Yesterday, I blogged about Sarah Palin's fear of "death panels" (which sounds like some kind of Indiana Jones booby trap, you know the kind that always impale his intemperate Indian/Arab assistants). In the post, I quoted from the Christian Anti-Defamation Committee website which in turn quoted from an Investors Business Daily editorial. Did you know that the IBD is a hotbed of right wing paranoia?

Credit where credit's due: Sarah Palin knows how to capture headlines. She also knows how to speak the language of America's most persecuted demographic: white Christian conservatives. Many in her audience believe in a secret plot by liberals to enact a radical secular agenda, and they view all progressive policies through the lens of this alleged conspiracy.

Sarah Palin on the health care plan:

Congratulations to Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Hers was the first nomination of a progressive judge since Bill Clinton appointed Stephen Breyer fifteen years ago. In the national debate over her nomination, we saw a preview of what's to come in future nomination battles. Given the ages of the judges, we will likely see from one to four appointments before Obama leaves office.

Call me a loyal customer. Yahoo has been my home page for a decade, which is about two thirds of the life of the web itself. Whenever I bought a new computer or installed a new browser, I dutifully found my way through the preferences to set my default page to good old Yahoo. In the old days, back when people still prepended "World Wide" to "Web," I preferred Yahoo because the home page loaded quickly and offered a great directory that neatly sliced the contents of the entire web into a handy taxonomy.

As the post-election protests by reformists simmers in the background, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly defied Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, setting the stage for a major political battle among the conservatives who hold power.

Last week, the House of Representatives voted 410-8 to spend nearly $100,000 to engrave "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance at the Capitol Visitor Center. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc. immediately sued to stop the engraving.

July 20, 2029

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA staged a high-tech reenactment of the event in Nevada National Landfill Park. The landing was delayed by several hours due to cloudy weather and space junk that disrupted satellite transmission of President George Prescott Bush's remote broadcast from Washington D.C. Officials finally commenced the mission without the President's address after impatient visitors began shouting and throwing landfill refuse, including vintage Pepsi bottles, plastic shopping bags, and other historic artifacts.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, apologized today for his firm's strong earnings in 2009. In a press statement, he took responsibility for the profit and promised to lose money more aggressively for the remainder of the year.

The American Conservative Union (ACU), which proudly boasts of being "the nation's oldest conservative lobbying organization," proudly demanded $2M+ from FedEx in return for endorsing its position in a legislative dispute with UPS, stating, "We stand with FedEx in opposition to this legislation."

The Supreme Court nomination process is one of the weirdest games in American politics. By tradition, the confirmation process is supposed to be non-partisan. Many Americans subscribe to an ideal that judges should objectively interpret the law without political bias. Of course, everyone admits that there is no true objectivity, but many of us still hope that our judges will come as close to objectivity as possible in a political institution.

CNBC has a bad rap. It began with Rick Santelli's made-for-youtube tirade in which he blamed home-buying "losers" for causing the mortgage the crisis. Then Jon Stewart skewered the CNBC journalists who promoted the banks that most analysts blame for the mortgage crisis, sparking a minor media war with Jim Cramer that left Cramer appearing petulant and self-important. A few weeks later, Cramer exploded at blogger Dan Solin and stormed off the set of the CNBC's Power Lunch.

The NYT reports that Google is planning the most direct challenge to Microsoft to date: an operating system.

The software, called the Google Chrome Operating System, is initially intended for use in the tiny, low-cost portable computers known as netbooks, which have been selling quickly even as demand for other PCs has plummeted. Google said it believed the software would also be able to power full-size PCs.

In her surprise resignation speech, Sarah Palin confidently quoted Gen. Douglas MacArthur to the hastily assembled press corps, "We're not retreating, we're advancing in another direction."

The media continues to lionize Michael Jackson with a deluge of tributes, retrospectives, and eulogies, and a stream of breathless reporting about what his doctor said and what his sisters did and where his kids stayed. Some of my co-bloggers have compared him to John Lennon. Other articles have placed him in a triumvirate with Lennon and Elvis Presley.

When Abram turned 99, God came to him and said, “'I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be perfect.”

Commentary: Yessir, God definitely had a man-crush on Abram.

Abram complied by falling flat on his face. Then God promised several more times to give Abram many, many offspring until Abram was about ready to tell God to shut up about the offspring already.

But then God demanded a price for his largess: circumcision.

Commentary: A kinky man-crush.

BREAKING: Having issued a number of bellicose threats in recent weeks, the government of North Korea has run dangerously low on epithets and histrionic adjectives. Though North Korea is the world's leading producer of hyperbole, the prolific output of the government controlled Central News Agency has outstripped their supply. Analysts fear that without wrathful verbiage, North Korea will resort to military force and patriotic parades.

Is it me, or does Nixon become more racist with every release of White House tapes? Ironically, the latest batch show him embracing moderate ideas for racist rationales.

For instance, it turns out that he supported a woman's right to have an abortion...in order to avoid those horrible mixed-race babies:

There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white.

I guess that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, didn't get the memo.

From the official Korean Central News Agency:

"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all."

A week ago, in response to U.S. threats to inspect cargo coming to and from North Korea, the same news agency vowed that North Korea would treat such actions as a declaration of war of promised a "100 or 1,000-fold retaliation with merciless military strike."

In the end, it was Sarai who solved the fertility problem. She suggested that Abram have sex with her Egyptian slave, Hagar. Abram enthusiastically followed her suggestion.

Commentary: I suppose that I shouldn't ask whether Hagar was consulted in this arrangement.