Tuesday's Headlines

• Opinion Research Corporation Poll:  “86% of Americans believe the federal government is broken.”  Headline:  The 14% who say it’s not!  Respondents in minority were believed to have been surveyed in meth labs, mental treatment facilities and Harvard faculty break rooms. 

• Obama new healthcare reform strategy:  Take despised old healthcare reform proposal…fashion new healthcare reform proposal that preserves despised elements of old healthcare reform proposal, and make them more despicable.  Price tag?  $1-trillion.  Latest Obama poll results:  “Strongly approve” –  22%.  A new all time low.  Obama end-of-term countdown clock at 1,062 days.

• Talladega Nights?  Christians in India horrified by depiction of Jesus discovered in primary school textbooks: Image, in handwriting primer for children, shows Savior holding a beer and a cigarette. Police hunting for publisher on charge of  “offending religious sentiment.”  Wine, maybe. But can of beer?  Excuse me.

• Hollywood:  Golden-Globe nominee and L’Oreal spokesperson Andie MacDowell has reportedly been approached by Outdoor Advertising Inc. for rental space on actress’s 50-foot forehead.  Would take over for fellow actress Nicole Kidman whose hairline has now receded beyond point of practical advertising application.

• When food police attack!  Increasingly litigious, meddlesome, overbearing arbiters-of-everything set sights on hotdogs:  American Academy of Pediatrics brands wieners “choking hazard.”  That’s right, wieners. New policy report says “high-risk foods” including hotdogs, grapes and apples for godssake, must be cut into “pea-sized pieces” before you feed your rugrats.  I gotta weiner for you.  Good lord.

• Earth doomed as scientists restart Large Hadron Collider:  Human species’ home planet given six days to exist, give or take, as researchers fire up pointless $5.8 billion dollar atom smasher near Geneva.  Officials insist problem-plagued machine cannot create Earth-vaporizing black hole, as some physicists have speculated…which basically means bend over, stick your fingers in your ears and forget being underwater on your mortgage.

• Global Warming Update:   About that sea level inundating Manhattan, Miami and Malibu thing?  In addition to the glacier thing and the zero-food for Africa thing…now scientists have been forced to retract the “rising sea levels due to warming” notion.  More arithmetic mistakes found that “undermine results.”  Can’t anybody run a damn calculator anymore?  Spokesman sniffs, “Retraction is a regular part of the publication process.”  Oh.

• “Gun Student Shot During Gun Class.”   Pupil attending Florida N.R.A. “concealed firearms” certification class took a bullet in the foot when the instructor’s gun went off.   Bumper sticker possibility:  “Guns Don’t Wound People, Firearms Instructors Wound People.”   I said, Dance, ya sidewinder!