Several things:

• Life and death: Frank Edward Robbins the Sixth has his picture taken inside of Laura. Patricia Helsing, RIP.
• Super tuesday! Obama has a narrow lead in delegates. Neither he or Clinton are likely to "win" based on primaries. Basically, if Clinton can keep a virtual tie, she can probably choke him out at the convention w/superdelegates and committee maneuvers. However, if Obama can open up enough of a lead to make that choke-out sufficiently unDemocratic, he could keep the nomination.
• On that note, I'm working on my first real decent think-piece on politics in ages. I'll post it on one of those kinds of websites and throw a link up here soon. UPDATE: here.
• Cornell Club: I'm more or less moved-in to the East Bay bachelor pad. It's pretty cool, actually. We have a nice dining room with an impressive scotch bar, are proximal to both the BART and a couple good night spots, and with a little more set-up should be ready for some kickass housewarming activities soon.
• On the downside, after two separate trips to Ikea, I still don't have all the parts to build a bed. Screw you, Swedes!
• It's been productive to be back in the office, and we've got pieces of paper up all over the place with bullet lists and schedules. Feels good!

All in all it's been busy but in a refreshing way. I've been getting up early and coming home late, which if not exactly how I want to spend my time in a perfect world, is decidedly a change in my habits of action, and is as such refreshing.

Just a note as I saw this in google news: Al Qaeda No. 3 Man Killed.

It just jogged my memory, because here's the version from 2005, and here's 2003. Indeed, this Times of India story from '05 notes that the subject of its piece was the sixth number three to date. I wonder what we're up to now? Moreover, the Times of India has the temerity to throw quotes around "senior" in the phrase "'senior' al-Qaeda operative," and to note:

bq. Although, no one officially described Al-Yemeni as a No.3, the joke in media circles here is that will be the nomenclature for any al-Qaeda suspect besides Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, the one-two who have evaded capture for more than three years.

I do love the Times of India. So disrespectful of our holy cows.

The point is not that these stories are lies, but to say they are stories, and that their value is as such -- comforting narratives of progress -- not as sources of information. This is generally true of non-investigative press reports based on sources within the military.

It's nothing new, but yet another reminder that you are surrounded by propaganda.

Those were what I called our "salad days."

As one commentator for this Mike Lux post put it, "soaring rhetoric, like most anything else Bush touched, is dead for me for a while." And lately it hasn't even been soaring.

George W. Bush is headed to history's footlocker as possibly the most unpopular president since measuring popularity was invented. He doesn't even have a "Nixon goes to China" to pin on his legacy, just a shitty debt-based economy, a brutal and senseless war/occupation, and a wave of fraud, indictments, and political malpractice that's only going to smell worse as time ripens the pile.

So I didn't really have any interest in watching the State of the Union. G-dubs is haggard and on the defensive. His popularity has been so low for so long, he can't even help out his peeps except by steering clear and trying to keep his stink off 'em. There would be no substantive announcements, and with his lack of political zazz, no entertaining shout outs warning us of "Human-Animal Hybrids" or the like.

Indeed, overall the reviews are tepid and our first-drafters of history seem eager to pass on by this guy, get back to covering the race to replace. People just don't care anymore, not even those of us who many thought were "haters." The Bush administration seems ready to fold up shop with a whimper, which is better than a bang given their predilections, I suppose.

Sen. Clinton wins narrowly in Nevada caucuses; Romney takes it in a cakewalk.

Also voting, but not done yet, is South Carolina, a state with an awesome flag:

Down there Obama has been on the upswing among Democrats and McCain and Huck! will fight it out on the GOP side. McCain has the big mo', and it would be sweet vengeance for his 2000 "illegitimate black love child" drubbing at the hands of Rove and Co, but you never know.

On both sides, it's looking like no clear victor until at least Feb 5th, and while media coverage focuses a lot on "winners," the truth is that delegates are won proportionally. Obama and Clinton will get virtually the same number of delegates from Nevada, for instance (UPDATE: bizarrely enough, Obama gets more). It's quite possible that with three or four players splitting the GOP vote, they could go all the way to a brokered convention.