NP: The Eels, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations

The president's plan for Social Security is getting absolutely crushed in the polls. People don't like it. People are going to like it even less when he interrupts Survivor to tell them about it tonight.

I'm not saying I'm proud of that particular causal relationship among my fellow Americans, but suffice it to say I'll be very surprised if it doesn't pan out.

Then again, I can't shake this feeling of Republican rope-a-dope, that we'll somehow end up with Bush's Social Security plan, John Bolton, and all of the White House's judicial nominees going through. Did every single warning about not getting too arrogant too early in the second term go unheeded? On the one hand, that seems hard to imagine, but on the other, the insularity and resulting arrogance -- or maybe it's the other way around -- of this administration is legend.