Pony nuggets

• Patrick Fitzgerald has created a sparse website; the term of the grand jury expires on Friday; liberals are hyperventilating; the administration is leaking and spinning and sweating and adjusting its package. My oscillating expectations for the Plame indictments have reached an equilibrium: certainly Libby, maybe Rove, and nobody more senior. I wonder how Ladbrokes pegs this. No Cheney, no "wider" investigation about the lies leading up to the Iraq war, no public pistol-whipping of Ari Fleischer. That's ok. I can deal. It's a wooden rocking-pony under the wrapping paper. That's fine. More than I thought I was getting a couple of months ago. Okeydoke. Dum de dum.
• I didn't even bother with yesterday's installment of "The Road to 4-12"... given yesterday's performance, it looks like I'll have to recalibrate my predictive model. Next week: a prototype version of "The Road to 1-15." Wilbon, for a change, got it right: they're "paper-bag-over-the-head bad." Meanwhile, however, the increasingly delusional Mike Nolan still smells the playoffs. He likened the 49ers to the Astros, who started the season 15-30. The only real similarity lies in their ability to play football. But then, Nolan's always one to spot a crisitunity.