Interesting times

It's an ancient Chinese curse - May you live in interesting times. Well, we certainly are. Here in NC, a 4-term incumbent is currently leading a high school history teach by less than 400 votes, so the recount is underway. The NC speaker of the House (scandal-ridden can only begin to describe him) is hanging on to a 7-vote lead (those Civics teachers that told you every vote counts were apparently correct). And the Democrats managed to, with the concession of Senator Allen from Virginia, grab the majority in both House and Senate.

Kinda.

Let's not forget that the Senate is actually split 49/49/2, with two independents, which makes Joe Lieberman one of the two most powerful men in Congress. Doesn't that present all sorts of opportunities to thumb his nose at the party that dumped him in favor of a more liberal new kid? Now, Jilted Joe has said that he will caucus with the Dems, but I think he'll likely find an opportunity or two to spank the Donkey Party for their lack of love at some point.

Rumsfeld resigns. Huzzah. Now, while I think that we should bring our troops home from Iraq, and that we shouldn't have gone there in the first place (although since we've been there before, wouldn't this be the second place?), I think it's really, really important that people put together a strategy for getting the hell out. For the record, I don't have one. If I did, you'd be the second to know. But I don't. But there are a whole lot of smart people that work for (although not necessarily run) our government, and I'm sure that plans are already laying around someone's desk. It's going to take time, regardless. We can't just elect a new Congress and expect them to get people out of Iraq by February. That would be silly. But maybe by February '08 people can start to come home and shake the sand out of their shorts. I hope so.

So back to poker - I've actually played a little this month. After I angered the poker gods by talking about booking small wins I gave most of it back, then reclaimed a tiny bit last night. I'm up for the month. Not much, but up a little. And I finished last month up a little, largely on the back of my trip to Vegas, which was a welcome change. I'm loving the Cap No Limit games on Full Tilt, and there's a long post coming soon as to why I think they're great games for a donk like me, so more poker content coming, I promise. Not that I think I'm any more qualified to babble about poker than about politics - I'm pretty equally clueless on both topics.