Some U.S. Treasury websites hacked, taken offline

By GottaLaff

Some U.S Treasury Department websites got hacked. If you happened to visit, you might have been infected. How many frequent the Treasury site? Hopefully, it isn't a real hot spot:

Four domains associated with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing were hit by a malicious attack. As a result, a bug on the site would attempt to infect visitors' PCs.

A bureau representative says the sites affected are BEP.gov, BEP.treas.gov, MoneyFactory.gov and MoneyFactory.com.

Scary. Cyber warfare is something we have yet to effectively defend against.

The affected sites were taken offline.

If you've visited any of the four ailing sites in the last couple days, you may want to get your computer checked.

After you throw it through the window.

PhotOh! Completely Inappropiate Stained Glass

By GottaLaff

My Twitter pal LJSearles found this via davetube555, who, incidentally, lives in Northern Ireland. We're not sure if it's "real", but....


Holy mother of...

Good lord.

Cooked

By GottaLaff

Via Greg Sargent:

Cook Political Report revises a bunch of ratings and concludes that 54 Dem-held House seats stand a reasonable chance of flipping, versus only six GOP seats. Conclusion: Dem control of House at risk.

Yikes

By GottaLaff

Um...

On C-Span, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) explained how the Federal Reserve told members of Congress about an electronic run on the banks "to the tune of $550 billion dollars" within "an hour or two" last fall.

According to Kanjorski, on September 18, 2008 the Fed tried to "stem the tide" by pumping money into the financial system but it didn't work and decided instead to announce an immediate increase in deposit insurance to $250,000 per account to stop the panic.

Said Kanjorski: "If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2 p.m. that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it."

Gulp.

Before he was president, Obama was mistaken for a waiter

By GottaLaff

I hope he gave him a decent tip:

On a warm weekday evening in 2003, a group that can fairly be described as representative of the media elite gathered at one if its favored venues: the garden behind the Manhattan apartment of journalists Tina Brown and Harold Evans.

The occasion was the publication of “The Clinton Wars,” by Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. [...]

Standing by myself I noticed, on the periphery of the party, a man looking as awkward and out-of-place as I felt. I approached him and introduced myself. He was an Illinois state senator who was running for the U.S. Senate. He was African American, one of a few black people in attendance.

We spoke at length about his campaign. He was charismatic in a quiet, solemn way.[...]

But what I will always remember is as I was leaving that party in 2003, I was approached by another guest, an established author. He asked about the man I had been talking to. Sheepishly he told me he didn’t know that Obama was a guest at the party, and had asked him to fetch him a drink. In less than six years, Obama has gone from being mistaken for a waiter among the New York media elite, to the president-elect.

What a country.

Winning a presidential election is the best revenge.

Surprise! U.S. Expects Bin Laden Message Near Election

By GottaLaff

Seems our government loves a good rumor. Well here's one: Bin Laden is in Gramm-pa McCain's corner. Look! Here comes another big fat juicy one as we speak:

Multiple senior government officials tell ABC News the intelligence community is anticipating a message from Osama bin Laden before or just after the presidential election.

As we race toward Election Day, sources say a number of intelligence analysts have concluded it is critical for al Qaeda's top leader to be seen or heard, if only for public relations purposes. [...]

According to sources, the full weight of the intelligence electronic eavesdropping and human sourcing is right now desperately looking for any hint of a bin Laden statement. So far there is only rumor, no hard evidence a message is coming, officials said.

Another perfectly timed unsubstantiated, meaningless rumor. Boy howdy! Good thing they're circulating it! We wouldn't want the election to be completely unaffected by terrorism this time around.