This week was most remarkable in that it culminated with Obama gaining eleven points in the national Gallup polls, which speaks well for the intelligence of the nation. If it truly is due to the wisdom of the electorate, this trend will continue, with factors like last night’s widely watched Democratic debate serving as significant assets to Obama’s ascent.

Yet the news today was news of the dumb: In some ways in an amusing sense, some an annoying, and in some a truly tragic, awful sense.

The laughably moronic item floating around today comes from across the pond. Apparently some knucklehead in marketing though it would be a good idea to call a bed for pre-teen girls, “The Lolita“. Working in marketing as I do, I can assure you this story is not nearly so far-fetched as it sounds. The article on it puts it best:

A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

I would reckon that they were not. Or, more likely, simply did not listen to the people who repeatedly told them about it.

Next on the WWW agenda is a piece that falls under a “cardinal stupidty” - the kind endemic in government, that reminds us about the similarities between sausage and legislation. Legislators in Mississippi of all places, in what was more likely a joke or a jab at the earnest concerns about obesity, fashioned a bill to ban certain obese individuals from being served by restaurants. Naturally, this dog did not hunt in the land where even lard must have butter on it.

The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state’s Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity. It does not detail what penalties an eatery would face if its grub was served to someone with an excessive body mass index.

Whether that was just a dumb joke or a joke about the dumb will likely never be known outside of the Jackson Kiwanis Club. But in our next article, the joke is most definitely on us.

There may be talk of our credit bubble economy being close to popping, with energy crises slowing production world wide, but that hasn’t dampened the spirits of the good people at EXXON Mobil, who posted record profits. Now, just to be clear, I am not opposed to oil companies posting record profits - even at the expense of the tax payer, or the wealth of human misery that comes from regional instability. I am, however, opposed to them posting records profits at the expense of the tax payer [i]and[/i] from regional instability [i]and[/i] while our heavy industry and construction groans on the brink of collapse.

The eye-popping results weren’t a surprise given record prices for a barrel of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more than 50 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since then.

So as I put in $3.19 a gallon to fill my tank, I want to at least be put at ease by being able to look at the big picture - and I do not mean the swelling backsides and bank accounts of the oil companies. The only consolation I can take from that is, “at least Russia isn’t the one sucking it down.” But, of course, increasingly, they are.

The last news relating to the stupid is so ghastly that simply calling the unfortunates involved ’stupid’ is distasteful and saddening. It shows the lengths that the al-Qaeda elements in Iraq must go to and will go to in order to keep America’s veins open in the region. It’s probably the most vile news I’ve read all week, and I read the Drudge Report daily; this is saying something.

It involves the worst suicide bombing in Iraq in a long time - one that blew up, of all places, a location called “the pet market,” which did, among other wares, have pets, and which was perpetrated by mentally disabled bombers. According to Iraqi security sources, the two women - who were the instruments of sequential attacks - suffered from Down’s Syndrome.

Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

More than 70 people died and scores were wounded in the deadliest day since the US “surge” of 30,000 extra troops were sent to the capital this spring.

In the first attack, a woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black Islamic robe in the central al-Ghazl market. The weekly bazaar has been bombed several times since the war started but recently had re-emerged as a popular place to shop and stroll as Baghdad security improved. At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The second woman then struck a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in south-eastern Baghdad killing up to 27 people and wounding 70.

Utterly heartbreaking, I hope that this most extreme action can only be the last gasp of an ailing al-Qaeda insurgency in Iraq. It is almost certain we will see other acts of violence from them, and even whole other armed uprisings, but hopefully this worst day will remain just that - the worst day since the surge, and no worse.