Dogs, Not Barking

(Updated, below)

1. The Swine Flu.  Someone in a recent comment doubted my claim that presidents don't get positive credit for potential disasters averted...I think this one is a good example.  I have no idea whether the Obama administration in general, or the president in particular, actually did a great job on this, but it's (apparently?) gone away, and the president and others seem to have been on top of it.  Since it went well, there's no story; no story, no credit, deserved or not.  Of course, the flip side is that presidents do get plenty of blame when something like this goes wrong, so there's always that.  Subitem -- as noted in a previous post, vaccine panic also fizzled rapidly.

2. Town Halls.  Presumably, some Member of Congress held some last week, but if there's a return of the August crazy (either on health care or something else), it's not being reported, at least not where I'm seeing it.

3. Continuing item: Democrats are still not retiring from Congress in any significant numbers.

4. And, as always, the Fairness Docrtrine.  I may or may not have already mentioned it, but I'm very disappointed to see that paranoid theories about Obama seem to be replacing the inevitable imposition of the Fairness Doctrine with the (as far as I can tell) equally improbable inevitable imposition of universal voter registration.  While just as unlikely to actually happen, tyranny by universal registration is a whole lot less fun for me to laugh at, because, well, it seems like a pretty good idea to me.  Voter registration as a responsibility of citizens is a weird American custom with very little to recommend it; most democracies have automatic registration, and I've never seen a good reason for not having it here.  So, I'll stick for now to Fairness Doctrine, and I'll appreciate anyone who tips me off to evidence that people are still claiming that Obama (or Pelosi, or Reid, whatever) is about to introduce it any day now.

(UPDATE:  See comments, and this TPM article, for some barking I guess I missed).