Another busy week, so I have been lazy about blogging. Some of the things that happened which I find interesting include the following:

If Vladimir Putin is serious about his warnings against any military action aimed at Iran, it could seriously complicate the Bush Administration's efforts at preventing an Iranian bomb.

A New Hampshire primary in December? It is starting to look like a good bet.

After spending the last year fairly confident that the 2008 election would be a repudiation of the President and his party, I am beginning to see evidence that the political currents are changing direction. Michael Barone sees evidence of this in the special election held this past week in Massachusetts, where the Democrat, Niki Tsongas, defeated her GOP challenger by a surprisingly small margin. What is happening to change the currents? This piece in the American Prospect argues that it is because the Democrats in Congress are increasingly viewed by the public as ineffective. Bill Kristol makes essentially the same argument, adding the equally powerful point that this Congress is also increasingly being seen as a body which tried to force the Administration into accepting defeat in Iraq, while the President simply pushed forward with a new strategy to try to obtain victory. So, as we approach the end of 2007, what does this mean for 2008? It means that the GOP may very well be able to campaign next year as the party that is more capable of achieving victory in Iraq, as well as in the overall war on terror, and they can campaign against a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress. If violence continues to decrease in Iraq, and if the different factions move closer to some accommodation (and I realize that those are very big "ifs"), it will be hard to argue against the Bush/Petraeus strategy as anything other than a success. Combine that with a series of silly mistakes by the Democrats in Congress (like the Rush Limbaugh letter fiasco), and you could get a GOP victory next November.