• MAYBE JUST STOP FLYING ON PLANES FOR A WHILE: “A passenger plane carrying 168 people smashed into the ground in northwestern Iran Wednesday, killing everyone on board and creating a huge smoldering crater.” [CNN]

METRO CRASH KILLS 2, 6, 9, INJURES 55 76: Red line trains smash up and stack up near the Ft. Totten Metro station, and emergency teams have reportedly just finished the “extraction.” Traffic jams, ambulances trying to get in and out, just avoid the whole area. Ugh. [WTOP/DCist]

It seems that Mexico has turned into a nightmare apocalypse swamp (desert?) just south of our own American borders, overnight. Once upon a time, carefree teens could slip down to Juarez or Tijuana for a good clean evening of wholesome fuckin’, and now they will just get kidnapped or worse. Just look at the news: terrible shootouts between drug cartels, a lethal plague, and now just today a scary earthquake near Mexico City … Jesus, no wonder Rick Perry wants federal troops on the border. MORE »

He is the most POWERFUL MAN IN AMERICA, for certain. Not only did Barack Obama make the socialist slumlord community organizing frauds ACORN magically disappear several weeks before he stole the election from honorable Juan McCain, he has made every acorn in the nation vanish. Do not mess with Barack Obama. MORE »

It’s Monday, meaning a bank fell. A major bank, felled. Or didn’t fall? Just “sold off” its entire banking operations: “Citigroup will acquire the banking operations of the Wachovia Corporation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Monday morning, the latest bank to fall victim to the distressed mortgage market.” While the F.D.I.C. chairman says Wachovia customers should expect business as usual, we think there should be a BANK RUN! EVERYONE FREAK OUT! GET ALL YR MONEY! RUNNNNN!!!! [NYT]

IS McCAIN TRYING TO SAVE BUILDINGS NOW? “We have breaking news out of Washington, D.C. where a building has partially collapsed. ABC2NEWS.COM has learned that the building that collapsed is unoccupied but it is affecting a building that is occupied.” [ABC 2]

During the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, FEMA found out the hard way that sometimes the press just isn’t feeling very charitable towards the incompetent agency. So when they had a press conference today, the Washington Post’s Al Kamen reveals, it’s way better to just make sure the reporters can’t get there, and then to assign various staffers with make-believe roles as pretend reporters. MORE »

California’s burning, and there are political points ripe for the plucking! Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, for instance, both agree it’s all the environazis’ fault, with Malkin taking the opportunity to throw a few Mexicans on the pyre while she’s at it. MORE »

Iraqi insurgents nearly killed three Republican senators and a Democrat from the House, for good measure, as the Americans attempted to flee Iraq on Thursday. GOP senators Richard Shelby, James Inhofe, Mel Martinez and Alabama Representative “Robert” E. “Bud” Cramer were finishing their vacation in Baghdad when missiles and rocket-propelled grenades were fired at their C-130 cargo plane. MORE »

When inexplicable tragedies happen, some turn to god, and some turn to drink. We turn to our Anonymous Lobbyist. And also drink.

The 35W bridge collapse doesn’t present too many easy scapegoats — Pawlenty and Bush do severely fuck up everything they’re supposed to be in charge of managing, but America’s decaying infrastructure isn’t exactly the work of one or two men. No, years and years of work and lobbying went into ensuring that nothing would ever be repaired! AL explains how, after the jump.

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Every day, trains carrying unimaginably deadly materials run straight though our fair district on ancient, poorly maintained tracks, bound for god knows where, always moments away from derailing and killing thousands. MORE »