Afghan Elections
Turnout is very low in today's presidential elections in Afghanistan... mostly because all the would-be voters are too busy attending health care town halls.



CIA Outsourcing
New reports show that the CIA hired contractors from Blackwater USA to locate and assassinate top Al Qaeda operatives. It wasn't because the CIA agents couldn't do the killings themselves, it's just that as federal employees none of them wanted to take any risks before they could collect their pensions.



Credit Card Changes
New rules kick in today that force credit card companies to provide more information and help for consumers. From now on whenever you get your bill, there will be a clearly printed telephone number where you can get in touch with one of those new government "end of life" counseling panels.



Lockerbie Bomber Freed
Scotland is releasing one of the Muslim terrorists who carried out the Pan Am 103 bombing because he is gravely ill. So now instead of dying behind bars, he'll die while he sits in British hospital waiting room hoping to see a doctor before 2011.



Hedge Fund Bet
A big hedge fund is betting that price of natural gas will more than triple this winter. To back up that bet, the fund is keeping supplies down by banning its employees from eating at Taco Bell.




August 20th


1866: President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over. The cast of Hee Haw still begs to differ.

1882: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow. A Russian worker only 70 years late? Not bad!

1991: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev. The stench from the crowd is palatable as far away as Milwaukee.

1998: The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval... or at least teaching everyone else in Canada how to make a decent croissant.