We won't lose our cookies over Girl Scout do-goodies

We begin with a special message to Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, both age 12, from Ann Arbor, Mich.

Hello, girls. We heard how you're refusing to sell Girl Scout thin mint cookies because they contain palm oil, the production of which might destroy habitat for orangutans in Indonesia.That's sweet. But listen, you little do-gooders: These are decisions best left to adults. It's not our fault your big sisters got us hooked on these things a long time ago.

Know this: We're going to get our thin mints one way or another. You can sell them to us and let the orangutans take their chances. Or, we can procure them from shady Chinese cookie merchants who harvest their palm oil in the habitat of those cute little cuddly panda bears.

And how would you feel about that? Hmm?

That's what we thought. We'll take four, please.

More hardball:

Sorry About Last Week's Absence: We had to take a long, cold shower after reading all that official business communication between Clay Bennett and David Stern.

Speaking of (Feats of) Clay: In his latest court filing, he accuses our tree-hugger mayor, Greg Nickels of a "Machiavellian" plot to bleed Bennett dry and keep the Sonics in town. One: So? And two: Anyone who can look at Hizzoner — by any measure, an affable, good-hearted peacenik — and come up with an adjective like "Machiavellian" needs some serious time in rehab.

Never Saw This Coming: NBA owners have voted 28-2 to move the Sonics to Oklahoma City. It's part of an innovative new league foster-care program that places really bad teams in really undesirable homes.

Deep Down, He's a Complicated Guy: Bennett said the approval to move the team leaves him with "mixed emotions." Yeah: Contempt mixed with glee.

Attention, U.S. Olympic Committee: With news about pending exposure of even more American doping cheats from past Olympics, you might want to wait a bit before sending back those medals won by relay teammates of Marion Jones. You can probably get a bulk shipping rate.

The Week's Employment Quiz: What do you get when you spend a year at your job being a complete, abject, miserable failure? If your name is Jeff Weaver and your business is throwing a baseball, you get a $1.25 million contract with incentives worth up to $2.75 million if you stick with the big-league club for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Straight to the Meat: In a crucial prime-time debate, ABC News anchors Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos grilled presidential candidate Barack Obama, D-Teeth, endlessly on pressing national issues, such as people with whom Obama and / or his pastor might have associated 40 years ago. They then went back to pondering the mystifying lack of relevance of U.S. mainstream media.

Speaking of Big Scoops: Political reporters at the once-notable Los Angeles Times, posting on the newspaper's politics blog, blazed a new trail Thursday by unearthing a YouTube video of Obama, talking about Clinton at a campaign stop. As he does so, Obama scratches his face with two fingers, one of which clearly is his middle one, leading the crack journalists to conclude that he was secretly flipping her the bird. "He'll no doubt deny it later," veteran reporter Andrew Malcolm predicted. Several hundred readers responded by posting responses in various forms of: "Are you people insane?"

And Finally: Northwest and Delta Air Lines have proposed a merger, creating America's new biggest, dumbest, slowest, costliest and most indifferent airline. Don't expect United and Continental to take this lying down.

A section and Thursday's Northwest Weekend section. His new blog, Olympics Insider, begins Sunday at www.seattletimes.com/olympics. Email: rjudd@seattletimes.com