READ IT AND WEEP

Here's a piece of the most lunatic letter to the editor this week, from my local newspaper "The Tulsa World."

"The electoral college needs to be abandoned before the 2012 election. If not, the 'governmental dependent' will elect him again. We cannot stand another four years of Obama's liberal ideas. In the 2008 election, the number of states won by McCain - 29; by Obama - 19; square miles of land won by McCain - 2,427,000, by Obama - 580,000; and population of counties won by McCain - 143 million, by Obama - 127. The land area won by McCain was owned by taxpaying U.S. citizens, Obama carried the inner-city welfare areas."

Since Barack Obama won the popular vote, it's hard to see how abolishing the electoral college would have changed things. Perhaps if the vote were limited to white male landowners, as our founding fathers intended...?

On Monday, murder suspect and Snohomish County, Washington, jail inmate Joshua Monson stabbed his lawyer in the neck with a pencil.


On Friday he was assigned a new lawyer who he then stabbed with a pencil.


Monson remains in jail awaiting a new lawyer.

There will be no Samuel Clem\ens Cove on Lake Tahoe.

Clemens, aka Mark Twain, camped on the shores of the lake and wrote about it in his book "Roughing It."

But the U.S. Board on Geographic Names turned down a proposal to name a cove after him, noting that Clemens also accidently started a forest fire there 150 years ago.

Some things you just don't forget.

QUOTABLE

"The Republicans were so pleased by the Osama bin Laden raid that today they granted President Obama full citizenship."

-- David Letterman

SUICIDE IS PAINLESS, IT BRINGS SO MANY CHANGES

Doctor assisted suicide is legal in the states of Montana, Oregon and Washington. But if your health insurance doesn't cover the procedure, there are do-it-yourself kits.

The Gladd Group of La Mesa, California sells a popular one by mail. For $60 you get:

• a plastic bag for your head to go in. 
• and a plastic tube to attach the bag to a tank of helium.
• The tank is extra. Get it from a party supply store, hook it up, and your party's over.

Gladd sells up to 60 of these kits a month to people all over the world, 30 this year to Oregon alone. 

Of course, they don't get a lot of repeat customers.

When a serial killer is caught, reporters always interview his clueless neighbors who say things like "I had no idea. He seemed so normal. He was quiet ad kept to himself but he was a nice guy, and he liked cats."

And so it was with Osama bin Laden. His neighbors in the quiet suburban neighborhood in Abbottabad, Pakistan didn't know bin Laden lived in the biggest compound on the street, but they'd met the men who lived there and said they were model neighbors who were polite and never caused trouble.

When the neighborhood children lost a ball over the compound wall, the men didn't return it. But they paid 50 rupees for a new ball. And when the kids threw balls into the compound to make more money, the men paid them, 50 rupees a ball.

And I bet they liked cats.


(New York Times)

HELL HATH NO FURY

Here in Tulsa, an 18 year old high school girl kicked in the front door of her ex-boyfriend's apartment, stabbed him several times, threw a pan of hot grease on him and shot at him.

This is one girl you don't want to break up with.

BREAKING NEWS

Osama bin dead for a day now.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"No one is happier -- no one is prouder -- to put this birth certificate matter to rest than 'The Donald' and that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like 'Did we fake the moon landing?'”

-- President Barack at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.