At Least It's Something

I can't write at length, because I'm in Canada and my internet connection is borderline useless. You think your dialup is slow? You ain't seen nothing. I'm pretty sure every packet of data this computer receives is being read and relayed individually by a beehive-haired switchboard operator named Mavis. (Hi, Mavis!) Ah, summer.

But I do want to offer some consolation amid the smoking heap of worthlessness that is our Democratic Congress. Yes, we blatantly capitulated on Iraq timetables, handing the president yet another blank check to send soldiers into the meat grinder; yes, Harry Reid sounds like a buffoon on the radio saying we're going to "continue pushing" or whatever it is, even though we've already done everything but hand the president our balls on a silver platter; and yes, the White House is suddenly NOW considering a plan to seriously cut deployment, which if effected would give them political cover to take credit for ending the war and kneecap Democrats' whole 2008 election effort. These are not exactly good developments. In fact, one could reasonably argue that we have been played like a goddamn fiddle.

HOWEVER. There is another story: you may not have heard, but we raised the minimum wage. Tucked into the bottom of that voluminous Iraq bill was a provision hiking the federal minimum wage by $2.10/hr, to $7.25, which affects 5.6 million people in 22 states. We've been fighting for this for a long time; while it sucks to attain it under these circumstances, the fact is that Democrats helped a lot of people this week. For the first time in 10 years, our workers are going to get some relief. Naturally behind the Iraq thing it's not getting a lot of press, but then the good stuff never does.

So give a little credit to our friends in Washington. Sure, they might be a bunch of spineless cockstains, but they're our spineless cockstains and they're working their hearts out for the good of the American people -- finally, with concrete results. This is progress.

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Hope everyone's exams went well, and congrats to our departing seniors. Keep reading Dem Apples over the summer; if it's anything like last year, we'll be updating just sporadically enough that new posts will be a pleasant surprise. Also expect them to be even more irrelevant and poorly-conceived than usual, if that's possible. (By August it'll probably just be nudie pics.) Happy Memorial Day!