On Bush,Iraq,The Minimum Wage and Not Much Else!

    Here are the latest stories making the rounds on this Sunday morning.

 

House GOP Shows Its Fractiousness In the Minority

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007

House Republican leaders, who confidently predicted they would drive a wedge through the new Democratic majority, have found their own party splintering, with Republican lawmakers siding with Democrats in droves on the House's opening legislative blitz.

Freed from the pressures of being the majority and from the heavy hand of former leaders including retired representative Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), many back-bench Republicans are showing themselves to be more moderate than their conservative leadership and increasingly mindful of shifting voter sentiment. The closest vote last week -- Friday's push to require the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare -- pulled 24 Republicans. The Democrats' homeland security bill attracted 68 Republicans, the minimum wage increase 82.             Entire Article

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   This was posted on Saturday, but just in case you missed it as I did.

 

Democrats Pledge to Extend Minimum Wage

Saturday January 13,2007     Via Excite

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fending off charges of favoritism, House Democrats say a just-passed minimum wage bill will be changed to cover all U.S. territories — including American Samoa — before it reaches President Bush's desk.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she has instructed the House Education and Labor Committee to help get the bill changed to "make sure that all of the territories have to comply with the U.S. law on minimum wage."

Her remark Friday followed accusations from Republicans a day earlier that American Samoa, which is not now covered by the $5.15 an hour federal minimum wage, was not included in the law raising the federal pay floor to $7.25 an hour because StarKist has a large cannery in the island chain. StarKist is owned by Del Monte Foods Co., which has its headquarters in San Francisco, Pelosi's district.

"Something is indeed fishy when the federal minimum wage is good for all Americans as espoused by the Democrat majority, yet we exempt a small, in many terms economically struggling island," Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., told colleagues on the House floor last week.   Entire Article

   Maybe the GOP should try complaining about the minimum wage at its current rate.

    From Informed Comment we have this story on secret paragraphs in the agreement between the White House (Bush) and al-Maliki group in Iraq.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Maliki Said to Have Pledged Mahdi Crackdown

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its sources in the Iraqi government are saying that there are some secret paragraphs to the agreement between the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government in Iraq to act against militia leaders. The article suggests that the model of the US raid on an Iranian liason office in Irbil might be deployed against Mahdi Army leaders and against Sunni Arab guerrilla commanders. That is, such raids would be small, targeted, quick and involve kidnapping suspected wrongdoers.            Entire Article

   Last but not least. I couldn't pass this one up from TruthOut

Mohamed al-Hatfield vs. Ahmed al-McCoy
By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Saturday 13 January 2007

It's been a few days since President Bush spoke to the American people about his new "strategy" for "victory" in Iraq. Reading the newspapers, listening to radio and watching television, one would think all the words that could possibly be written or spoken on this speech have finally been exhausted.

But when the punditocracy gets hold of this kind of issue, the last word is never written or spoken. And I am under no delusions that my words will be anything near the last.

But I will write them anyway, because there were a couple of things that struck me.

One of them was the way of most of both the print and broadcast media bought into the president's characterization of his plan as both "new" or a "strategy." It is not new; we've had several unsuccessful "surges" in the past. And what Mr. Bush terms a "strategy" is little more than a tactical adjustment. It is "stay the course" 101.1.           Entire Article

   I guess that now I can go to bed and wait for the Sunday morning news talk-show line-up to cast their spin for the day.  I'll see you in the noon time!

 

Technorati tags: Bush, Iraq, Minimum Wage