kentucky Derby Open Thread/Existential Crisis, in which we spend an hour anticipating a moment that will pass faster than a pinball game.

Hey, could be worse. Could be NASCAR.

Have you heard about the new flu that threatens to turn our brains to a mass of jiggling Jello and fill the streets of our major cities with flesh eating Zombies? I’m talking about the Mexican flu. Haven’t heard of that one yet? Maybe you were preoccupied by the recent swine flu epidemic and didn’t hear about the Mexican flu. I’ll bet if that’s the case, then you probably haven’t heard of the Obama flu either. If so, don’t worry. I’ll let you in on a little secret: they’re all the same disease. It’s just that different people like to call it by different names. Let me toss another name out for you: the H1N1 virus. That’s what scientists like to call the new flu strain, because they’re all into funny names that make no sense at all and like to make the rest of us feel stupid. H1N1… wasn’t that one of the robots from Star Wars?

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Last year at this time, we stumbled into a commenting frenzy around the Kentucky Derby, so this year we’re declaring it an annual event. Jam photos can be whatever the hell you want, as always, but remember to check back at 5:30 p.m. Eastern for our Open Thread/Mint Julep Marathon. That’ll give us an hour to get good and wasted before NBC broadcasts the most hyped two minutes in sport.

A Jam at the Races [Flickr]