This week in news guaranteed to blow. your. mind. comes word that God is a hermaphrodite.

That’s right. Not just Alpha and Omega, but AC/DC. Innie and outie. Pistil and stamen. Man and, um, man in the boat.

How do we know? After six thousand years, somebody finally thought to read it backwards.

The journal of Reform rabbis published an article this week proclaiming that if the four-letter Hebrew name of God were spelled backward and pronounced it would sound like the Hebrew words for “he” and “she.”

Actually, HWHY sounds like our aunt sneezing, but bear with us.

The reasoning is that since Hashem — Moses’ name spelled backwards — is Hebrew for “The Name”, perhaps God backmasked Himself as well. (“Hashem” is how you refer to He Who Must Not Be Named, roughly equivalent to “gosh” for Christianists.)

And that would suggest that the ancient Israelites saw God as a self-satisfying deity.

We find the whole notion far-fetched, although it was probably handy to fend off nosy neighbors who asked why there wasn’t a Mrs. God.

Is God a hermaphrodite? [Chicago Tribune]

What’s that, Flipper? You say the presidential candidates are debating at a church? Only it’s not really a debate, more like dueling interviews, and not really a church, more like a Mall of Christ?

Or are you bitching about the headline? Dolphins, porpoises, nobody gives a flying backflip about your evolutionary turf wars, and you all taste the same to my friend Shamu across the I-8.

So quit yer yap-yap-yap yap-yap-yap yap-yap-yap-yap-yappin’. We have some serious typing to do in about twenty minutes. Here, go fetch this can of tuna.

7:43: It’s actually 4:43 in Sandy Eggo, but we’ll try to transpose the hours, at least through the first couple of beers.

7:48: CNN’s chattering about some JeezusFest in D.C. — anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, yadda yadda. Note to self: Find the place in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Blessed Are the Cretins”.

7:54: CNN talking head: “A lot of people do get their information from the Internet, and they’re cynical.” Drink!

8:00: LET’S GET READY TO RUMMMMMMMBLE!!!

8:02: Pastor Rick bringz da rimshotz.

8:08: Barry drops Matthew on “America’s greatest moral failure”, successfully evades three days of headlines.

8:15: Commercial break? “Resting on the seventh day: Priceless.”

8:27: Barry does a soft-shoe around abortion, comes up with “civil unions” for gay marriage, yadda yadda about stem cells. Whatever happened to Liberation Theology?

8:32: Given the opportunity to knock off a Justice, Barry picks off Thomas first, then Scalia. Thomas may be “incompetent”, but isn’t that better than if he knew what he was doing?

8:41: So here’s the news: Pastor Rick is asking better questions than most network anchors. He actually drove through the hot buttons rather quickly, almost apologetically, and the lack of high-five gotchas is a nice change. We can almost forgive him for the goatee.

8:57: Barry’s done, no howlers. What a disappointment. Bring it on, Geezer, we need to drink.

9:02: And Geezer opens with a shout-out to Petraeus. Game ON!

9:04: Greatest moral failure? “The failure of my first marriage.” No details, but give him credit.

9:07: Shout-out to Reagan! Shout-out to Thatcher! Please, don’t everyone yell Bingo at once.

9:08: Offshore drilling! DJ Geez is picking ’em up and laying ’em down!

9:09: Nukes! Oh sweet Jesus, the crowd is about to spontaneously rapture! GEE-zer! GEE-zer!

9:11: POW! Dude, even Cher saves something for the encore.

9:16: Is it the POW Christmas story? Is it? Cross in the sand? Come on, come on…

9:17: YESSSS! Pandermonium breaks out!

9:19: Hey, PUMA! “I’ve got a 25-year pro-life record.”

9:22: Bin Laden, Gates of Hell, etc.

9:23: Iraq! Iraq! Iraq!

9:24: Is it just us, or did Geezer just put his stump speech on shuffle?

9:29: And we thought Reagan governed by index card. Geezer plans to govern by bumper sticker.

9:33: Typical example of wasteful spending: $3 million on bear DNA. Um, what about the trillion in Iraq?

9:37: McCain feels strongly about your Constitutional rights. But it seems he can’t count to Four.

9:39: In case it’s not yet apparent: Barry tried to engage the questions (within political limits, of course), while Geezer just twists them into a talking point. Why do we suspect McCain will get the credit for a “strong performance”?

9:41: Second or third Reagan reference, plus at least two Petraeuses. Full house!

9:44: Hey, fundies: “Georgia was one of the earliest Christian nations.” Well, that cuts through the complexities.

9:47: Another Reagan. That’s four Ronnies. Call.

9:51: “I put my country first during the S&L crisis.” Hold on, we think we got the audio wrong.

9:53: And… scene! Now on to CNN, so they can tell us how they watched a different event entirely.

(From left: Barack Obama, Rick Warren, Rick Warren, and Sam Brownback.)

The Saddleback Roundup starts at 7 8 p.m. Eastern, CNN, MSNBC and Fox will be broadcasting it, and we’re desperately seeking excuses not to liveblog it.

Unless Bob Barr storms the sanctuary, of course. Nothing spices up an event like a purpose-driven Libertarian.

Update: Make that 8 p.m. Eastern. We’ll be lining up our livebrews around 7:45.

Barr goes to court to demand entry into Saddleback Church [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

We’ve been trying to rewrite this lead all afternoon, but how do you compete with greatness?

A man has been banned by a court from having sex with his partner at her home after keeping neighbours awake with loud shouting and banging in the night.

Really, you might as well try to outswim Phelps, or outkaraoke some cute Chinese kid.

As to the details: neighbors complained, Rutting Gold Medalist Adam Hinton was hit with a £200 fine for “breaching a noise abatement order” — crank at 11, we hope — Hinton threatened the neighbors, and the Brighton, England, council stepped in with an injunction against him to mind his distance.

How loud was it? While we can’t find reports of car alarms being set off, some neighbors had to be moved to quieter flats. How can you sleep with all that fucking racket going on?

Man banned from sex at love nest [BBC. That’s right. BB-fucking-C.]

Reading through the Obama campaign’s 40-page response to Swift Boat II: Barackolypse Now, we’re rather disappointed with the quality of the calumny. There’s nothing your idiot relatives haven’t already warned you about in forwarded emails — the madrassa, the drugs, assorted radicals and militants, Rezko — plus an odd diversion into Kenyan politics which would bore us even if true.

However: Did you know that Barack Obama shamelessly plagiarizes the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries?

In a section on borrowed lines from movies, Corsi wrote, “Obama has repeatedly used the words bamboozled and hoodwinked in framing his argument that the truth has been hidden from voters.”

What makes this noteworthy is the full page devoted to addressing this slur, with seven examples of contemporary usage, including Jesse Jackson Jr. (“We’ve been hoodwinked, bamboozled, run amok and led astray by Al Jolson politics before.” — Pop taught you well, kiddo) and Ray Nagin. Which we’re sure will come in very handy the next time you’re challenged to defend Barry’s use of haolebonics.

The book debuts at the top of the Times “nonfiction” list this week, and while purchasers may be hoping to be goshbustified by a sockdolager, we suspect instead they’ll be hornswoggled by a scalawag absquatulating with their hard-earned skrilla.

Obama campaign issues rebuttal to book’s claims [AP]

Unfit for Publication [Obama campaign]

Hillary Clinton will be placed in nomination at convention [LAT]

You give us the first, we’ll think about the second.

Colin Powell: Will he or won’t he publicly back Barack Obama? [LAT]