Picture of the Day: Congress Gets a Fail Whale

On a day when a partisan stalemate over the debt limit has overloaded the Captiol switchboards, preventing constituents from reaching the offices of their elected officials, this bipartisan fail-whale cartoon is appropriately making the rounds.

Inspired by the debt ceiling standoff, Flickr user David Colarusso drew the adaptation of Twitter's Fail Whale, which pops up when Twitter's servers are overloaded and its services down. Colarusso uploaded it nearly two weeks ago, on Jul. 12, when debt-limit talks looked depressingly mired, but perhaps not as depressingly mired as they do today. Colarusso included this note:

I wanted a visual expression of my frustration with partisan gridlock in Washington, and this is what I came up with. It was sparked by the talks surrounding the debt ceiling, but I'm afraid it could work for just about anything these days.

The bald eagles carrying the donkey and elephant, which appear to be sleeping, look like they really want a deal.

Image credit: colarusso/Flickr