I have a confession: I looked at the news this week for the first time in ages. I have no newborn to blame anymore either.

It’s just that it’s all just so very tragic. And where there’s no real tragedy, by God you can always count on a news producer to find some for you. Because even if no Americans died in Iraq today, there’s still a three-legged dog somewhere who bit a homeless orphan with colitis before being run over by a drunk schoolbus driver. And now, here’s Bill, with sports.

So I peek today, just for a bit, and here’s what I see:

–2 more soldiers missing in this stupid useless occupation. Which is horrible, of course. But how many non-soldiers went missing today? While all life is sacred, it’s like we hold up two missing US men as the worst thing in the world, and describe whole villages (towns, really, but we call them villages so that they seem less important) blown up in a quick blurb on page 23, right after Ann Landers and Your Lucky Numbers.

-The grieving man whose wife and two little girls plunged over a cliff at Bear Mountain in their minivan? Yeah, he might not be an innocent bystander after all. However the good news, according to the newscast, is that the kids “suffered only minor injuries.” I guess losing your mother and finding out your philandering father might have played a part counts as minor these days.

-$1.4 billion of FEMA money –our money–after Katrina went to bogus claimants for bogus purchases like Saints tickets and Carribean vacations. Way to go Brownie. Another heckuva job you did there.

The only good news seems to be that An Inconvenient Truth is kickin’ box office booty.

Please someone. Please give me some good news. I need a lift.

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Edited to add: I had originally referred to this Iraq fiasco as a war, and not an occupation which is what it is. Thanks to my ever-astute mother for the correction.