Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) and Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov answer reporters' questions during a news conference at the State Department May 7, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The conservative press is very upset at this latest Obama GAFFE, in which he does a subservient bow to the king of Saudi Arabia, or maybe just bends down to shake shorty's hand.

President Messiah's iPod gift to queen was loaded with his own speeches. Presumptuous, still.

Man, our screw-up president. What did he do this time? He insulted the Queen of England with another one of his boneheaded lame "gifts!"

So. Chris Hitchens got beat up in Beirut by a bunch of thugs because he defaced a billboard of a maybe-Syrian nationalist political party. He is really, really proud of this fact.

Drunk warmongering Trotskyite Slate columnist Christopher Hitchens was apparently beaten by some Syrian nationalists while drinking in Lebanon. Don't worry, he's ok!

Why doesn't anyone ever write about the real victims of the current war in Gaza? That's right, the losers and freaks of Second Life.

"You are being lied to about pirates," a HuffPo headline declares. They... they didn't talk like Charles Laughton? (Or Keith Richards?) No, he is talking about those nutty Somali pirates!

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, in Israel playing at being an international statesman when he can't even get the 7 train to run on weekends, heard a rocket and hid in a basement.

Alternate-universe President-elect Cynthia McKinney hopped on a boat to Gaza with 3 tons of medical supplies and then they were rammed by Israelis and forced to dock in Lebanon, where CNN cameras were waiting.

The US is still engaged, supposedly, in the occupation of an unfriendly middle eastern nation, called "Iraq." We remind you of this because you won't learn about it on the television. It's expensive!

Bomb in Paris Department Store leaves secular godless French baffled—how much more coddling do these terrorists need?

Sure, we got problems, but at least the Queen of England didn't indirectly shut down our government. Sucks to be Canada! [Slate]

We had a feeling, when we saw this million-point headline at Drudge saying Iran will get a nuke during Obama's first term credited only to a mysterious "paper," that the "paper" referenced would be either the Moonie-owned Washington Times or the Murdoch-owned Times of London. More amusing: in order to stop the evil Iranians, the Times insists that Obama must engage in the direct diplomacy without preconditions that John McCain (and Hillary Clinton!) called so naive and foolish. A more reasonable assesment of the report from Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations is here. [Times via Drudge]

Hey, Barack Obama's on the TV. Remember when he introduced the people who'd save the economy, week before last? Now, it is time to save the entire world. Please welcome his all-star national security team, starring Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, a Republican, and a retired General! New Beginnings guaranteed or your money back!

We don't know about you, but where we come from a "Thanksgiving massacre" is what happens to the Detroit Lions, not a disturbing, well-coordinated terrorist attack in the world's fifth-largest city, involving anywhere from two dozen to 50 terrorists, many of whom haven't been caught, who had no demands but death and destruction, leaving 170 dead so far. Here is your amusing Weekend Gawker listicle: our top four favorite horrific descriptions of the violence in Mumbai this week!

America, as we've learned, has a big PR problem. The rest of the world doesn't like us so much! Our current president is something of a laughingstock, you see, and we have this problem with expecting others to live up to the ideals we espouse as we fail to live up to them ourselves. You can see how that might bug people, right? Thankfully we're done with the Bush administration. Listen to how little Bush is respected by the Russians and French:

Raja Petra Kamarudin, a blogger in Malaysia, will be released from from government detainment today, after having been arrested on September 12th for no reason. Raja Petra is—you'll never guess!—"one of the most vocal critics of the current government," according go the Times. What was the critism that made the government mad enough to lock him up for two months?

Jörg Haider, the leader of Austria's far-right Alliance for Austria's Future party, died this month in a high-speed car crash. He was drunk. Why was he drunk? Because, of course, he'd just had a terrible fight with his gay lover, who was also his 27-year-old protege and party deputy. After the fight, Haider went to a gay club and drank heavily with male escorts. Did we mention he was the leader of the far-right party? The one that's anti-immigrant and anti-European Union and pro-traditional family values? And that Haider was married with children? Haider's successor and lover, Stefan Petzner, is now speaking openly of his love for his neo-fascist boss.

Sarah Palin increased her foreign policy experience by 475% today and the media wasn't allowed to hear any of it! Because Sarah Palin doesn't really speak to the media much/ever, so they have to follow her around and ask the photographers dispatched to capture the photo ops what they heard her say, as if she is just like her new pal Henry Kissinger and she is engaging in top-secret high-level diplomatic negotiations. Except… at the end of the meetings the ensuing media accounts don't have anything to write about, because nothing actually transpired, so the poor journalists are left to write about how she lipsynched that she "had a good time" meeting the emperor of Tokyo or whatever. So what's a bigger waste of time than following Sarah Palin around while she says nothing about meaningless meetings with foreign dignitaries? Making up fictional event-free meetings with foreign dignitaries for the sake of a pointless quiz to see if you can tell which ones actually (pointlessly) happened!Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which! 1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger