IT'S ELECTION DAY, PORTLAND! Vote, if you haven't, damn your eyes.

Emergency workers are searching this morning through the rubble that was once an Oklahoma City suburb, after a powerful tornado struck the area Monday afternoon. The damage is vast, and the toll is unclear, but dozens are dead and many more injured.

And, yikes. More rough weather looks likely.

A new Xbox is being revealed today, which at my current rate of adopting video game consoles means I can look forward to owning one in nine years or so. Exciting!

Still almost 12 hours left to VOTE! Why not?

I know very little about golf, but I do know that—to the extent the playing of the sport itself can be said to look normal—those very-long putters some players use are ridiculous. And now they're outlawed.

Former Internal Revenue Service heads are appearing before a Senate committee this morning. It's continued fallout over recent revelations the agency improperly targeted conservative groups.

And look who else is in a Senate committee hot seat!. Apple CEO Tim Cook is testifying today, following revelations the enormous company employed elaborate schemes to shield international earnings from the US' greedy and nebbish tax collectors. One thing: According to the Washington Post "using foreign operations to avoid U.S. taxes is legal and common among multinationals."

The sun, long a provider and sustainer of life for those of us here on Earth, is considering taking out our electric grids.

Instead of grumbling about the tepid, gray drizzle the Weather Widget has in store this week, let's be thankful Portland never gets anything more serious than a light snow, weather-wise. Some thunder would be nice once in a while, though.

Vote.

GOOD MORNING, BLOGTOWN! You could plan a pretty picnic (you could plan a pretty picnic), but you can't predict the weather, Ms. Jackson. LET'S GO TO PRESS.

Three months after we caught 'em hacking, the Chinese hackers have resumed attacking American targets—this time employing different tactics. Sounds like someone is challenging us to a... hack war!!

The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama administration spied on Fox reporter James Rosen, collecting phone records, tracking his movement in and out of the state department, and seizing two days worth of emails. Gaaaaaaaaaahhh.

Britain is experiencing a measles epidemic, reportedly because of the millions of parents who refused to give their babies vaccines, due to fears of autism. Thanks again, Jenny McCarthy!

Tornadoes creamed Oklahoma and the midwest yesterday, and more trouble is on the way.

Yahoo buys Tumblr, but promises "not to screw it up." Why does that make me more nervous than ever?

According to news sources there, two CIA agents allegedly working for us and Israel were hanged in Iran on Sunday.

A hero cop—who sat next to Michelle Obama four years ago during a presidential speech—has now been accused of rape.

A masked assailant uses a girl as a human shield, then points his gun at the cop. What happens next is incredibly sad.

Pastor E.W. Johnson, a candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia, compared Planned Parenthood to the KKK. You know... I'm sorry, I just don't see the connection!

Here's more info on.... MOON BLAST 2013!

The honeymoon's over... Justin Bieber is BOOOOOOOED at the Billboard Music Awards.

Now here's what's going on in your neck of the woods: Mostly sunny today with a high of 74, but tomorrow? Wear your galoshes!

And finally, would you like to be "Reg Rolled" by Reggie Watts? The answer to this question, is yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

We don't have a lot of time with each other in this life, everybody. Let's keep it brief today.

Powerball. You're not going to win, but it will be thrilling for a minute (if you win, e-mail me!).

Sometimes trains collide head-on. It happened in Connecticut yesterday. It makes no sense.

North Korea's firing missiles again. But it's not a big deal.

MOON EXPLOSION.

France is cool with gay marriage. Oregon still is not.

Uh oh. Crazy ants trump fire ants every time.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has yet to address allegations he smoked crack on camera.

The Weather Widget tells is like it is. No two ways about it.

Also, you'd think astronauts would be dismissive of Bowie's "Space Oddity," detailing, as it does, astronaut death. Not the case.

Portland's voter owned elections died a convincing death at the hands of the people in 2010, when Portlanders roundly rejected the system. But there are tenuous signs of life in the old girl yet.

This sign was posted on the ground floor of the Board of Trade Building (310 SW 4th) this afternoon.

• Dirk VanderHart

The meeting was closed off to the public, but revolved around how supporters might revive publicly financed elections, an attendee said. As killed by voters, the system allowed candidates for city council and mayor to gather 1,000-1,500 $5 contributions to receive $150,000 in public funding from the city.

The process was enacted in 2005, and has a bit of a spotty past. Former council candidate Emilie Boyles ran off with the public money in 2006, for example. But City Commissioner Amanda Fritz won election to council her first time around using public funds. It's been a pet issue of hers ever since.

Fritz' office confirmed she attended today's meeting, calling it a "brainstorming session." The meeting was arranged by Common Cause Oregon.

Reviving voter owned elections, by the way, has been oft-discussed since its demise. Whether this nascent push has legs remains to be seen.

No that anyone's paying attention to the growing body of cogent arguments for water fluoridation in Portland, but here's another.

Slate writer Jake Blumgart's piece takes a long look at the fight over fluoride here in town. If you've spent the last several months debating this issue (or vandalizing your neighbors' yards for their stand on the issue), not much will come as a surprise. If you've been meaning to learn about the fluoride debate but haven't gotten around to it, first read our story. Then read Slate's.

Oh, and if you haven't voted, VOTE! Ballots are due next Tuesday.

From the piece:

America is a fluoride nation. Beginning in 1945, when Grand Rapids, Mich., became the first city in the world to add the stuff to its water supply, the practice has spread across the United States. In most areas it is simply understood that ingesting minuscule levels of fluoride is good for dental health. As of 2010, almost three-quarters of Americans drink fluoridated water from community water systems, and the nation’s 30 most populous cities consume it.

With one weird exception: Portland, Ore., whose water system, sourced from the Bull Run River, serves 900,000 people.

There is an apparently amazing video for sale—says Gawker, which has seen the video and broke the news—showing the conservative mayor of Toronto smoking crack-cocaine within the past six months. While in office. And his dealers, says Gawker, service a wide swath of the cognoscenti in Canada's New York. Ford's lawyer addressed the claim rather curiously in the Toronto Sun: “I think unless one has expertise in crack cocaine smoking, it is very difficult to gauge what a person is actually doing in an alleged video.”

You remember Kai, the "hatchet-wielding hitchhiker," right? He's been charged with murdering an elderly lawyer who met Kai in Times Square took him back to his home in New Jersey. The rest of the story gets really weird, though. Maybe they had sex or maybe Kai was drugged and raped and then decided to kill the attorney?

Republicans lathered up about a supposed Benghazi coverup are now accused of doctoring the White House emails they leaked out to make their case.

Russia is beefing up the fleet it has stationed at a base on Syria's Mediterranean coast, maybe a sign to NATO types to think twice before staging an intervention in a country that's coming apart at the seams, with warring factions carving it up into autonomous fiefdoms after months upon months of civil war.

A million bucks in jewels meant for the red carpet at Cannes vanished suspiciously during the screening of a Sofia Coppola movie all about teenagers stealing jewelry. "Ironic twist?" Or how about "guerrilla marketing?"

The Pakistani doctor who helped with the vaccine scam used to suss out Osama Bin Laden's compound, landing in jail for his troubles, had previously been denied asylum in the United States.

The IRS' deposed acting boss answers Congress over claims Tea Party groups were targeted for extra investigation. "We provided horrible service here. I will admit that. Whether it was politically motivated is a very different question."

Years before Arizona targeted people with darker skin by demanding they carry their immigration papers all the time, the state went after the businesses that hire undocumented immigrants. How's that 2007 law working? Hundreds of workers have been prosecuted. But only three of the state's 147,000 businesses have had a day in court.

Justin Bieber has until midnight German time—which is only hours away—to pick up the pet monkey he toured with and then left behind (and pay thousands of dollars in boarding fees) before the government transfers the sad animal to a zoo or somewhere else.

Here's a good reminder that the Pearl District, with its buildings reserved for low-income Portlanders, is not solely a playground for the wealthy.

PREVIOUSLY ON BLOGTOWN, ICYMI: Another poll on fluoridation shows a widening lead for opponents. And, in big political news, Mayor Charlie Hales and Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen struck a budget deal last night that picks up funding for about a $1 million bucks in safety net programs the city wanted to stop funding.

AFTER THE ELECTION, WE SHALL PUT ASIDE OUR FEELINGS AND WE SHALL DANCE! ALL OF US!

“It was pretty much a proctology exam through your earlobe." Conservative groups talk about being targeted by the pain-in-the-ass IRS and detail the flaming hoops that inspectors and investigators forced them to leap through—in violation of the law.

Confronting a bizarro reality where Tea Party acolytes look legitimately aggrieved and sympathetic, President Obama has fired the acting head of the IRS. Never mind that the deposed director, who blamed rogue employees in Cincinnati, wasn't in charge when the targeting took place. He replaced a longtime Bush appointee in November.

While we wring our hands over the IRS and the AP and Benghazi, congressional Republicans are doing what they do best: Plotting to hold the national economy hostage with brinksmanship over trophies like a trans-American oil pipeline and an erosion of abortion rights.

A bleeding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon bombing suspect, reportedly scrawled a confession on the walls of the drydocked boat where cops eventually found him. The note, according to reports, called victims of the blast "collateral damage" for Muslim victims of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The savagery in Syria's civil war has hardly been dim, but videos emerging in recent days—celebrated executions and purported cannibalism—show sectarian violence and cruelty flaring with a previously unseen intensity.

May remains the deadliest month this year for NATO forces in Afghanistan. A suicide car bomber in Kabul plowed into a convoy, killing 15 people. Two were American.

Wow! More blood on our clothing and shoes—this time after the collapse of a sweatshop in Cambodia where, so far, six people working in lousy conditions so we can put smaller purchases on our credit cards are dead.

Iran's ruling cleric has decreed what everyone already knew, just in case anyone thought they might not be serious about that whole brutality and intolerance thing: Only men can serve as president.

Twenty counts of attempted murder have been filed against a 19-year-old New Orleans man arrested in connection with a shooting during a Mother's Day parade that left 19 people injured.

The mayor of Detroit decides to shout "NEXT!"

Climate change deniers, among scientists, are distinctly in the minority. How do we know this? Because 97 percent of all academic papers written on the subject over the past 20 years definitively agree that humans are to blame.

Sports news! The NBA continues to torment Seattle (birthplace of the Oklahoma City Thunder!) by denying the Sacramento Kings' relocation bid.

More sports news! The English husband of Posh Spice doesn't want to play soccer anymore.

Thieves are thieving the fee money Oregonians place inside unmonitored tubes at federal parks up and down the coast.

You can be kicked off TriMet, a judge says, if you argue with or criticize an employee and that employee decides to say you were making "excessive noise."

PREVIOUSLY ON BLOGTOWN, ICYMI: An adorable Carson Ellis mural in St. Johns. A brewing fight over a no-parking apartment in Kerns. And one more debacle for Portland's arts tax.

REMEMBER TO FILL OUT YOUR BALLOTS BEFORE NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT. READ UP AND REMEMBER, WE ENDORSED WATER FLUORIDATION ALONGSIDE EVERY OTHER NEWS OUTLET IN TOWN.

GOOD MORNING, BLOGTOWN! I'm the trouble starter, fuckin' instigator. I'm the fear addicted, danger illustrated. I'm a firestarter, terrific firestarter. LET'S GO TO PRESS.

It's been a grisly, horrific month in Syria in which government forces have murdered entire families and forced survivors to proclaim President Bashar al-Assad as "God."

For the second time in a month, a U.S. military member working in a sexual assault prevention program is accused of... you guessed it! SEXUALLY ASSAULTING SOMEONE.

The Justice Department is opening up an investigation of the IRS for their role in holding up tax exempt status for certain conservative groups, which of course is wrong—even if it was the Tea Party. (Man, that's tough to say. BUT STILL WRONG!)

House Speaker John Boehner is demanding that the guilty IRS members accused of malfeasance be sent to prison. Oh, and he may cry about it, too.

Religious bamboozler Billy Graham's son screams, "The IRS targeted me, too! (Though I have no real proof of what I'm screaming about!)"

Republicans are voting for THE 37TH TIME to repeal the health care law. Unfortunately wasting everyone's time instead of doing their job to get the economy back in shape isn't a crime.

The adoptive parents of an eight-year-old who was born with both male and female organs are suing the state of South Carolina for operating on and assigning the child a gender—and whoopsy! They guessed wrong.

Ariel Castro—the man accused of kidnapping and raping those three Cleveland women—is pleading not guilty. Good luck with that!

Detroit Mayor David Bing—after valiantly fighting to stop corruption, blight, and crime in his town—says "Fuck it. I quit."

Locally, the "TriMet Barber"—who used to go around snipping the hair of female passengers—should now be called the "TriMet Ejaculator" for reasons that might be obvious. PROTIP: Ladies on the bus? Wear a hat.

Now here's what's going on in your neck of the woods: Cloudy with on-and-off sprinkles and temps in the '60s through Saturday.

