“Rep. David Wu announced his resignation from Congress today, moments after U.S. senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden called for his resignation. The Democrat said in a statement that he would leave office after Congress resolves the debt ceiling crisis.” [Oregonian]

“Yes, many want government to start living within its means. And many are fed up with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle-class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few. But do you know what people are fed up with most of all?”
—Barack Obama, Monday night

• Craven Democrats
• Centrists being mistaken for Progressives
• Triangulation being mistaken for Principle

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The Preznit of These United States will be speaking to Our Exceptional Indebted Nation at 9 p.m. ET, in order to explain the necessary Austerity Measures that will only affect the Already Austere. If you’d like to see how millionaires speak to peasants, tune in.

“A man suffered life-threatening burns Monday after a portable toilet he was using exploded, apparently after he lit a cigarette.” [Raw Story]

“With its Sarah Palin documentary ‘The Undefeated’ increasing its playdates by 40 percent this weekend, only to watch box office revenue decline by more than 63 percent, distributor Arc Entertainment announced Sunday that the film will soon be available on pay per view.” [Yahoo]

If we understand the timing, Our Exceptional Nation actually hit its debt ceiling back in May, but thanks to a high-stakes shell game over at Treasury, nobody noticed. Entropy being what it is, however, the shells aren’t being shuffled as fast as they were, and eventually they’ll come to a full stop on August 2.

The other nominal deadline in the news was last Friday, which The Preznit set as the last possible moment to achieve a Grand Sellout Bargain. Any cocktail-napkin deals signed off by then would still have needed to be translated into actual mind-numbing legislation and passed by Congress, and allowing two weeks for that would be cutting things short, what with other national emergencies like Demon Light Bulb legislation to tend to.

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Title: “Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom”

Author: Jennifer Holland

Rank: 68

Blurb: “Unlikely Friendships documents one heartwarming tale after another of animals who, with nothing else in common, bond in the most unexpected ways. A cat and a bird. A mare and a fawn. An elephant and a sheep. A snake and a hamster.”

Review: “I have to say that this may not be a book for sensitive children. One story is about a lioness who (unbelievably) adopts a baby Oryx, caring for it as if it were her own cub. As she is resting, weak with starvation from refusing to leave it, the Oryx wanders off, when a male lion ‘snatched it up’. She ‘sniffed the blood of her baby in the grass’ and helplessly watched the male ‘devour it’.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting”, by Rachel Shteir

Footnote: Tell us the one about the scorpion and the frog.

Unlikely Friendships [Fuck Amazon]