Rules of the contest:
1. I don't care if joke is original, but if multiple people post the same one it'll be first-come, first-served.
2. One joke per entry comment. Don't forget to mention the charity you want in the comment.
3. Five minutes between entry-comments for each person, but feel free to reply to anyone's comments as you please.
4. Charity cannot be you personally or any other individual, nor can it be an organization whose activities are legally controversial. Must be a non-profit.
5. Only jokes posted in a comment directly to this diary will be considered entries, while jokes posted in reply to other comments will be assumed to just be conversational.
6. All forms of humor are acceptable, but of course I can't control how anyone else will react, so exercise good judgment. Images are acceptable, images + captions, anecdotes, snark, traditional-form jokes, etc.
7. Decision on best joke is entirely up to me, so doesn't matter how many Recs a given joke gets.
8. I will also select a runner-up joke to get $10 for their charity.
9. Caveat to flexibility on originality: No ripping off other Kossacks. You can post a joke of theirs with credit to them and then get them to post a reply endorsing it.
10. Competition will continue as long as this is on the Recent Diary list, after which I'll announce the $20 winner and $10 runner-up.
If anyone else wants to reward someone's joke by giving a little bit to the charity they're supporting, please do so and tell them in a reply to their entry comment. If a few people decide to do that, this could be kind of a fundraiser that we do from time to time in various formats.
3:54 PM PT: OK, we're not quite yet to the bottom of the Recent Diary list, but it seems like the contributions have petered out, so I'll start making my determinations and announce whose charity gets the money.
4:03 PM PT: There are a lot of very funny ones here, but two stand out. First, the runner up that will get $10 for Veterans Green Bus is jwinIL14 for this incisive one-liner:
Why can't anyone cross the road?
Republicans won't vote to fix it.
And the winner of the $20 contribution is
zenbassoon for this zinger:
How many Republicans does it take to
change a lightbulb?
None. They'd rather sit in the dark and blame Obama.
Zen hasn't indicated a charity yet, so I'll inquire and update with the response.