we're doomed

So apparently this is what they're doing at ACHS football games now:

In one of the few memorable moments of this governor's race, Zach Wamp dissed Bill Haslam by comparing him to wimpy, wide-eyed Bobby Ewing in the old Dallas soap opera. He meant to paint Haslam as an amiable doofus incapable of leadership, but there's a better analogy from late '70s pop culture: Haslam is Chance the gardener, aka Chauncey Gardiner, in the classic Peter Sellers movie Being There.
[...]
To the surprise of even the most jaded political observers, not a single ad has stated any specific policy proposal or offered any significant clue as to what this fill-in-the-blanks candidate might do as governor. Yet somehow, that hasn't seemed to count against the Knoxville mayor with voters and opinion makers.
[...]
Isn't it great to know that in modern America, the seed of a rich guy running a relentlessly vapid campaign in which he absolutely refuses to take any positions at all — and sometimes appears totally out to lunch — still can win an election hands-down? Only in the Theater of the Absurd that is this governor's race could this candidate look like the Chosen One.

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When Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office in January, he inherited a military not just drained by a two-front war overseas but fighting a third battle on the home front, a subtle civil war over its own soul. On one side are the majority of military personnel, professionals who regardless of their faith or lack thereof simply want to get their jobs done; on the other is a small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officer corps.
[...]

Google's 411 service was created to help the machines to understand our spoken languages

Think the US has it bad? At least we're not as fucked as Iceland:

An entire nation without immediate experience or even distant memory of high finance had gazed upon the example of Wall Street and said, “We can do that.” For a brief moment it appeared that they could. In 2003, Iceland’s three biggest banks had assets of only a few billion dollars, about 100 percent of its gross domestic product. Over the next three and a half years they grew to over $140 billion and were so much greater than Iceland’s G.D.P. that it made no sense to calculate the percentage of it they accounted for. It was, as one economist put it to me, “the most rapid expansion of a banking system in the history of mankind.”
[...]
In the end, Icelanders amassed debts amounting to 850 percent of their G.D.P. (The debt-drowned United States has reached just 350 percent.) As absurdly big and important as Wall Street became in the U.S. economy, it never grew so large that the rest of the population could not, in a pinch, bail it out. Any one of the three Icelandic banks suffered losses too large for the nation to bear; taken together they were so ridiculously out of proportion that, within weeks of the collapse, a third of the population told pollsters that they were considering emigration.

as seen from a cop car

So I'm reading now that the gas shortage has spread from Nashville to east TN and parts of GA and NC. So what's it like back home? Are people rioting yet? Has the horse-drawn buggy made a comeback? Burning Fulmer effigies to stay warm?

No word on shortages here in southeast SC. Purely status quo as far as I can see. Well, except that temperatures have dropped into the 60s these last couple of days, and the natives are freezing...

Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of
800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it
would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you
may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation
movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need
the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these
funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly
under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for
a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the
funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will
respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used
to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

A Memphis crack TV news team "discovered" that a porn video was shot in a local suburb's public park.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
[...]
Mr Bush also faced criticism at the summit after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was described in the White House press pack given to journalists as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice".

The White House apologised for what it called "sloppy work" and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it.