We at USDemocrazy have a pretty stacked social schedule for this weekend. (Filling in at our grandmother’s bridge game counts, right?)

Imagining that you might too, we’ve decided to expand our classic “What’zup today?” section to help you catch up on some of the important, or just interesting, or maybe bizarre, stories floating around the world wide web. You know, so you have something to talk about at all the parties you’ve promised to attend in the coming days.

Here goes nothing…

Here, The Daily Beast explores the possibility of “The Next Sarah Palin?” Can there be a “next” when the original is still hanging around? We smell a rivalry…

Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire’s GOP rising star, is a folksy, gun-loving mother of two who has her eyes on a Senate seat. And, you betcha, she married a dude who puts Todd to shame.

The new “the FBI made me do it” defense makes its debut… A blogger charged with making threats against lawmakers and government officials claims the FBI taught him how to do it all.

“His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest,” Orozco said.

Robert “Mr. Smug” Gibbs gets dizzy more often than you think. Why? A photo.

The “burqini” for Muslim women gets banned in northern Italy. One would presume it just doesn’t show enough skin for the Italians.

A modest fit burqini, thanks to: http://www.ahiida.com/

“The sight of a ‘masked woman’ could disturb small children, not to mention problems of hygiene,” mayor Gianluca Buonanno was quoted as saying.

Who is better at swimming: Shaq or Michael Phelps? We will soon find out….

America loses another pioneer in news… The inventor of the news magazine and the televised presidential debate, Don Hewitt, has passed away.

We’ve heard about the uproar at health care town hall meetings, but have we seen the best protest signs? The Huffington Post helps us out in finding the most amusing. Our favorite:

What this country needs is more "Arrested Development."

You think American news outlets have major spin going on? Try living in North Korea. (OK, that wasn’t fair…)

Last week, KCNA took a similarly rose-colored look at the fact that the country’s capital city still has no traffic lights and relies instead on a corps of women who direct traffic the old-fashioned way, by hand, in an article headlined: “Traffic Control Platform beneath Umbrella Installed at Intersections of Pyongyang.”

Must be cool under there.

Is Putin back in the saddle? (Come on, that one’s worth a little smile.) The presidency may be in his future (despite also being in his past…).

See why we're funny?

Apparently, T-shirt-making is a science. That ragtag collection in your dresser doesn’t pass muster when it comes to T-shirts being fashionable, you know.

This shirt, if you’ll excuse me for sounding ridiculous, may be the most perfect garment I own. The fabric is thin to the point of almost being sheer, made of high-gauge long-fiber Sea Island cotton that is difficult to describe without resorting to clichés: soft as a buttered, cashmere baby’s bottom? Yes, that soft!

Barney Frank loses his cool over health care “Nazi policy” accusations come up. Well, it is August…

After all the uncomfortably testy town-hall footage we’ve seen this month, watching Frank deal with an over the top Obama-as-Nazi accusation is pretty entertaining. Nothing like an accusation of Nazism to lighten up August.

Time has come for the Afghan vote! (Catch up on the Afghan election situation here.)

And to wrap up, a bit of fake news: Obama gets tangled up in coat hangers! (Via The Onion.)