Anne loves this photo:

Parker had tons of fun at Meramec over the weekend. If we could get him to run around for hours at a time during the week at home, I think we'd sleep better.

So it looks like North Korea's nuclear test failed as badly as the President's (833 days, 3 hours) foreign policy. Either or both might contribute to his 34% approval rating.

Polls open in 27 days, 15 hours, 57 minutes.

...when North Korea gets the bomb.

Wow. Try as I might, I can't think of any worse result of the President's (834 days, 4 hours) foreign policies than North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb this morning. (The USGS felt it; did you?)

Josh Marshall has a fair summary of how this happened, but I think we all know already:

The origins of the failure are ones anyone familiar with the last six years in this country will readily recognize: chest-thumping followed by failure followed by cover-up and denial. The same story as Iraq. Even the same story as Foley.

All diplomatic niceties aside, President Bush's idea was that the North Koreans would respond better to threats than Clinton's mix of carrots and sticks.

Then in the winter of 2002-3, the US prepared the invade Iraq, the North called Bush's bluff. And the president folded. Abjectly, utterly, even hilariously if the consequences weren't so grave and vast.

And where is China in all this? Apparently they've decided that a nuclear-armed and insane regime on their flank is better than no regime at all.

How long will it take to undo the damage our administration has caused? How much more damage will we suffer as a result?

Indian summer is here. It got up into the mid-20s (mid-70s F), so I toodled down to Millenium Park. I don't expect weather like this again until March at the earliest. At least I got to enjoy it.

Earlier today I got all excited seeing the Census Bureau's population clock at just below 300 million. In a move that will surprise no one, I got the math wrong, so my guess about when this would happen was off by an order of magnitude. This morning it was at 299,923,329; right now, it's 299,926,233. At this rate it will be about nine days before the thing ticks over 300 million.

So check the population clock on the 15th. It's likely it will take about that long to add another 74,000 people to the U.S.

It looks like the Census Bureau's Population Clock will roll over 300,000,000 this evening. We'll check back throughout the day.