• Your 2009 World Series will feature the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, two popular Northeast athletics organizations. USA! [New York Times]
• Baghdad had another suicide bombing: 132 people died, which is the most all at once since 2007. [Washington Post]
• The new new new health care bill will be submitted to the CBO as early as right now, or possibly even earlier this morning! [WSJ]
• “Tony Blair” is a name that’s being thrown about to be the new president of the EU. Michael Sheen is already prepared for this. [Times Online]
• College’s favorite singer, Morrissey, is A-OK after his collapse on a stage in London sometime a couple days ago. [CNN]
• Wall Street money financial fatcats would like to maintain their huge bonus system, duh and thank you. [Reuters]

Hmm, here is a possible scoop from your Department of Rumor, Speculation, and Innuendo: a CIA supervisor just back from Baghdad was reportedly hanging out at a bar in Camp Peary, Virginia, where he got super loaded and started talking crazy talk about putting fire ants on some Al Qaeda guy’s head to “break him.” MORE »

The mouth-breathers in charge of GOP.com, the RNC’s hilarious website, still have this ticker proudly displayed front-and-center on their homepage. While Barack Obama has still not agreed to McCain’s series of 12,000 town hall duels, he is in Baghdad right now, which we believe is in Iraq, so this counter on the left should probably be at zero. Or is this whole trip a green-screened conspiracy, like 9/11, which Barack Obama also planned? Why is Barack Obama inventing 9/11 trips today? [GOP.com]

Llewellyn Werner is a California investor who doesn’t like death, but does like Disneyland. Most of us don’t draw the distinction, but Werner wants to replace the former with the latter in Baghdad with “The Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience,” a developing “American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.” Christ, wasn’t the plan to get the oil first and then destroy them with Americanization? Priorities, people. MORE »

Performing his first miracle since he picked George W. Bush to be president of the United States, God blanketed Baghdad in some light, fluffy snow today. Almost no one in the city had ever actually seen snow before, which fell all morning for the first time since anyone could remember. So awestruck was the whole place that not a single person got blown up, shot or decapitated while the snow was falling. MORE »

So people have this crazy concoction that private security force Blackwater likes to go around Baghdad and shoot people for no apparent reason. What a silly billy thing to say! Obviously, they shoot people — or animals — that piss them off, which is like half-legal for private contractors in Iraq. The New York Times has certainly been pissing Blackwater off every since the whole “massacre” thing by, you know, chronicling very clearly how in-the-wrong Blackwater was. And how does Blackwater respond to the Times‘ ballbusting? BY SHOOTING ITS DOG. MORE »

Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) having been bitching to high heaven ever since Condi & Her Power Friends ordered them to serve in Iraq. Fortunately the State Department has its savvy, Y2K-inspired Internet Weblog, Dipnote, to quell this undiplomatic sand-in-the-vagina-fest. Yesterday, an FSO currently serving in Iraq — he volunteered, of all things! — has a special message to his trembling colleagues in Foggy Bottom: The Marines over here think you’re “weenies.” MORE »

The State Department recently announced that it would order some diplomats to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq due to a lack of volunteers, what with it being Iraq and all. As a 22-year-old, I prefer the idea of a diplomat-draft over that of a draft-draft, but these emissaries ain’t feeling it. The State Department held a town hall yesterday to run through the gripes (it’s all “dangerous” over there or something), and it’s pretty clear now that our diplomatic corps is just a bunch of pussies. MORE »

Iraqi insurgents nearly killed three Republican senators and a Democrat from the House, for good measure, as the Americans attempted to flee Iraq on Thursday. GOP senators Richard Shelby, James Inhofe, Mel Martinez and Alabama Representative “Robert” E. “Bud” Cramer were finishing their vacation in Baghdad when missiles and rocket-propelled grenades were fired at their C-130 cargo plane. MORE »

* White House souvenirs excommunicated from the monetary system on Bush’s order. [The Swamp]
* Anyone can be president in America, except Jesus-hating queers. [Freakonomics]
* And, uh, Jesus-loving queer-haters. [Fresh Intelligence]
* U.S. Embassy in Baghdad totally built with slave labor. [IraqSlogger]
* Bookies think Thompson takes the nomination. [On Call]
* Arizona Republicans face crisis of whether to endorse shooting or hanging of Mexicans. [Hot Air]
* Or forcing them to invade and destroy Mexico to prove their loyalty. [IMAO]

* What gets Rudy Giuliani to sleep at night? A little bit of Ambien and a whole lot of jerking off to his 9/11 scrapbook. [LGF]
* The “Sheehan-Reid-Obama-Clinton cult” is the really dangerous one, other cults just front. [The Corner]
* Justice Department under Clinton had a gulag for Republicans. [Washington Prowler (last Item)]
* Paul Wolfowitz for Mayor, of Baghdad. [The Blotter]
* Alaskan oil companies want Ted Stevens to have the biggest, baddest house on the block. [TPM Muckraker]
* A drawing by Barack Obama of some white people is apparently worth money. [eBay]