Good Morning Middle America, welcome to your King of Simple News Network, for all the news, that is news, from around the country. “Mostly” real news, the way it should be reported.

WASHINGTON: The U.S. State Department is ordering 200 to 300 diplomats to serve in Iraq due to a puzzling lack of volunteers. It seems that the Foreign Service positions in all of the other garden spots around the world, such as Tahiti, are overfilled.

Those ordered to serve will be given 10 days to make up their minds; go, get canned, or serve in Miami. Applications for Wal-Mart greeters have suddenly spiked.

The fact that mortar-fire occurs on a daily basis at the Embassy (that’s incoming mortar fire) seems to be a deterrent for several of the candidates. And the fact that 200 to 300 positions are open at one time, gives pause to the average Foreign Service Joes and Jane’s. As in, “Where did those other guys go?”

The main nuisance factor however, is that the Iraqi American Embassy is located in…Iraq.

In other Washington news, Senators who are running for president don’t have much time to be Senators. Barrack Obama broke a streak of 39 consecutive missed roll call votes, which luckily keeps him in the “above average attendance” category.

Hillary Clinton, who has been running for president for 26 years said, “You people can count yourselves lucky, imagine the mess you’d be in if we actually worked.”

President Bush, not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to barb the Democrats said, “The Democrats keep flapping their jaws about having a lame duck in the Whitehouse. Rather than stand around talking about it, why don’t they just call a veterrain… vetranir… a veterranner…, a duck doctor?”

Washington seems to remain the focus of the news with Rep. Charles Rangel (Crazy Charlie) trotting out a new tax proposal that he calls “the mother of all reforms.”

Charlie proposes a large tax increase on upper income earners and business that would raise about a trillion dollars per year and pretty much finish off any flickering economy remaining in the United States.

Rep. Rangel is finding little support for his proposal with the exception of Hillary Clinton who has a similar plan of taxing all Americans to the point of “equal poverty.”

“After all, the only other option would be to reduce the size and spending of government, which is not an option at all for those of us who make up the rules.”

Finally, a bit of news from the California wild fires, where it has now been determined by experts that breathing smoke is not good for you. One hospital said, “we have seen an increase in patients with breathing trouble, which may be related to being in a forest fire.”

Another California man said, “Sure I’m worried about breathing that stuff up there. It’s not cool but everyone is dying to get back home.”

Keep in mind that these people are eligible to vote.

Stay tuned right here for “broken news” from the King of Simple News Network.