I, for one, welcome our new Islamicist overlords. I've always thought sharia law was the way to go. No doubting what's important in that system. Keeps one grounded, it does.

Kidding, of course. I am very heartened to see that the center held, to see so many good ole' conservative Blue Dog Democrats are making the trip back to Washington. Good for the Jim Webb's, Heath Shuler's, and Nancy Boyda's. Good for the country. Too bad about Harold Ford, though. A good man running with the wrong name in the wrong state for the wrong party. Switch to Republican Mr. Ford, you'll win in a heartbeat, even as a Ford in Tennessee.

I am also very heartened to see that this election has already shaken Republicans out of their lazy complacency. The removal of Donald Rumsfeld had to happen--he had become too much of a lightning rod for every minor setback in the war in Iraq, including from the prowar and military side, which was most important. He did it to himself by insisting on maintaining prewar levels of funding and prewar conceptions of transforming the military, even when September 11 and the situation on the ground in the war had made it perfectly clear that some of these ideas had to change and that we needed to funnel more money into the military. As a result, everytime anything, no matter how small in historical terms, went wrong in Iraq, Rumsfeld was to blame.

I continue to maintain that the war in Iraq has been a success in all historical terms--we've removed Saddam, set up a fledgling democracy, killed lots of fundamentalists, taken remarkably few casualties--and I wonder if the erstwhile critics of the war will notice, or at least have the criticisms blunted, without Rumsfeld to kick around. Hey, it's not that farfetched: how often have we heard about the Patriot Act since Ashcroft stepped down?

Anyway, it will be most interesting to see how Democrats handle the war now that they have some control. They've said they have better ideas and better tactics, more nuance and more tact--now we'll find out. Something tells me that they will be as useless with the reins of Congressional power as the Republicans have been, and they'll blame the president and his obstruction and the Republicans will blame them back and we'll have another election that will swing back and so on and so forth, as it ever has been in times of peace.

Because it's clear that as a nation we do not believe we are at war.

As for me, I'm unconvinced that the "Stick our Fingers in Our Ears and Yell LALALALALALA Doctrine" will work in this fight.

But I do hear that the new season of "Lost" is fantastic and that Britney and K-Fed are hanging it up, so everything should be fine. Really.

Update: I just found a handy little graphic:



Read the chart. Let it sink in. Wonder, like me, how it is even possible that not a single prominent politician in this country has used these figures to question our commitment to fighting this war. Not one.

If there has ever been a more stark example of how the baby boomers have failed in the face of their generation's greatest test, I haven't seen it.

I'm told we're now to refer to K-Fed as "Fed-Ex." Ha Ha.