Who's ghostwriting the Petraeus Report? (It's not who we thought)

This just might be the big blockbuster of summer fiction reading. At best it was gonna be based on true events, but now even that premise has been thrown out the window.

It doesn't require much reading between the lines to understand, at long last, by whom and for whom September's Iraq progress report is being written. And to absolutely no one's surprise, today's understanding is vastly different from yesterday's -- literally.

First we thought it was to be penned by General Petraeus; a mistaken but forgiveable assumption, since, after all, the report was commonly referenced as the upcoming Petraeus Report. Silly us.

No, straight from Disinformation Central, we were told the White House would do the creative writing. This development, at least, comported much more with our cynical expectations. So we settled in for a rousing September tale of slow but steady progress in Iraq, as conceived by those rugged in-the-know types: White House speechwriters.

But now we learn -- again, with a little reading between the lines -- that the White House won't actually be the author, either.

Sure, its name will be on the cover, just as John F. Kennedy's name adorned the Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage. But Ted Sorensen-like, it's the Republican Congressional minority that's doing the ghostwriting, and to it should flow most of the credit. For the White House could never pull this off without them.

I just love the way they by-pass spin and go straight to fabrication. And have no delusions, this report will be cut from whole cloth.

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This just gets bigger and bigger

I'm talking about the judicial firings for "apparent" political reasons. And guess who's right in the middle.

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

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File under: WTF?

Bush denounces atrocious Baghdad bombing.

The White House called the suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed 135 people an "atrocity" on Saturday and pledged to help the Iraqi government bring security to the capital.

"The United States stands with the people of Iraq. We will support the freely elected Iraqi government and its security forces, to help bring those responsible for today's atrocity to justice, and to deliver greater security to the people of Baghdad," White House press secretary Tony Snow said in a statement.

The blast, caused by explosive-laden truck, was the deadliest single bombing in Iraq since the 2003 war and took place in a mainly Shi'ite area of Baghdad.

The White House said the attack "targeted the innocent people of Iraq."

"Free nations of the world must not stand by while terrorists commit mass murder in an attempt to derail democratic progress in Iraq and throughout the greater Middle East," the statement said.

Yes it was an horrendous act and killed many innocent Iraqis, but give me a fucking break. Bush has killed untold thousands. Just keep your mouths shut you idiots.

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US Senate votes first hike in minimum wage in a decade

I'm gonna beat this dead horse one more time until I'm sure it can't get up.

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade, a major promise of new Democratic congressional leaders.

Lawmakers voted 94 to three Thursday to raise the wages rate by 2.10 dollars per hour -- from 5.15 dollars an hour to 7.25 dollars.

That means the annual salary for a full-time minimum-wage worker would rise from about 11,000 dollars a year to about 15,000.

The House approved a similar measure on January 10, and the two bills will now have to be reconciled before going to the desk of
President George W. Bush, to be signed into law.

"We haven't resolved anything," cautioned Charles Rangel of New York, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

One major difference to iron out is that the Senate's version provides 8.3 billion dollars in Republican-backed tax breaks to help small businesses compensate for the impact of the wage hikes.

Senate's new majority leader Harry Reid said after the vote that the bill's passage was a long-deferred victory for the common worker.

"Democrats in both the House and Senate have kept yet another one of their promises to move America in a new direction, and we will continue to do so," Reid said.

"For the first time in 10 years, Congress voted in a bipartisan fashion to increase the minimum wage. In the time since the last minimum wage increase, household costs have risen -- including the price of gas, the price of food and the price of health care," the Democratic lawmaker said.

"This increase is long over-due and with today's vote, we have given hard working Americans, struggling to get by, the raise they deserve," he said.

Wow! Fifteen thousand fucking dollars! That's gonna put huge spikes in new car, housing and appliance sales.

With all due respect, Senator Reid, what you should have said is "We should double or even triple the existing minimum, but don't have the cojones because businesses who contribute to our campaigns need their serfs."

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