Red Alert ~ Dumbledore is Gay!

Your Demon's vote for most scintillating tidbit of the day: former welfare queen & Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling outs the headmaster of the Academy by revealing that Dumbledore is gay!

One can only hope that the news will help throw the American presidential elections toward the anti-gay right, fueled as they are bound to be by enraged parents demanding federal Constitutional amendments banning the reading of fictional works featuring gay characters (AND witchcraft) by their naiive little tots, poisoning said tots' minds irretrievably.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/10/20/harry.potter.ap/index.html

This is very important news, & I hope y'all are sufficiently distracted by it.

In other news, as we in the U.S. face another winter of stagnant wages, the greatest gap between rich & poor since the roaring '20's, kids without healthcare, & astronomical heating bills, the WaPo reports that we have a new definition of "energy hog" (besides your SUV) to worry about:

"One year ago, a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund named Amaranth held huge sway over the price the country paid for natural gas. Trading on unregulated commodity exchanges, he made risky bets that led to the fund's collapse -- and, according to a congressional investigation, higher gas bills for homeowners.

"But as another winter approaches, lawmakers and federal regulators have yet to set up a system to prevent another big fund from cornering a vital commodity market. Called by some insiders the Wild West of Wall Street, commodity trading is a world where many goods that are key to national security or public consumption, such as oil, pork bellies or uranium, are traded with almost no oversight. "

Read on regarding this underrated plague, visited upon us by the American genius for "free markets:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/20/AR2007102001203.html

And, in a related nod to the GOP's belated concern for balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, thereby driving them deeper into destitution, consider this, in today's news, as well:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program. "

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071019/pl_nm/poor_usa_winter_dc;_

Now, good Christians, get back to worrying about fictional characters' sexual deviances, and the untoward effect even the availabilty of such smut on the shelves of your local bookstore is bound to have on your childrens' minds.

Are you your brother's keeper, after all? No? I didn't think so.