The newspaper should come with an anti-depressant. Here are the stories we New Yorkers were greeted with this morning:

81% of people polled say the nation is on the wrong track. (The other 19% could not be reached because their phone service was cut off for non-payment.)

Investors stalk the wounded of Wall Street.

The New York City Council has been appropriating money to fictitious groups.

Inspectors told a Congressional hearing that agency supervisors did not enforce rules on airplane inspections (yet another wrinkle on top of the difficulty of trying to use miles and being well-fed while flying).

150 students (more than a quarter of the school) at Cheektowaga (imagine being a cheerleader and having that mouthful) Central Middle School were barred from after-hour activities because of poor grades or bad attitudes.

Oh, yes, Baghdad: Over 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen refused to fight or abandoned their posts during an assault against Shiite militias in Basra, raising doubts on the effectiveness of the security forces who'd been "trained" by Americans.

A photo shows the discouraged faces (almost entirely male) fielding questions about Bear Stearns.

Abu Yahya al-Lib, who escaped from an American prison in Afghanistan has risen to the top of the class among the Al Qaeda leadership and is thought to be the next Osama bin Laden.

And that's just the front page of The New York Times. Continuing on, we read that a study shows one of every 43 American infants is abused, 33% of eighth graders scored at or above proficiency level, immigration agents have been accused of improperly entering New Jersey homes and making arrests to round up immigrant fugitives, weekend subway service is abysmal, but that's not a problem if you're wanting to get to the Barnes & Noble in Chelsea because it had to close down.

Oh, and it's the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's death.