What a Week, 2/13

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Despite a new AP/Ipsos poll showing that most Americans believe getting out of Iraq would be the best way to stimulate the economy (with 48% adding, "Duh!"), the Senate OKed the $168 billion "Buy-Shit-At-Target" anti-recession plan instead. Meanwhile, our ever-innovative corporate predators began unveiling their plans to keep you coming back to your favorite toxins: Yum announced 99-cent menus and Kroger announced $4 prescriptions, meaning recession-beleaguered Americans can cop the disease and its remedy for under $10.

But things won't be so sweet for Kentucky's shut-ins, elderly, and/or mentally ill. Governor Monty Beshear's budget calls for cuts in human services, including Meals on Wheels and other services for the disabled – services that tend to keep shut-ins from needing far costlier nursing-home care. In a sad reminder that not all crazy people work in Frankfort, Central State Hospital laid off 16 psychologists and social workers.

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Speaking of lunacy, the Brady Campaign ranked Kentucky in a last-place tie with Oklahoma for the nation's most lax gun laws (www.stategunlaws.org). Requiring businesses to allow guns in the workplace and allowing deadly force to be a first resort in public helped us edge out those second-last-place pussies in Missouri and Louisiana. Putting an exclamation point behind the Brady report were gun-wielding maniacs in St. Louis (6 dead, council meeting) and Baton Rouge (3 dead, classroom).

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Not to be outdone, scores of tornadoes pulled a Bobby Knight, choking three states, then abruptly leaving. The storms left 59 dead, including seven Kentuckians but mercifully didn't admonish anybody to "relax and enjoy it." In other ker-powie news, this year's Thunder theme, "Out of This World," was chosen over runner-up "Rednecks Blowing Shit Up."

World-classness
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