Here's some lovely Thursday afternoon news: The credit rating agency Moody's has pre-warned the United States about the possibility of debt default later this year, saying that it will downgrade ratings on America's public debt — the safest investment in the world — from AAA to AA should an agreement not be reached.
The monitoring anklet that Lindsay Lohan, Hollywood's most larcenous starlet, has been forced to wear while under house arrest went off earlier this week. That would normally indicate that Lindsay's left the building. But when police went to her Venice Beach house, they found LiLo lounging in the sun on her roof deck, reading scripts. Authorities surmised the bracelet must have malfunctioned. Are they sure they located the right Lindsay? The one we know wouldn't be caught dead actually doing work.
China and North Korea are the happiest nations on Earth, while people in the United States are utterly miserable, according to a completely objective survey by North Korean researchers. Groundbreaking.
Mortgage the hovel! Empty the penny jar! Leverage yourself to the hilt! Scrape together whatever meager nut you can, financially devastated Americans: Groupon is going public. You have to get in on this!
A train derailed in Taunton, Massachusetts yesterday after thieves apparently used a blowtorch to steal two 8-foot, 900-lb chunks of solid steel track. Luckily, the train was moving slowly when the conductor hit the brakes, so no one was injured. Though this crime initially baffled me (what the hell would you do with a 900-lb railroad track?) Taunton's police chief barely batted an eye:
In your emotional Thursday media column: Bill Keller vents, the NYT newsroom tweets, worldwide journalist peril quantified, Ed Schultz is coming back, and rumors of more Time Out troubles.
It's all a forgery, Mark Zuckerberg says. The contract where he signs over Facebook ownership; the emails where he tries to swindle his business partner — all fakes from a known liar. Once a liar always a liar, right, Mark?
Tangerine-dipped social construct Donald Trump took some heat from The Daily Show and others for stacking his two slices of pizza and eating them with a fork and knife on a recent jaunt to a Broadway chain restaurant with the Palin family. This provided a perfect opening for Trump to issue a public explanation and keep the controversy aflame for another few hours.
We crack wise about a lot of things here at Gawker, and generally avoid getting all serious and earnest about the political issues of the day. But this month, in honor of Pride Month, we've decided to, earnestly and seriously, throw our support behind something we're truly passionate about: marriage equality. So we're hosting a big fundraiser to support the cause, and we need your help.
For the past two weeks, President Obama has not had the legal authority from Congress to use military action in Libya. I know I'm being a stickler, but if we're going to get further and further involved in a third war with no plan in both the short and long term, then Congress should at the very least sign off on it as the law requires it to. The other option for Congress is to use its authority to end this altogether — which it appeared willing to do yesterday, before the Republican leadership pulled the vote from the floor.
Will the plague of "hacked" political Twitter feeds never end? As Anthony Weiner struggles to stand firm in the aftermath of his dick twitpic scandal, the Republican speaker of the Ohio House has announced that his Twitter was hacked, too. The result: A couple liberal tweets about Ohio policy stuff, which Speaker William Batchelder did not approve. Bo-ring. Go glans or go home.
Mitt Romney is kicking off his second presidential campaign later on Thursday, and — according to published excerpts from the afternoon's big speech — he'll do it with a healthy dose of fear-the-coming-socialist-tide rhetoric.
Michelle Obama and her nosy goons at the USDA have destroyed America's beloved "food pyramid" nutritional diagram in favor of a new "food plate," which they unveiled this morning. As if any Americans eat food off a plate? Wake me when the nutritional diagram for wolfing down food over the kitchen sink comes out.
