There’s a war in Iraq? I thought the only thing going on was with the John Mark Karr character. Well it must be going well over there then since our great news doesn’t say anything about it.

Violence in Iraq left nearly 50 people dead Monday in a suicide car bombing and clashes between Shiite militia and Iraqi security forces, a brutal contradiction of the prime minister’s claim that bloodshed was decreasing.

The deaths followed a day of bombings and shootings on Sunday, when more than 60 people were killed across the country, from the northern city of Kirkuk to the capital Baghdad and down to the south in Basra. The dead included eight American soldiers, one of the deadliest weekends for the U.S. military in recent months.

In the city of Diwaniyah, gunbattles between Iraqi forces and militiamen of the Mahdi Army loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr left at least 34 people dead and about 70 wounded, Iraqi officials said.

The fighting broke out late Sunday night when Iraqi soldiers conducted raids in three neighborhoods to flush out the militiamen and seize weapons, said army Capt. Fatik Aied.

He said the fighting continued Monday.

So this past weekend we lost 8 soldiers in Iraq. What have we heard about all weekend? John Mark Karr, Emmy’s, and the Space Shuttle. Wait – there was that plane crash, which was on all the local channels here in Cincinnati yesterday, considering Comair is located in Cincinnati.

This is how the media plans to help out the Republicans this fall. They know that the hardest thing facing Republicans is Iraq, so they just won’t mention it when we have major blood baths. Don’t tell the Americans that 8 of their soldiers died this weekend, or we might help the Republicans loose. I am sure that the families of these soldiers appreciate their silence on the sacrifice their loved ones made, or the sacrifice the 2,628 soldiers overall have made in this illegal war.

We need to let the media know that if they don’t start reporting on real news and stay the hell away from things we could care less about, then their ratings will really suffer. Perhaps what we need is an organized national “media blackout” day. A day when no one turns on CNN, MSNBC or FOX. A day to show the media we want to see stories that affect us.