* I’m back! Anything interesting happen while I was gone?

* So Sarah Palin is officially out of the race. A lot of people already got a head start on that by ignoring her, but now it’s official. So, is Palin still going to be a factor in politics now that it’s certain she’s not running? She could be, if she does something interesting… like endorse Herman Cain. Come on; do it. Make waves. Be a maverick. Join us in the battle to not get stuck with Romney!

* Also, while I wasn’t blogging, the iPhone 4S was debuted, but everyone complained that it didn’t add very many cool new features over the previous generation. And then Steve Jobs died. Great job, Apple fans.

* And so the Occupy Wall Street thing keeps going on… though no one still has any idea why. And apparently they’re doing it in other cities as well. There was even an Occupy Boise — allegedly. No one I know seems to have noticed it. But they marched on the Boise capitol building — where all the big decisions about what to do with all the potatoes is made — to… um… let’s see… Someone in the article sums things up as “separate politics and money.” So I guess we’ll pass the “separate politics and money” bill and fix everything.

Actually, any time you try to press these people on what they actually want changed, they get all indignant that they’re expected to come up with the answers. So I guess this protest movement is a bit like a baby crying: They only have a vague sense that something is wrong, but have no idea what and no idea how to fix it, so they’ll make noise until someone comes over and fixes it for them. Also, like a baby, the protesters smell like poop.

"Hey! Don't compare me to those incoherent freaks!"

* Ever notice how the left would freak out about the mere idea of Tea Party violence — despite none ever materializing — yet the Occupy Wall Street people keep clashing with police and it’s a non-issue with them. I point this out a lot, and I will keep pointing it out: The left have no core values, they just have worthless partisanship. They don’t care about intemperate speech, violence, or even racism; they just pretend to care about it when they think it’s a partisan advantage. And if ignoring it a partisan advantage, then they’ll do that just as easily.

* New GOP debate tonight. All eyes will be on Herman Cain to see if he can capitalize on his momentum. If he has a great performance, he truly will be a front runner. Also, this is Perry’s last chance to prove he can speak coherently and should be given another consideration. It will help if he doesn’t call the vast majority of Republicans “heartless”. And Romney should continue to try and stay out of the fray, waiting for everyone else to stumble or take out each other so he’s the only one left and we have no choice but to accept him despite that we all hate him. And there will be other candidates there too, I think, though I’m not sure why. Maybe they’ll do a song and dance number between sections of the debate.

Come on, Cain! We want to love you! Make us believe!

* The White House is letting it be known that Romney’s health care laws in Massachusetts influenced Obama’s federal plan. So I guess that’s going to be Obama’s main attack if Romney is the nominee: Romney’s ideas are so awful that they influenced Obama.

Also, as things get more desperate, expect lots of frank discussions about Mormonism. Will Mormon weirdness stand against Obama’s more mainstream religion which concerns itself with CIA conspiracies to spread AIDS? We just might find out.

* Wisdom of the Day: “‘For Shizzle!’ – warriors riding into battle to avenge a friend named Shizzle.” –Artur Bagyants

* Ron Paul is warning us that now the U.S. might start targeting journalists for drone strikes. I don’t think anyone in government would be dumb enough to be that blatant. Maybe instead they’d just do something like, “We’re going to put out a kill order on Krugman’s beard.” Because no one would consider it too wrong for the government to take out facial hair. And then they’d have a drone fire a hellfire missile at Krugman’s beard, and if the rest of Krugman is incinerated in the assault, that would just be marked down as collateral damage. It was his fault for collaborating with an enemy beard.