Look at the nice illustration Google put together for the birthday of Yosemite National Park. Thanks to anarchist Republicans in the House of Representatives, today's "Google Doodle" also marks the closing of all U.S. national parks. Even the parks' websites are shut down.

After reading some books about banking, Denny Ray Hardin set up a website, created 2,000 fake promissory notes, and opened up "the Private Bank of Denny Ray Hardin" (not necessarily in that order) from his home in Kansas City. How entrepreneurial! And illegal.

Most people would not buy a used car from "The Government." According to a new Pew poll, just 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government "just about always" or "most of the time." Stupid government. [Reuters]

The Interior Department is the classic example of the type of thing Republican hacks will accuse of being an overfunded regulation-happy socialist bureaucracy even as they have already seen to it to staff it at all levels with ethically bankrupt bribe-happy supercorruptionists that basically do everything the GOP and its oligarch bankrollers would like them to do! Okay, so, case study: Last spring Palin sued the Department for trying to protect polar bears in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge! Because, you know, fuck the polar bears, they totally get in the way of the oil. And speaking of drilling! The whole time Sarah Palin was making out the Interior Department to be some Ecoterrorist front organization polluting soft minds with her fuzzy science on climate change, numerous employees of the Interior Department and the oil companies Sarah so loves were getting very cozy. And snorting cocaine! A federal investigation concluded today revealed: