The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced today that effective immediately they will cease all banking operations nationwide.

"The simple truth of the matter is that we just couldn't deal with this many banks failing all at once," said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. The government agency provided so-called deposit "insurance" for bank deposits up to $100,000.

Created in 1933 during the Great Depression, the FDIC was intended to be a government-issued security blanket that would restore confidence in the banking system among the American people. Unfortunately, the agency was never granted enough power or funding to handle more than one or two minor bank failures per year.

"We never really expected this degree of crisis," explained Bair. "I mean, who could have possibly predicted...

OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma City SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett announced today that he will sell the NBA team he wrested from Seattle and moved to Oklahoma City just three weeks ago. Bennett said he and his fellow billionaire owners realized after their settlement victory in Seattle that there is one thing they enjoy more than owning a basketball team.

“More than We love screwing people over,” a beaming Bennett said. “When we looked down from the 14th floor of the federal courthouse and saw 3,000 Sonics fans holding a rally – helium balloons, dorky signs – to save their team, how could you top that?

“We said, ‘Just think, we could do this to a whole damn state!’ It's like pissing off your little brother and holding him back from punching you by jamming your hand on his forehead – times 6.5 million,” he said.

Republican candidate for Governor Dino Rossi issued a strong statement today denying any ties to charities in general and Seattle's Union Gospel Mission in particular. A series of incriminating photographs have been revealed that show Rossi performing a number of selfless volunteer acts for Seattle's Union Gospel Mission.

"I do not now, nor have I ever cared even the slightest bit about what happens to the homeless," said Rossi. "This is just another of the baseless attacks that have become typical of my opponent."

Allegations of Rossi's involvement at the shelter began in May. At that time, Rossi denied having any sort of connection, saying "I don't even know what the Union Gospel Mission is, but I definitely don't support unions." However, an in-depth investigative report by the Naked Loon uncovered evidence that contradicted Rossi's claims.

Analysis

In an attempt to stop hemorrhaging money, Starbucks—whose stock price has tumbled over sixty percent since October '06—recently announced the impending closure of over six hundred stores, including twelve in the Puget Sound region. Here's a look at what went wrong for the largest dealer of legalized drugs in America, and how you can cope with the crippling withdrawal.

What do they do?

Starbucks business model is ostensibly based on selling coffee, the mind-altering drug of choice for busy self-important professionals. In recent years, they have deluded themselves into thinking that people visit their stores for the "atmosphere" rather than the drugs. This has led to a series of inexplicably poor business decisions such as CD kiosks, placing as many as seven stores on a single block, and attempting to sell $12 pastries.

The state Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision Friday, clearing Michelle Obama of wrongdoing in the mysterious placement of marijuana-scented metal spikes discovered buried on the floor of Greenlake.

The spikes were discovered by a policeman during a routine patrol of the lake. When one of the ten-foot, machine-sharpened, diamond-tipped spikes was pulled from the slimy lakebed, the unmistakable smell of marijuana led to the discovery and subsequent arrest of nine-hundred more, scattered throughout the lake.

In addition to the Greenlake spike Supreme Court ruling, Mrs. Obama's visit to Washington State this week was also timed to coincide with a fundraiser for Christine Gregoire and the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale...

As the video game trade show E3 wrapped up in Los Angeles today, Microsoft stole the show with their surprise announcement of a revolutionary new game exclusively for the Xbox 360: Barista Barista Revolution.

Scheduled for release in spring 2009, Barista Barista Revolution will put players in the role of a coffee shop barista as they grind, tamp, pull, and steam their way to the perfect espresso, in rhythm to the beat of dozens of today's top hits.

"We're really pumped about this innovative new game," said lead developer John Parker...

With all the dangerous things that abound out there in that big scary world, it can be tempting to succumb to paralyzing fear, never setting foot outside the safe and familiar confines of your home. Unfortunately for you, even your own home is full of perilous life-threatening hazards that can easily terminate your existence quicker than you can say "organic."

Luckily for you, The Naked Loon has yet again come to your rescue by compiling this helpful guide to household safety. Read on to learn more about the most dangerous parts of your house, and how you can protect yourself and your family.

Have you ever stopped to think about what life would be like if there were no lighthouses in existence? No West Point Light Station at Discovery Park? No Admiralty Head Light? No Alki Point Light?

