Washington, D.C., February 12, 2008 -- An unusually somber and introspective President George W. Bush, presenting the details of his $3.1 trillion fiscal year 2009 budget proposal for members of the American Plutocrats Union, a conservative group, lamented that the budget proposal represents his “last chance to shaft the poor.”

He urged the assembled audience to do “everything in their powers” to convince their elected representatives that the budget proposal represented an historic opportunity that may not return for a decade or more.

Reno, September 22, 2155 -- The festivities were frolicsome, the conversation frivolous, and as the last of the guests slip one by one through the vapor-lock and into their plasma cubes for the bounce home, the hosts sigh at the hurricane-like swath of residue left by the merriment: glass shards, cracker crumbs, innumerable dribblings of hors d'oeuvres. But do they don decontaminant apparel and reach for broom and dustpan?

Individual NannoGoat (shown in front of a half-inch $500 coin)

Washington, D.C., January 7, 2006 -- Legendary lobbyist and indicted political connections broker Jack Abramoff has been "renditioned" by an undisclosed agency of the United States government and is currently being held in an unknown location for "interrogation, I suppose, or whatever else we can think of do with him until some of the heat is off, or the 2006 midterm elections, whichever comes first", according to an agent of the CIA who requested anonymity.

Western Atlantic, April 29, 2024 -- Cartographers at the Trans-Coastal Mappery, based in Newport, Rhode Island, announced that while inspecting satellite photography of the American eastern seaboard Wednesday they discovered the island of Bermuda to be conspicuously absent. Following up on the discovery, the cartography team attempted to telephone a number of businesses and government offices known to be located on the island, but were unable to establish contact.