Newsflash - And They Fly On Jetplanes To See One Another!

The Bushies officially send their Happy Valentine's Day message to Congress today in the form of a $82B supplemental defense funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan operations.

The Iraqi elections results are in, but the results are certainly a matter of interpretive debate. Robin Wright seems to think the results indicate major disappointments for the NeoCons. The BBC briefly sums up British reaction as mixed. The Arab world (a tough thing for anyone to sum up) is much more vehemently debating the success or failure. A Turkish paper I'd not looked at previously offered this disturbingly logical nugget - "(a)ccording to the results, Sunnis are expected to have only five seats." That's out of 275, for 20% of the nation's population. Whatever the most telling analyses may hold, I'm among those that believe the easy part is now past. Calling this an historic achievement is like calling the Declaration of Independence the end of the Revolutionary War. Forming the coalitions necessary to govern and pull together 2/3rds of those 275 seats to elect a President and two Deputy Presidents will be a bitch.

Salon posted a thoughtful piece on Dubya's Social Security strategies. If past efforts by the Bushies (aim high and then quietly change tactics completely to take eventual credit) hold true in this case, we may see some measure of their "reform" after all. They do hold majorities in Congress and the Dems are pretty gawddamn weak-kneed far too much of the time. Watching Charlie Rangel (D-NY) on "Meet the Press" yesterday, however, makes that self-loathing analysis still seem pretty unlikely.

Drudge holds true to his Walter Winchell era thinking by trying to make a big deal out of Judy Dean's intention to stay in Vermont with her medical practice while Howie heads to DC (part-time, it must be said to clarify). Newsflash, Matt - women DO work. A tip of the fedora to the Deans for making that reality a bit more high-profile.

The NYTimes tries to get all up in the blogosphere's grill with a piece about "trophy hunting" and the resignation of Eason Jordan from CNN. How they could publish this piece without doing equal time on JD Guckert's dismantling is a mystery. Still, I don't really give a crap about the mainstream worrying about the gnats flying around their backsides.

I'm sounding like a broken record even though we're not "due" until tomorrow, but there's no baby yet. We've got an office appointment later this morning to suss out where things stand. I'll spare everyone the details, especially given that my in-laws may well be reading this somewhere. Rest assured that we'll let everyone know as soon as the adventure unfolds. Be well.