Good, bad and ugly

Probably the Titanic offers the best example of good news/bad news in history. "The good news is we're unsinkable. The bad news is we're sinking." In that spirit, I offer a few observations about America, observed while rearranging deck chairs on our own sinking ship:

-Congress has just approved increasing the national debt limit to $9 trillion. Imagine that. The good news is it's just money. The bad news is it's our grandchildren's money.

-The bad news is that Oprah's Book Club is back in rehab until it masters the part of the 12-step program which requires rigorous honesty. The good news is that the rest of us can JUST SAY NO to being spoon-fed a steady diet of regurgitated Oprah pabulum.

-While on the topic of books, the good news is that Stephen King's new book is about how everyone who uses a cell phone gets zapped in the head and turned into walking zombies. The bad news is it's nonfiction.

-The good news is that Dubai Ports World has promised to sell its newly acquired U.S. port operations to an American company. The bad news is that the only company likely to want to buy them is Halliburton. The really bad news is that the liberals will say Dick Cheney engineered the whole port-security fiasco as a way to crank up some more business for his old buddies at Halliburton. The really good news is that no one takes the liberals seriously when they start spouting absurd conspiracy theories. The really, really bad news is that this absurd conspiracy theory may just be right.

-The bad news is more people in a recent survey were able to name the characters on "The Simpsons" TV show than identify the fundamental rights of Americans that are enumerated in the First Amendment. The good news is that the brainwashing of Americans into stupefaction by "The Simpsons" and other mindless TV is not a fundamental right, just part of Rupert Murdoch's Dick-Cheneyesque plan to take over the world. The gooder news is that "The Simpsons" is way cool.

-It's hard to find good news relating to a war, but how about this?

The Pentagon posted captured Iraqi documents on its Web site last week which confirm a relationship between Iraq, al-Qaida and the Taliban both before and after 9/11. That's pretty good news, right?

Turns out that on Sept. 15, 2001, the Iraqis were already being told that "America has proof that the government of Iraq and Osama bin Laden group have shown cooperation to hit target within America." Moreover, that "Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan are in contact with Iraq and … that previously a group from Taliban and Osama Bin Laden group visited Iraq."

OK, so that's pretty good news because it confirms our worst suspicions about Saddam; what could the bad news possibly be? The bad news is that the Bush administration won't play up the story, the mainstream media will ignore it, and the Democrats will distort it.

-I'm on a roll now, which brings us to our final tidbit: The good news is that this column is over. The bad news is that if you hate me, I tricked you into reading it one more week.

(P.S.: I know there is no such word as "gooder." It's a joke!)