First we hear about the National Debt Clock running out of digits
Then comes this picture of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke appearing at a Capitol Hill hearing today:
Isn’t running out of LED numbers one of the biblical signs of the apocalypse?
Found on Flickr (larger size):
vs.
I thought of doing something like this after last night’s debate, but I saw that adennak on DailyKos had already done it. It’s so well done I’ll just repost it:
Via an e-mail making the rounds this morning:
I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..(hope I’m not offending anyone):
- If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
- If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you’re a quintessential American story.
- If your name is Barack, you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
- If you name your kids Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.
- If you graduate from Harvard law School, you are unstable.
- If you attend five different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
- If you spend three years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
- If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
- If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
- If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
- If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
- If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
- If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
- If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, *much* clearer now.
Via CBC:
A Quebec businessman whose name is one of the many that have erroneously landed on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s flight passenger watch list has decided to change his name to avoid lengthy security hassles at the airport.
Mario Labbé, an executive with a Montreal-based record company, says his Canadian passport triggers a red alert on the computers of U.S. customs agents every time he tries to board a flight to the U.S. — which is about once a month for the past seven years.
…
Although Labbé wrote letters to the U.S. department, his efforts were in vain, prompting him to legally change his name.“So now, my official name is François Mario Labbé,” he said.
“Then you have to change everything: driver’s license, social insurance, medicare, credit card — everything.”
Although it’s not a big change from Mario Labbé, he said it’s been enough to foil the U.S. customs computers.
It turns out that terrorists aren’t allowed to legally change their name, so I guess we can consider that security hole firmly plugged.
Commenter at Metafilter:
[S]omeone needs to remind Sarah Palin that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.
Via The White House:
President George W. Bush calls Texas Governor Rick Perry, Saturday, Aug. 30, 2008, to discuss the impending storms that are expected to strike Texas and areas of the Gulf Coast region as a result of Hurricane Gustav.
Update – LA Times:
Not only is President Bush keeping atop the reports of Tropical Storm Gustav, but the White House press office is keeping atop efforts to report that he is keeping atop the reports.In other words, the president’s staff wants us to know he’s paying attention.