And finally, here's your daily reminder to read our must-read feature about FLUORIDE, vote "yes" for FLUORIDE, and know in your heart you've made "An Excellent Choice, Old Chap!"

President Obama's sort of mucking things up, lately, everybody. A rundown:

-Obama's Justice Department, it turns out, surveilled the phone records of more than 100 Associated Press reporters last year, an attempt to identify a leak.

-We're pretty conservative here at GMN, and it boils the blood to learn guys like us have been disproportionately scrutinized by the IRS. States' rights!

-To say nothing of this Benghazi business. Small government!

-And look! An accused American spy stationed in the US Embassy in Moscow has been detained by Russian authorities. Russia says Ryan C. Fogle was carrying a letter aimed at recruiting a Russian agent.

The international media is in what feels like a frenzied, frothy mourning for Angelina Jolie's biological breasts, which she recently rid herself of to avoid possible breast cancer. To be fair, many outlets are also highly supportive of Jolie's transparency. She revealed the procedure today in a New York Times Op-Ed.

New Orleans police are searching for the man they believe opened fire on a Mother's Day parade, wounding 19.

The sun was angry that day, my friends.

The destruction of one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids at the hands of soulless capitalism would be SUCH a good Captain Planet episode, right? I always liked Manny. HEART!

In case you missed it, authorities lost their shit yesterday, when a ballot "filled with suspicious white powder" was found at the Multnomah County Election Office. We've all lost our minds over this fluoride thing. Is it May 22 yet?

You all know I'm the Weather Widget's staunchest supporter and would never gainsay her, but I admit I am frustrated. She gave me so much hope this month, and is snatching it away one drizzly day at a time. I realize this is not rational, but that doesn't make it any less real. HEART!

And SERIOUSLY, guys. Make the right choice on fluoride.

Two years after the city enacted policy restricting its employees from wearing perfumes, colognes and other scented products to work, it's facing a lawsuit alleging it has refused to enforce the rule.

On Friday, Bureau of Transportation employee Julee Reynolds filed suit [PDF] in US District Court under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reynolds alleges she's complained for years about the lotions and perfumes borne by her coworkers, but that superiors have refused to remedy the situation.

The city received notice of the suit today, and would not comment on pending litigation, according to PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera.

Reynolds, a utility locator in PBOT's Maintenance Bureau, says she suffers from a condition known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and that exposure to scented products has sent her to the hospital in recent years.

"The condition causes her to experience symptoms ranging from respiratory distress, dizziness, headaches and nausea to anaphylaxis," the suit says. "This condition has been recognized by Ms. Reynolds' physician as potentially 'life threatening' and, on at least one occasion, has resulted in Ms. Reynolds' hospitalization after a work-place exposure."

The suit seeks damages "estimated at $50,000."

Reynolds' alleged difficulties in the bureau began in 2010, when a coworker's lotion gave her system offense. She says she complained to a supervisor, and provided a doctor's note, but the situation continued. Most seriously, Reynolds allegedly landed in intensive care when a June 2011 "exposure" gave her a serious allergic reaction.

The suit details a litany of efforts Reynolds made to correct the problem— from meeting safety and human resources officials to securing a letter of support from Disabilities Rights Oregon.

"In response on April 4,2012 city representatives met with Ms. Reynolds and told her that she was suffering from nothing more than allergic symptoms and that, in the City's view, she did not have a disability," the suit says. Still, a supervisor offered to move Reynolds' desk to another area, the suit says. It didn't help.

"Ms. Reynolds has continued to report the chemical exposures, but all of her reports have fallen on deaf ears."

But city leaders have been willing to listen to similar claims in the past. In 2011, city council unanimously supported a policy change prohibiting scented products like perfumes in the workplace.

According to the policy revision: "Employees who have asthma and those who experience sensitivity to perfumes, colognes and other chemicals may suffer potentially serious health consequences due to exposure to airborne irritants."

While he almost certainly doesn't want to pay out $50,000 in city funds, Reynolds' claims may strike a chord with City Commissioner Nick Fish. During the 2011 fragrance hearing, he described how certain types of perfumes and make-up cause him to break out.

By the way: The condition Reynolds claims, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, is highly controversial. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "chemical sensitivity is generally accepted as a reaction to chemicals but debate continues as to whether MCS is classifiable as an illness."

A call to Reynolds' attorney was not returned this afternoon.