And When The Terminator Makes A Threat, Best Take It Seriously

Perhaps you’ve read (or…been told by your boss) that the federal minimum wage has gone up to the princely sum of $6.55 (which, not to brag, is what I made at the very first non-babysitting job I ever had — working as a page in my town’s public library — in 1991). This is great news for the two million Americans in minimum-wage jobs. It’s good-ish news for 200,000 state employees in California who are threatened with having their pay cut to the federal minimum wage by their bitch of a governor. The state’s in a middle of a budget crisis, and in order to force the issue, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to make these poor state workers who have no control over the damn budget into pawns. The state controller says he won’t sign the order, but still, the fact that Schwarzenegger’s even floating the idea makes him look pretty bad. What happened to the devil-may-care bodybuilder who had this sanguine attitude? Power really does corrupt.

Sticks And Stones, Kids

How can you tell George W. Bush is a lame duck? Well, of course there’s obnoxious posturing like this…which I really wish had been documented in some sort of A/V format. But there’s also the fact that Democrats — who’ve tended to fold like card tables on every initiative in which they demonstrate any opposition to the administration — are starting to feel bold enough to stand up for themselves. Take Nancy Pelosi, for instance: she’s feeling so stroppy that yesterday she called the president “a total failure.” Don’t believe the written report? We have proof!

Now that she’s called him out, I have to assume there’s a fist fight on the horizon. 3 o’clock: bike racks!

Pretty Sneaky, Bro

So…the Bush administration has decided not to act on climate change in its waning months, but they do have time to redefine abortion so broadly that many forms of contraception would fall into the category? Seriously? Look, dudes, it’s summer. People are hot and bothered and they want to get it on. Leave them alone and go on your vacation already, damn.

Of course, we probably shouldn’t be surprised at such a confused policy proposal coming out of an administration headed by a guy who would talk about gynecology like this.

Brownie, Your Legacy Is Intact

As Iowans sift through debris as part of post-flood recovery efforts, what say we check in on the last unbelievably terrible flood of recent American history? Over there, we have the supplies for Katrina survivors that…totally never made it to survivors at all. And then over here, we have the notorious FEMA trailers that manufacturers knew contained potentially dangerous levels of formaldehyde. Democrats are pissed, but Republicans? Eh, they say it’s not the manufacturer’s fault: since there are no government-mandated safety standards for travel trailers, apparently it’s okay for them to contain as much formaldehyde as manufacturers would like to load them up with! Wow, it takes a particular kind of evil to come up with an argument like that and think people aren’t going to question you about it. The bottom line, because it can never be said too often: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.“