This column today celebrates a milestone -- triple digits on the odometer! That's right, as hard as it may seem to believe, this is the one hundredth volume of your weekly Friday Talking Points column. For a little over two years now, we've brought you our thoughts on "the week that was in politics," and for a little less time than that, we've announced our weekly winners of both the aforementioned MIDOTW as well as the ignominious Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. And we wrap it all up with some practical, good old-fashioned, home-brewed Democratic spin, our Talking Points for the week ahead.

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The day before I cast my vote for Barack Obama, I wrote a column titled "Barack Obama Is Smarter Than Us." By "us," I meant the legions of us lefty bloggers out here, who second-guessed his campaign on a daily basis for nigh on two years. I included myself in that "us" as well -- because, I fully admit, I got incredibly frustrated during Obama's campaign when he didn't do what I really, really wanted him to. Or didn't do it fast enough to suit me.

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Much like Sherlock Holmes' non-barking nocturnal canine, the remarkable thing about President Barack Obama's poll numbers last month was that nothing remarkable happened. Both trendlines were pretty flat for the month, which was the second month in a row of little movement. Things are not getting much better for Obama's approval rate, but then neither are they getting much worse.

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I speak, of course, of the new healthcare reform compromise idea being batted about over in the Senate. Trying to build a bridge between the public-option-supporting Progressive Democrats and the fiscally-conscious Blue Dog Democrats was always going to be the Grand Compromise which had to be forged to pass a bill. Various ideas have been floated to build this Compromise Bridge (my metaphors seem to be getting all mixed up today), which all eventually collapsed into the metaphorical chasm below. The "trigger" option, where a public option would be in the law but wouldn't activate unless a "trigger" was pulled at some later date was probably the most-talked about plan prior to this, mostly because it was the favorite of the only Republican who actually may vote for healthcare reform in the Senate. The "co-op" plan, which will be in the bill Max Baucus' committee votes on (Um, guys? Weren't you supposed to have voted this week? I'm just saying...), has also been declared a non-starter.

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Still, the image remains. The media has apparently discovered that we have troops in Afghanistan. This may come as a shock to some, since the mainstream media (at least on television) have pretty much ignored this fact for around seven years now (so much so that Afghanistan became known as "the forgotten war" for a while). But the reporting on what President Obama is going to do next in Afghanistan has been so over-the-top in the past few weeks, it has astonished me (and I do not astonish easily, especially when it comes to the idiocy of the evening news). More stories have run on Afghanistan, I would be willing to venture, in the past two weeks than have run in the past two years.

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No so very long ago, Afghanistan was known as "the forgotten war." While America's attention was largely focused on Baghdad, many forgot our military was even in another country. But these days, Afghanistan is hard to miss in the headlines. Rumors are swirling over what President Obama will do there -- increase American troops, draw down troops, keep the same troops (it depends on which headlines you read) -- and how he will change our strategy and goals. Talk of "failure" is rampant, except that now it is not coming from the anti-war crowd, but instead from the Pentagon. President Obama needs to get out front on this issue, by beginning to talk about our newly-forgotten war: Iraq.

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How time flies. This column marks its second anniversary today, by the calendar if not the Volume number. For the second straight year, we only produced 47 columns, but by the calendar we've gone two full years and a few odd days. Actually, now that I think of it, more than just a few odd days. Ahem.

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Scrapping this idea is a smart decision by Obama, because it defuses a major stumbling block to relations with Russia, and because the system was of dubious strategic value to begin with (if it even worked, which has not been definitively proven). Plus, in both Poland and the Czech Republic, the idea wasn't very popular at all. Nor was it popular with NATO. So taking it off the table results in positive diplomatic gains in more than one direction.

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In the calendar of politics, throughout the year, the label "Take Out The Trash Day" is attached by the media to Fridays. Late Friday afternoon (or even evening, after the national television news deadline), the White House releases news that they'd really rather just ignore -- and would be very happy if everyone else ignored as well. There's a good reason for this timing: Friday evening (and Saturday as well) is the time of week when the least amount of the public is paying attention to the news. Meaning that embarrassing or awkward stories can be released with the fewest possible ripples in the body politic's attention. But this concept sometimes broadens to encompass an entire week. With Congress, the president, and what the White House hopes is a maximum amount of the public all on vacation this week, it seems to be the time to toss a few news stories over the wall, in the hopes that they'll get less attention than normal.

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President Obama stunned the political world today by announcing he will switch political parties, and soon become a Republican. "It seems the only way we're going to get bipartisanship in this town is if I lead the way," he said, in brief remarks before leaving for vacation. "The Republicans have refused to work with me because I'm a Democrat, and Republicans' biggest strength has always been the ability to fall into line with whatever their leaders tell them, unlike other certain unnamed political parties in America..." (the president appeared to cough several times at this point, although one of his coughs sounded suspiciously like the word "Democrats," if truth be told...). The president, clear-throated now, continued, "So I will now be the leader of the Republican Party, and they will fall in line with what I tell them to we're going to do. The Democrats who are interested in bipartisanship can join us to pass Medicare-for-all, instead of the Rube Goldberg machine which they have been attempting to construct."

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