1.IRAQ!! Newspapers all over America carry news that Baghdad is safer than it was in February. Although the improvements appear to be modest:

…while there are still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores, customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army.

God forbid you’re a secular woman trying to buy liquor for the wedding band in a less stable neighborhood of Baghdad. But still…
BAGHDAD: Less dangerous than a swarm of sharks, a minefield, AND Britney Spears’ umbrella, combined. But is it “safe?”

Meanwhile, a US general tells troops in Iraq: “A good way to prepare for operations in Iraq is to watch the sixth season of ‘The Sopranos.’”

2.IRAQ!! US prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of the Blackwater rent-a-cops who shot 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians back in September. This means prosecutors believe there is enough evidence of wrongdoing by the firm to warrant a thorough criminal investigation. Although it’s not clear whether the civilians they shot were secular-dressed, liquor-buying wedding band fans, or regular oppressed, terrified casualties of a horrifying civil war engendered by the failure of this country to hold its fascist government accountable for engineering a hedge fund war. But still…

3.IRAQ!! The Iraqi military detained 43 rent-a-cops working for a Dubai-based firm contracting with the American military, following the shooting of an 18-year-old girl in central Baghdad on Monday. Seriously. What timing.

4.STOP THE MADNESS!! Let’s rename 42nd Avenue after a dead middle-aged white male. Remember, this is not about race, but honoring a hero to middle-aged white men. Douglas Adams, if I remember rightly, died on a Nordic ski machine, of a heart attack, following an exercise binge. How much whiter can you get?!

5.OBAMA AVENUE!! Thank God, Barack Obama tops Hillary Clinton in Iowa polls. He’s more likable and genuine, they say. And I’m with them. Let’s rename a street.

Good day!!