"It's just nice to be around intelligent women with life experience."

"They are eager to please ..."

"... Think about it, if you're with an older individual, it's not bullshit."

And here, they say no one was harmed at a recent Cougar Convention?

News flash: Levi Johnston, father of Sarah Palin's first grandchild, is going to pose for Playgirl. Read the story here on Gawker.

Unfortunately—or perhaps this is good news—Johnston won't pose showing his privates. What's the point of being in Playgirl? He doesn't seem ripped enough to make other photos worth the newsstand price? This is as disappointing as the HBO series Hung, about a male escort. Female frontal nudity? Yes. Male frontal nudity? No. The guy is supposed to be hung, but

• Bacon Chocolate Cake Is Not Good For You

Articles like this little number on the Arizona Daily Star's Web site are strong evidence that Americans will not stop until every man, woman and child is morbidly obese or able to claim full blockage of at least one major artery. No big deal, though; it’s not like there’s an obesity epidemic plaguing our country or anything.

Not to belabor the issue, but I have to point out that the recipe for bacon pecan caramel ice cream balls at the end of the article tips the scales at 695 calories per serving, and 37 grams of fat. Nice.

If you’re reading this while preparing your “Obama’s Health Care Plan Is Gonna Kill My Grandma” placard for the next town hall meeting, think about making another one that says something akin to “Maybe We Wouldn’t Need to Be Worrying So Much About Healthcare If We’d Exercise and Stop Eating Bacon-Ice Cream Sundaes.” Fair is fair.

• The Winner: Shaun McClusky

In raw numbers: McClusky got 456 votes, while Gomez got 318 votes. That’s a pretty unimpressive turnout, but then again, there are only 4,398 Republicans in Ward 5, so the 780 votes including cast—including two write-ins, three people who didn’t vote for either candidate and one who voted for both—comes out to 17 percent of the electorate.

But here's an interesting fun fact: Only 132 people cast votes on Election Day. The rest—82 percent of the voters—cast early ballots. It might have been cheaper to go the voters' homes and get their ballots than to open the polls.

Why no interest in the race? I'd say it has a lot to do with rational ignorance:

Those low turnout numbers tell us that many citizens—if they're even registered to vote in the first place—do a calculation in the back of their heads: They measure the amount of time that it would take them to understand the intricacies of local politics, and then compare that to the amount of difference a single vote makes. Finally, they decide that the investment of their valuable time has almost no payoff: They have better things to do than get caught up in the details of redeveloping downtown, mastering the revenue projections from tax-increment financing districts, and creating a sliding-fee scale for pottery classes.

The political scientists have a name for this: rational ignorance.

"Voters have very little reason or incentive to learn very much about politics," says David Schleicher, a law professor at George Mason University who studies the implications of rational ignorance. "It doesn't affect your day-to-day life. The odds that your vote is going to matter in an election are very small. This is not to say that voters are incapable of learning about politics. It's just that it doesn't make a lot of sense to become very informed about politics."

McClusky will face Democrat Richard Fimbres in the November general election.

The good folks at Border Action Network have a few job openings right now, and application deadlines are around the corner: Associate director (full-time) and membership/events coordinator (part-time) applications are due by Sept. 14. They are also looking for a communications coordinator (part-time). For more info, go here.

From the job announcement:

Border Action's organizing within immigrant and border communities in Arizona and local, state and national policy advocacy has been growing by leaps and bounds, so staff are guaranteed to have challenging, interesting, and fun experiences working with a great team of staff, board and active members.

If you've always wanted to be involved in the All Souls Procession finale performance, get your Day of the Dead-loving rump to an introductory meeting on Monday, Sept. 7, 7 p.m. at the Rhythm Industry Performance Factory, 1013 S. Tyndall Ave. For more info, e-mail nadia2311-at-yahoo.com.

Today is opening day for the new Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures, a 15,560-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility located at 4455 E. Camp Lowell Drive.

The museum is dedicated to miniature houses and room boxes and is the only museum in the U.S. dedicated solely to the display of minatures, said Gentry Spronken, director of marketing and communications.

More than 160 miniatures are on display at the museum, and include replicas of the Gambel House in Pasadena, Calif., and ornate European palaces.

Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $7 general; $6 seniors; $5 for ages 4 to 17; free for ages 3 and younger.

Congrats to the Tucson Toros! In their first year in Golden Baseball League, the Toros won the top spot in the Southern Division in the second half of the season and are headed to St. George, Utah, for two divisional playoff games on Wednesday and Thursday. They will be back here at Hi Corbett Field on Friday for the third game in the best-of-series and will play on Saturday and Sunday if necessary.

Ticket info and more here.

The doomsday clock continues to tick-tock at the state Capitol as Gov. Jan Brewer weighs whether to sign the budget that Republicans have sent her way.

Brewer has until the end of the week to sign the budget, veto the budget, or let it become law without her signature.

The governor vetoed a similar budget way back in July, saying that it “devastated schools, human services and public safety.” But after a special session that took up most of July and August, GOP lawmakers couldn’t rustle up the votes to put Brewer’s proposed sales-tax hike on the ballot for voters to decide, so they passed what they could and called it quits.

Brewer has begun new talks with Republican and Democratic leaders from the House and Senate. From what we hear, though, Democrats are starting to think that Brewer isn’t very serious about including their ideas and is just using them to get a better deal from the Republicans.

In the meantime, the state’s financial condition remains lousy, according to the latest report from the Joint Legislature Budget Committee.

In July, the first month of our new fiscal year, tax collections continued to come in below expectations. The state collected an estimated $573 million in taxes, which was $33 million below the forecast for the month and $65.5 million below July 2008. That means we’re already getting off to a bad start.

For the 18th straight month, sales taxes have declined compared to the same month one year ago—and for the ninth straight month, the decline was in the double digits, at 18.4 percent. That’s largely driven by a continuing drop in construction taxes (off by 37 percent compared to July 2008) and car sales (off by 14 percent). But the bean-counters note that the cash for clunkers program might lift car sales in next month’s report.

Meanwhile, income taxes dropped 11.5 percent from July 2008 and were $29 million below the forecast for the month.

The good news: Lottery tickets sales were up by $4.1 million over July 2008. Guess people must really be feeling lucky out there.

Here's the report, for those wonks who want to study it: mfh-aug-09.pdf