I didn't think so, so here's your chance to do so.

Done already? Well okay then. Your conclusion probably went along the lines of this: "I don't want to think today. Also, you can't tell me what to do." Well if that's the way it's going to be, you leave me no choice but to straight up tell you what the world would be like if we didn't have any lighthouses.

Imagine this. You are a captain of SS Blue Flamingo and are on a very important mission to deliver three tons of marijuana to the U.S. so that all the suffering cancer patients can toke up and forget they have cancer. Day turns to night, and you find yourself in the perilous waters of Dead Cows Corner...

In a press conference from Jerusalem on Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the stunning findings of a team of Iran's best genealogists: Ahmadinejad is a sixteenth Jewish.

A stunned silence fell upon the roughly 200 members of the press, most of whom expected the revelation to be followed by an explosive tirade against Israel. Instead, Ahmadinejad calmly explained that he now realizes that his previous "annihilate Israel" platform may have been unnecessarily harsh, and that he intends to fully embrace his newly-discovered Jewish heritage.

"In the past, when I said that 'anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury,' I was speaking from an outsider's misunderstanding of what it means to be Jewish," said Ahmadinejad as he donned a traditional kippah. "It turns out that the Zionist regime really isn't that bad after all."

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced a revision yesterday to his plan to charge city residents for using plastic and paper bags at area grocery stores: The “price” of a bag will rise to $1 for paper and $2 for plastic, a jump from the original fee of 10 cents for paper and 20 cents for plastic.

The fee program was approved by the city council last summer, and has met with substantial resistance from local merchants, tourists, and pretty much everyone one except the mayor.

“We, or rather I, feel it is imperative to make this fine, err, I mean green-use fee sting, in order to teach the upstanding, if obstinate citizens of our eco-friendly city that hurting the earth simply does not pay,” Nickels said Friday afternoon at a press conference hastily organized on the steps of city hall.

For many Seattle-area residents, the only thing more depressing than the thought of Californian immigration to Washington is organized sports.

The Mariners are floundering at the bottom of the MLB heap, and have never even been to the World Series. The Seahawks lost their one shot at the Super Bowl to a bunch of guys in striped shirts. Rumor has it that the Sonics won the NBA Championship once, but now that the NBA has skipped town, Seattle's only remaining sports team to have won a national title is the Seattle Storm, our WNBA team. Unfortunately, there are only approximately three people in all of Seattle that care about the WNBA, and this includes the team, their families, and their friends.

In spite of all this, there is still hope for sports fans in the Puget Sound. We need not stoop so low as to feign interest in women's basketball in order to enjoy the glory of having a winning team. No, we must simply turn our attention to Seattle's most overlooked and—more importantly—our winningest sport: WhirlyBall.

Hot on the heels of a recent Louisiana victory in the fight against evolution, the Seattle-based think tank Discovery Institute held a press conference Thursday to announce their latest initiative: defeating the myth of gravity.

Robert Crowther, Discovery's director of communications was visibly excited as he detailed the Institute's plan for attacking what he refers to as the sloppy, inaccurate, and overtly biased portrayal of the theory of gravity.

"Gravity is just a theory, and a poorly-supported one at that," said Crowther...

Seattle city officials held a progress review meeting today to update the city's civil defense preparations. The meeting was hastily ordered by Mayor Nickels after a city clerk discovered an obscure city code dating back to the 50s that requires the city to update its civil defense plans and distribute updated materials to the public every ten years. Seattle has not updated its civil defense plans since 1951.

...changes to the civil defense materials include updates to lists of subversive organizations and replacing detailed explanations of death by atom bomb with comprehensive descriptions of death by chemical or biological attack.

"We're pretty proud of what we were able to produce on such a short notice," said Mayor Nickels, who explained that updated civil defense pamphlets and books will be available to Seattle residents as early as next week.

James Elmore spent the night in the bed of his El Camino. A mass of ladybugs had crept up his leg the night before as he finished the endless chores of his startup farm. He didn't want to take the helpful bugs all the way to his house in Arlington.

Besides, all his chores—those endless, repetitive, and mind-numbingly boring chores—would be waiting for him the next day. The dandelion is a harsh mistress.

