On second thought...

Live in Salt Lake City and want to rent out that extra room in the basement? It will now cost you $110 to obtain a license each year year, plus $342 if you don't attend a "voluntary" program. It's the city's strategy for promoting affordable housing.

City officials say the new requirements will reduce the number of substandard apartments. True, but it also will reduce the number of substandard rents.

BYU researchers said last week they found that kids who watch raunchy TV shows tend to swear a lot. On the other hand, kids who watch Leave it to Beaver reruns tend to say "Gee whiz" and "swell" a lot.

Occupy Wall Street protesters came close to deciding on a reason for their outrage last week, but then they got distracted by how fun it was to get arrested.

Amid all the political division in this country came word this week that the Obama administration had deported a record number of illegal immigrants for the third year in a row. I hate it when facts get in the way of how we see the world.

There were 396,906 deportations between October 2010 and September 2011. Apparently, the president decided to get tough when he learned he couldn't register them all as Democrats.

Meanwhile, someone stole President Obama's lectern, teleprompter and presidential seals out of his bus this week during a whistle stop in Virginia. Police are watching eBay for a special lot of barely used presidential memorabilia.

What would you do with stuff like that? A presidential seal might make a fun white elephant gift, but there is always some busybody in the group who, lacking a sense of humor, will call the Secret Service.

And would you really want to be that guy in the federal penitentiary whose only crime was to steal the president's seal?

"I'm everybody's president," Barack Obama told the crowd in Virginia. Apparently, they were confused because he didn't have his teleprompter or seal.

Meanwhile, if you're the president, how much confidence do you have in a Secret Service that can't even watch the bus?

In a debate this week, Herm Cain told Americans to do their own math to see how well his 9-9-9 plan would work. Now there's a winning campaign strategy — tell Americans to do math.

Jay Evensen is associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @Jayevensen.