I was struck by the news in one of the reports of Paris Hilton’s looming trip to jail that, in California prisons, one is only allowed a lipliner; of all the cosmetic items to choose from why a lipliner? Wouldn’t a lipstick or mascara be a more appropriate choice? What in the heck can you do with just a lipliner? You wind up looking like a coloring book. You would think that in California, of all places, they would have more sense. It was just another thing to add to the list of how ass-backwards the bureaucracy in this country can be sometimes; and how unfeeling! Soldiers in Iraq can’t get the proper armor; and Paris Hilton is reduced to a lipliner!

Every day we are seeing mounting evidence of how severely the poiticians on both sides of the aisle misjudged America’s tolerance for this war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, which receives less mention in the news, but which fills us with no less dismay). Did the Washington gang really think we couldn’t care less that soldiers were dying, being maimed physically and emotionally, sent on endless missions into battle without even the adequate gear? Did they really think we were that heartless? Yes. Because many of them are, I guess; they must be; or just power-hungry and cowed by what the sociologists these days like to call “group-think” but what fascists called “loyalty to the party...”