What we’ve missed this week

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Finally tonight, let's be honest here, this past week has been demoralizing for a lot of Americans. We lost 30 of our finest in Afghanistan , the week's death toll is now 42 in our nation's longest war. We lost our nation's top credit rating , just as we were still processing the fact that Congress can't agree on anything or get their work done on time. Those were the stories we spent most of our time covering this past week. But there were others. So in our last two minutes of the week here, let's get caught up.

Offscreen Voice: Two, one, and we have ignition.

WILLIAMS: This was the thing that was going to make us feel good about ourselves after a rough week. The US has been anxious to launch a space plane , a hypersonic flying wing that could go from New York to LA in 12 minutes at 13,000 miles an hour, unless it crashes, which is what it did this week nine minutes after takeoff. Thankfully no one was on board. Just don't call your travel agent quite yet till they work the bugs out. That thing in the skies over New York this week was a banner that read "Thanks for the downgrade, you should all be fired." A Missouri woman paid for it to be flown over Standard Poor 's headquarters after they took away our top credit rating . In retired space news, a rare sight this week as two former space shuttles , Discovery and Endeavour , came nose to nose while being moved at NASA . The two have decided to remain just good friends.

WILLIAMS: Speaking of which, Bert and Ernie are not gay. There's an online campaign to get them to marry, and in an effort to ixnay that kind of talk around the kids, the folks at Sesame Workshop actually put out a statement this week saying they're just friends, and reminding us they're puppets, after all, and, quote, "do not have a sexual orientation." As opposed to Vladimir Putin , the Matthew McConaughey of Russian presidents, who loves taking his shirt off and never misses a masculinity opportunity, has been at it again, bending a frying pan and scuba diving, not that there's anything wrong with that. Or with this for that matter. The technical name for that sweet sound is boom chucka boom chucka, and the reason you know that's a Johnny Cash song was Marshall Grant , the bass player behind the man in black all those years. He died this week at 83. And you know how every summer there's a song that we always associate with that summer? It's safe to say this year's song is "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People. It's a surfy California style delivery system for a gritty underlying message. And then there's the French. While fighting off bank failure this week, they have somehow found a way to dispense baguettes in vending machines for those times when you've just got to have a crusty loaf of bread. Just like the times when you've got to watch Web videos of Mishka the talking Husky . Say "I love you," Mishka .

WILLIAMS: What a good dog. And because of that, we're working on a profile of Mishka for this broadcast.