Farming dandelions requires daily sacrifices from Elmore, his wife Eleanor, and his nine children, who hope to someday turn their 153-acre plot of dandelions in Trafton into a thriving ranch that supports the family of eleven.

"It's this crazy dream we have," says Elmore, 36.

After months of silence, a video released from al-Qaeda on Monday announced that the struggling organization will close 150 terror cells worldwide, including in Seattle.

The unnamed spokesman in the grainy video cited skyrocketing insurance costs as the primary reason for closing the Seattle cell. "Health, dental, vision, life, automobile, home... it adds up fast," said the figure.

Most of the local terror cell jobs will be outsourced to Iraq and Pakistan. The move has upset local dedicated al-Qaeda operatives.

"I left my job at Microsoft because I believed in this organization's three values: Death to America, establish caliphate, and taking care of the martyrs with full vision and dental," said Shoreline al-Qaeda member Ahmed Moqed...

I feel I just have to address something gone terribly wrong in this world: Dolphins. Yes, you heard me right, dang it. I said dolphins. Yeah, I know, you think they're cute. You think they are smart. That's what you've been told. Told by the system. THE SYSTEM! DO YOU HEAR ME?! THEY ARE FORCE-FEEDING YOU THESE LIES!!

Yeah, they may LOOK cute, and their trainers may SAY they are smart, but they are not smart. Not at all. (Imagine an uppity nasal voice here) "Dolphins are easily as intelligent as man because they develop complex social relationships with other creatures and display learning skills higher than any other animal. Really humans could learn a lot from dolphins. They have the intelligence to aide them in living full happy lives, without the instinct to use their intelligence to prey on other creatures. We are indeed inferior."

Independence Day—a day when all America shirks responsibilities like work and heads outside to barbecue with friends and blow stuff up in remembrance of our country being awesome. Truly this is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they signed the Fourth of July Party Proclamation that kicked off this yearly tradition so many years ago.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, an empty bag will not stand upright. In that spirit, and in order to assure that everyone can have a fun holiday weekend free of exploding death and dismemberment, The Naked Loon has compiled this helpful guide to Independence Day in the Seattle area.

A committee made up of city, state and county officials commissioned to study solutions to the Alaska Way Viaduct announced their latest findings today. The committee released a statement indicating that they have finally determined a definitive solution to the problem of the crumbling Viaduct. That solution, according to the committee, is to form more committees.

"I'm a little embarrassed it took us this long to see the obvious answer that was staring us in the face this whole time," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

The report from the committee laid out an extensive plan to solve the Viaduct issue by convening a series of seventy-three separate committees over the next twenty years.

Editor's note: Thanks to the uncanny prescience of our writing staff, The Naked Loon is able to bring you the big news about today's Sonics ruling ten whole hours before anyone else!

Welcome to the future, Seattle.

As U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman handed down her decision today in Seattle's lawsuit against the Sonics, team owner Clay Bennett successfully maintained his trademark scowl without displaying even so much as a slight twitch at the corner of his lips.

When Judge Pechman's ruling was revealed at 4:00 this afternoon...

In the wake of last week's seemingly dire news that ice at the North Pole is on track to melt by September, climatologists have come forward with news that somewhat softens the blow. According to a growing number of scientists, melting arctic ice tastes absolutely delicious—far better than any bottled water currently on the market.

"Recent Arctic warming is quite dramatic," said Jolene Townsend, a climatologist at the University of Washington, "but so is the American appetite for pure, fresh-tasting bottled water." Townsend described the scenario as a win-win since really who lives in the Arctic anyway—nobody, that's who.

"If I weren't so busy breathlessly spreading global warming alarmism, I would bottle this stuff and sell it myself," said University of Colorado climatologist Steven Wiltshire...

One week after the iconic Ballard Denny's building was unceremoniously smashed to bits, the 31-year-old Denny's restaurant building in Kenmore continues to remain standing, a blatant mockery of all that is good and wholesome.

While the architecturally interesting Ballard Denny's met the steel claw of progress last week, the exceptionally ordinary Kenmore Denny's building has so far avoided meeting the same fate.

Since the closure of Denny's in May of 2006, the nondescript building has been sitting gutted and empty without so much as a peep from local neighbors...