Only light coatings of bloggity goodness for about five more days.  Busy.  Also, there are days I almost can’t look.

Glanced at Google News this morning, and for some reason, the sheer horror of where we are right now really hit me.  Here’s one random day’s news, all of which has now become oddly routine (most of the following, including the first link in every entry, comes straight from the Google News front page):

Iraq: further descent into madness.  Mass hangings by the government.  Even the U.S. State Department admits to death squads in the Iraqi police your tax dollars are helping support.  Saddam’s old torture hole Abu Ghraib is still open, years after it should have been shut down.  But Bagram, the old Soviet machine shop in Afghanistan where U.S.-held prisoners detained without trial have been tortured with mock executions, will stay open.

Next stop: Iran.  With whose army, I have no idea.

Meanwhile, wire reports claim that the Dubai company is bailing on the deal to hand over security at 21 key U.S. ports.  Bush’s bizarre insistence has been weird enough, but the inability of the media to notice that the deal was not for six ports, as you keep seeing — the deal was for twenty-one — is nothing short of amazing.   Any reporter who can’t get that basic fact right two weeks into the story doesn’t deserve a job.  Collect ’em all…

The GOP-controlled Congress is ravaging food health and safety labeling.  And ethics reform?  Are you serious?

In business, the U.S. trade deficit sets yet another new record.

In health, bird flu is about to reach the U.S.  Incidentally, despite that fact that scientists have tracked the virus for years and it has the potential to kill many millions of people, the U.S. government has done little to prepare until very recently.  A massive Katrina may await us.

In the national pastime, the game’s greatest home run hitter has been gorked to the gills on go-juice, something everyone with eyeballs has understood for years.  He’ll just keep on playing, his teammates will close ranks, and nothing will probably happen.  Which is a perfect emblem for the times.

Was it always like this?  Was it really?