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When the polls closed on the August 24 Alaska Republican primary election an unknown forty-three-year-old, flag-waving, baby-killer-hating, right-of-fiscally-conservative attorney from Fairbanks, Alaska, named Joe Miller dumbfounded the pundits and rocked the national political culture. Because if after absentee ballots are counted he holds onto his 1,668-vote lead, Joe Miller will have ousted Alaska’s senior United States Senator, Lisa Murkowski, from the seat in the Senate she has occupied for the past eight years.

My disappointment with the rhetoric offered by the Sarah Palin’s, Dr. Laura’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, Don Imus’s and Glenn Beck’s of the world is that their messages resonate with so many Americans. It seems that every time I begin to become encouraged and believe that there has been real substantial progress in OUR country something happens to remind me that many have merely put a more presentable façade on some of this country’s ugly unresolved issues. America has so much more ability than is currently being realized.

Smarmy condescension fairly drips in this latest Sarah Palin video: Over the weekend, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was in Homer, Alaska, to film her TLC documentary series Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Alaskan teacher Kathleen Gustafson decided to welcome Palin with a banner reading “WORST GOVERNOR EVER.” Upon seeing Gustafson’s handiwork, Palin walked over to talk with her.

Andrew McCarthy, one of the dependable frothers over at what experts call ” American’s Shittiest Website ,” has some indignant things to say about Islam and Islamists–and in so doing, he has deeply insulted both me and America. How? In a minute. First, though, everyone wants to know: Does McCarthy’s latest bleat meet or exceed standard National Review Online (NRO) specifications for dishonesty, fake “thoughtfulness,” and barely-contained scaredy-cat pants-pissery? It certainly does.

If you couldn’t make it to Netroots Nation 2010, don’t despair! Here’s a guide to today’s live broadcasts. (And if you’re at the conference but want to see two panels at once time…don’t forget to use headphones!) All Times Pacific. Click on room name to view feed.

In a story that’s at least ten years overdue, the New York Times reports today that ” many groups in the United States [are] using tax-exempt donations to help Jews establish permanence in the Israeli-occupied territories — effectively obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state, widely seen as a necessary condition for Middle East peace “: The result is a surprising juxtaposition: As the American government seeks to end the four-decade Jewish settlement enterprise and foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the American Treasury helps sustain the settlemen

As a foreign affairs columnist, it feels a bit odd to be writing about the Black Sea when so much is going on at home:: the overdue firing of US general Stanley McChrystal, Britain’s impressive attack on its debts, new US bank regulation, and the hugely expensive and mostly unnecessary G20 jamboree in Toronto, which has turned that normally sedate metropolis into a version of “Escape from New York.” More on McChrystal and his Crusaders next week. To me as a military historian, Yalta is a nexus of history, the site of events that continue to affect our world to this day.

Each day in this (still young) summer, it grows harder for many of us to read the front page of the newspaper, listen to the top stories on television or scroll through the links on an Internet news site. The prospect of almost 1000 barrels of oil seeping into the Gulf of Mexico every second of every day–for some 63 days now–has become a kind of “shock and awe” from which we instinctively turn away. So, too, has the buying and selling of Congress on the Wall Street reform bill.

When Darsi Ferrer, a Cuban dissident emerged from nearly a year’s confinement for buying black market construction materials, a reporter asked him who should get the credit for his release. He credited the Cuban Catholic Church. And then he said, “What should be the solution in Cuba? Dialogue. The dialogue of the Church and civil society; between the people and the government; between the Diaspora and Cuba; the dialogue between the European Union and the government.” Among those who could help the Cuban people, he never mentioned the United States.

Move over death panels. Now Sarah Palin is tweeting comparisons between President Obama and Adolf Hitler: …This is about the rule of law vs. an unconstitutional power grab. Read Thomas Sowell’s article: http://u.nu/… Sowell’s article , noted yesterday by Barbara Morrill, likens the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi regime and argues that the $20 billion compensation fund from BP is the latest example.