If you haven't heard, the country is in a recession and things are getting bad. I spend every afternoon watching CNBC and weeping. My father, who deals in real estate, calls me every night just to scream and babble incoherently. My wife splits her time between loading up the Model T to head out west Californee-way and burning our quarterly financial statements for warmth.

We're on an economic roller coaster right now, and I don't mean a reputable roller coaster like at Six Flags. We're talking one of those death-trap coasters that even the carnies won't ride. The depressing thing is that the whole bag of crap we're in right now just seemed to come out of nowhere, like the last season of Roseanne. How did we get here? Why is this all happening now?

You might be tempted to blame the usual suspects: the president, the congress, the Stone-Cutters. But you'd be wrong. The real culprit behind this whole problems is Friends.

Sheesh.

So here's what happened: FoxNews was doing a story on the indictment of Rep. William J. Jefferson, who was charged with bribery. Unfortunately, the network ran footage of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, instead. Both Jefferson and Conyers are black.

I searched for footage of this mistake, preferably one without political commentary on the mistake itself, but all I could find was the video below from Talking Points Memo. Nevertheless, you're all big boys and girls and should be able to make up your own mind about what transpired.