This Looks Like a Job for the Neocons

Time lampoons the decadent, inept or just plain weird fashion decisions of the powerful

(NEWSER) - Not all world leaders are world fashion leaders. Time pokes fun at the most inept:

1. Kim Jong-Il. He mainly wears khaki suits that call attention to his paunch and “Kanye West-sized” sunglasses.
2. Vladimir Putin. Not a bad dresser—when he wears clothes. Unfortunately, he's often snapped shirtless to keep his strongman image intact.

It may anger neocons, but he should keep his hands clean: Stephens

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama and his team clearly want to support the Iranian opposition, writes Philip Stephens, and Republicans such as John McCain have hammered the president for not condemning an election viewed as a sham. But for the Financial Times columnist, Obama is striking a shrewd balance between idealism and real-world politics. Obama knows, he writes, that "overt US backing for Mousavi would hand a weapon to Ahmadinejad." More»

Painful insults abound in leaked cables

(NEWSER) - The fallout from the WikiLeaks release of US embassy cables is only just beginning, but one thing is clear: there are going to be some seriously embarrassed diplomats. Some insults to world leaders, as collected by the Telegraph:

• Nicolas Sarkozy: The French president is an "emperor with no clothes," with a “thin-skinned” and “authoritarian” manner.
• Angela Merkel: The German chancellor "avoids risks and is rarely creative."
• Moammar Gadhafi: The Libyan leader can't travel without what one diplomat described as his “voluptuous blond” Ukrainian nurse.

Best he can say is Tehran is 'isolated,' which isn't true

(NEWSER) - Charles Krauthammer continues his President Obama-is-weak crusade with an op-ed ridiculing the administration's stance on Iran. After 16 months of US "groveling" and outreach, Tehran has responded with nothing but "defiance, contempt and an acceleration of its nuclear program." The best Obama can do is repeat over and over that Iran is becoming "isolated" from the international community, Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post . More»

Nobody is afraid of the US anymore

(NEWSER) - It may look like your standard photo op, but the image of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raising hands with the leaders of Brazil and Turkey after their deal on nukes is much, much more to Charles Krauthammer. "That picture— a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam—is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy," he writes at the Washington Post . More»