Dear Dirty America

A government official tells ABC News that the federal government is expecting and preparing for bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the rating of US debt from its current AAA value.

Officials reasons given will be the political confusion surrounding the process of raising the debt ceiling, and lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reduction. A source says Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal will be part of the reason cited.

The official was unsure if the bond rating would be AA+ or AA.

In other news, there has been a flurry of solar activity that has been thought to be the culprit behind many of the power outages affecting many areas around the nation. While we worry about the stock market, and about our credit rating, just know that one huge solar flare could obliterate all of our satellites orbiting in space.

Our communication would be down, our systems would crash, and there would massive chaos. And how long would it take to build and launch new satellites and get everything running again? Who knows. But it happened in 1859. Luckily for them, they didn’t rely on the Internet to run their food supplies and financial markets.