The mischievous scribes at Fox Nation are lighting up Twitter with this magisterial headline-photo combination about President Obama's private White House birthday party yesterday. The "Hip-Hop BBQ" didn't even create any jobs! This guy doesn't even deserve to be 50 years old.

Now we know why Gov. Rick Perry is aggressively trying to change Texas' state university system to one where teachers are paid by how much money they bring in, and students are treated like "customers": It's to take on revenge on the professors who gave him horrible, no-good, very bad grades during his college days.

It's the first Friday in August! This means two things: The nice, brisk days of autumn aren't too far away, and the latest jobs report has come out. Employers added 117,000 jobs in July and brought the unemployment rate down one tenth of a percentage point to 9.1%. This is kind of good?

In 1964, two black teenagers disappeared as they were hitchhiking in Mississippi. Two months later, their bodies turned up in a river. From the NYT:

Occasional Tea Party pitchman Jimmy McMillan, otherwise known as the "Rent Is Too Damn High" guy, is now battling his landlord over the rent on his St. Marks Place apartment, for which he pays $872.96 per month. McMillan told the Post he's had the place since 1977, and that his rent back then was around $275. "Maybe the landlord doesn't know, but he can't bulldog me because I know the law," he told the paper. His landlord is apparently arguing that the St. Marks Place apartment is not McMillan's primary residence because he keeps an apartment in Brooklyn that doubles as his party HQ. McMillan says that his landlord just wants to get more money from a new tenant (!!!). Good luck with all that, and welcome to the real world, Jimmy.

Muammar Qaddafi's youngest son, 28-year-old Khamis, was reportedly killed in a NATO airstrike in the western city of Zlitan yesterday, according to Libyan rebels. Khamis leads the elite 32nd Armored Brigade, aka the Khamis Brigade. RIP, or something.

What does North Korea look like? Not too different from anywhere else—just emptier.

This particular class of legislators is, we can all agree, an exceptionally stupid group of people. But they are more than just stupid! They are also widely hated: A new poll has congress' disapproval rating at 82 percent—the lowest since the poll was first taken in 1977.

Jimmy Wales, the iconoclastic founder of Wikipedia, made a troubling announcement at the seventh annual Wikipedia conference: Nobody wants to edit Wikipedia anymore. Is Wikipedia going to shrivel up and fade away?

Congressional Republicans have become quite talented at taking legislative "hostages" at crucial junctures, making extreme demands, unifying behind them, and ultimately rolling Democrats into embracing horrible pieces of legislation. Maybe it's time for Democrats to come up with a plan for this sort of thing. So are they? Sorta.

Here's just the latest sign that our campaign finance laws are healthy in every way the Founding Fathers could have imagined: A secret company that no one knows anything about has given Mitt Romney's SuperPAC $1 million and quickly dissolved into nothingness. The folks behind this fly-by-night operation are probably relaxing on a beach in Mexico by now! Oh man.

America! What is wrong with you? Despite the fact that Wal-Mart is the only store of any size left in your post-apocalyptic economically decimated little towns, Wal-Mart's sales have been falling for two years now. Important update: it's getting worse!

Baggy-eyed, battered and desperately in need of a cigarette, President Barack Obama limped across the birthday finish line today, making it to a round half-century: Our Commander-in-Chief is now 50 years old.

Probable presidential candidate Rick Perry, like other Texas governors, has a history of executing tons of people. The most famous case is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed under Perry for burning down his home with his three children inside, even though there's significant evidence that he didn't do it. How will Perry ever get past this in a presidential primary? Trick question! He doesn't have to "get past" anything, because Republican primary voters like him for doing this.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the evil procedural genius who somehow always manages to be the most powerful person in Washington from his lowly perch as Senate minority leader, doesn't take offense when people call him and his party "hostage-takers." He rather fancies the title! But he does want to clear up the details of how and why he loves taking legislative hostages.

Don't fret, Sarah Palin! Stay home in Arizona or Alaska, wherever you summer. Because President Obama has decided to do the Midwestern second leg of your bus tour for you. That's right: Obama will ride around on a bus, too, as part of the great White House "pivot" to a focus on jobs, which no longer exist.

Deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appeared in court today to face charges of corruption and ordering the killing of unarmed protesters earlier this year. He was wheeled in on a hospital bed acting the part of a sad old man, along with his klepto scumbag sons, Gamal and Alaa. Hard times for the Mubaraks. So, in honor of Hosni's not so glorious return to Cairo, here's a quick look at the man in happier times.

Washington Post style reporter Dan Zak wrote a dispatch for the section's "Night Lives" column about D.C.'s Guardian Angels.

Lost in the coverage of Vladimir Putin calling the U.S. a "parasite" was this image of Vladimir Putin bending a cooking pan with his bare hands. If Barack Obama doesn't bend two pans tonight in front of TV cameras then Putin's right, we are parasites.

Now that the debt ceiling's been raised and all uncertainty removed from the markets, the Dow Jones will respond by... dropping 265 points on the day. The reason is that the economy is terrible.