Stupid Texas: Idiots in the Lone Star State

Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes. --Tom DeLay, America's Community Bankers meeting, March 12, 2003

* After revealing absurd 911 phone calls and America's dumbest criminal antics, former Saturday Night Live writer Leland Gregory skewers political pandering and pen-pushing philosophizing.

Leland Gregory generates the best laughs by exposing the worst of human nature. Inside Idiots in Charge: Lies, Trick, Misdeeds, and Other Political Untruthiness Gregory offers more than 250 accounts of bumbling bureaucrats on both sides of political party lines:

* David Spellman became mayor of Black Hawk, Colo., on July 12, 2006, a week after pleading guilty to felony menacing and third-degree assault for pistol-whipping his wife with a handgun and firing three shots in 2005.

* County officials in Vermillion, Ind., were told by state homeland security officials in July 2006 to stop using the special emergency-only highway message boards to advertise their charity fish fries and spaghetti dinners.

* District 1 Town Councilor David Watson resigned from his position as council vice chairman on January 23, 2007, after unintentionally forwarding an e-mail to 18 members of the New Elementary School Building Committee. The e-mail contained nine embedded images of topless women under the heading This Is National Women's Breast Awareness Day. The only other text in the e-mail read, Beats . . . Martin Luther King Day, doesn't it?

It's important for people to know that I'm the president of everybody. --President George W. Bush, from Air Force One, January 14, 2005

Who Leland Gregory voted for in the 2004 presidential election is his business. But when George W. Bush won a second term, Gregory had to be doing cartwheels around his computer. The humorist, after all, makes a career of recording human behavior at, let's just say, its less-than-brilliant moments.

Bush-Whacked does a thorough job of tracking the president's language mangling as well as the inept bungling of his administration:

* And so during these holiday seasons, we thank our blessings . . . --GWB at Fort Belvoir, Va., December 21, 2004.

* Through bureaucratic mismanagement, parts for a top-secret spy plane, originally intended for destruction, were discovered being auctioned off on eBay. --New York Post

* (T)he illiteracy level of our children are appalling. --GWB, Washington, D.C., January 23, 2004

With his expert nose for nuttiness, Gregory includes numerous perplexing quotes, wacky anecdotes, and weird one-liners in this hysterical collection. This isn't the president at his finest, just Dubya at his funniest.

Arizona was the last continental state to enter the Union. Arizona Trivia isfull of fun facts about this young state. Approximately how many rounds of golfwere played in Phoenix in 2000? And what are the deepest and widest points ofthe Grand Canyon? (Answers: 11 million; 6,000 vertical feet, and 18 miles wide.)

This book is the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the Grand CanyonState.

Some wonder why and some wonder why not. But it's the latter ones who make you scratch your head and say, 'What in the world were you thinking?'

Former Saturday Night Live writer Leland Gregory skewers cruel crooks and the idiotically inane.

From absurd 911 calls to presidential philosophizing and political pandering to foolish felons, Leland Gregory generates the best laughs by exposing the worst of human nature. Inside this collection, Gregory offers more than 275 accounts of human stupidity at its most malicious and peculiar:

* In August 2006, 40-year-old Darrel Rodgers was treated at a Bloomington, Indiana, hospital for a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his left knee. Rogers explained that he shot himself seeking to relieve the pain in his knee, which probably stemmed from shooting himself in the same knee ten years earlier.

* And, because some of the stories are just that unbelievable, each anecdote, quote, or factoid is presented with relevant background information--including its verified news source.

Stupid on the Road: Idiots on Planes, Trains, Buses, and Cars, the compilation of human stupidity from New York Times best-selling author Leland Gregory, is a riotous collection of the unbelievably bizarre events and behavior that result when people strap themselves in behind the wheel.

This time, Leland--who so entertainingly highlighted humanity's stupidity in the areas of crime, business, love, politics, cruelty, and history--turns his attention to idiots on the road and in the air.

For instance, here are actual statements given by insurance policyholders describing their automobile accidents:

A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.

The guy was all over the place. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

These true stories, from the strange to the outrageous to the just-plain dumb, will have you shaking your head at the wacky misadventures that have occurred as people attempt to get from point A to point B.