With gambling and booze in the tank, our economic collapse seems to be undermining long-held assumptions about safe investment bets. But one business appears to be thriving amid the gloom:

Designer sex toys.

These aren’t your mother’s dildoes. Popularized by Sex and the City’s Rampant Rabbit, we’re talking about three-figure equipment for your two-finger needs.

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Clintons bid farewell to Socks the cat, age 20 [MSNBC]

We enjoy WorldNetDaily because they provide a concise digest of Wingnut talking points — one-stop shopping for the idiocy du jour. Led by Joseph Farah, whose rug runner doesn’t match his drapes, WND saves us the trouble of paying attention to Rush, Malkin, Fox, NRO, and the guy on the corner who shouts at us as we’re driving to the coffeehouse.

Typical example: “gay” is always rendered in scarequotes. Gotta love ’em.

WND is still running polls and updates on Barry’s birth certificate. And, flogging an issue that dumbfounded us a couple weeks back, they’re still on the warpath against a federal policy that was dropped a generation ago: the Fairness Doctrine.

As you’ll recall, that was the broadcast equal-time rule: If you give an hour to Michael Savage, you’re obligated to resurrect Vladimir Lenin for an opposing viewpoint.

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World hero Muntathar al Zaidi faces trial in Baghdad this morning on charges of throwing truth to power, or as Iraqi prosecutors call it, “assaulting a foreign head of state”.

Zaidi has been kept in custody since December 14, when he greeted George W. Bush as a liberator. His lawyer reports that Zaidi has been beaten, presumably by American journalists enraged that he went off script. Conviction could bring a fifteen-year sentence.

Whatever Zaidi’s fate, all that remains of his world-historical shoes is videotape. Police destroyed the Freedom Footwear after testing for chemicals and explosives.

After praise, poetry, Iraqi shoe thrower faces trial [McClatchy]

Lawmakers across the country are tyring to ban a drug we’ve never heard of because of dangers we can’t document.

It’s an herb called Salvia, it’s readily available online, and apparently it makes you freakishly happy. For five minutes. And then it’s over.

If anything, it should be banned for the letdown.

Of course, anything that makes you feel good without the imprimatur of the pharmaceutical, alcohol or nicotine industries is manifestly a threat to society, which is why politicians, with the support of your local Eyewitless News, are falling over themselves to outlaw it.

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We’ve been amused for years by the tax-avoidance schemes of the wealthy, which largely consist of creative ways to tax the poor. A straightforward graduated income tax would work wonders, but of course that would have the same effect as consolidating credit-card debt: scaring the shit out of you.

So instead we scatter taxes all over the place, pretending it doesn’t all come from the same wallets anyway, especially the thinnest.

And with state budgets bleeding red in the billions, state lawmakers are discovering a new untapped revenue stream, just around the curve from those wallets.

Ladies and gentlemen — well, gentlemen, mostly — welcome to the Porn Tax.

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As we know, George W. Bush prefers to await the Verdict of History on his presidency, instead of fleeting matters like popularity polls or just about every objective statistic you can cite.

And if the first round of voting is any indication, there’s room for hope: Shrub is only the seventh worst president in two centuries, following James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and four other trivia questions.

Give the dude credit: We were sure he’d place in the bottom five.

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