IRAQ'd (TNR)

"A sustained, large presence of U.S. forces in [Fallujah] can at best slow the reconstitution of the insurgency, especially as residents return to the city; furthermore, at some point that U.S. presence will yield diminishing returns in terms of a reduced insurgency, since the very placement of Marines in the city--even if they never fire a shot in anger from here on out--is provocative. And all this assumes that we can maintain this level of troop and resource commitment to Falluja, which is unlikely given the demands of the rest of the chaotic country." [LINKED @ 4:00 PM EST 11.18.04]

BLOGGERMAN (Keith Olberman)

"A joint report out of the CalTech and MIT voting project— suggesting that the much-decried exit polling of election night really wasn’t outside the margin of error at all when analyzed on a state-by-state basis— had already been countered by a Penn professor’s report using the exit polling for Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Now it’s not just CalTech and MIT versus Penn— but also UC Berkeley versus CalTech and MIT. Stay tuned for the halftime show. And stay tuned for the latest disaster from Ohio." [LINKED @ 3:46 PM EST 11.18.04]

DemFromCT (DAILY KOS)

"Arnold Hasn't Solved the CA Budget Problem - We have quite a few left coasters here at Daily Kos. Since all politics is local, let's hear how this issue plays in CA and how it interacts with the Governator's still-high popularity. Does anyone expect the CA Governor to govern, or is it all by ballot initiative now?" [LINKED @ 2:31 PM EST 11.18.04]

MATHEW GROSS

"Go read James Wolcott: [Ken] Pollack's The Threatening Storm... convinced some intelligent waverers that something must be done about Saddam Hussein's WWD program and festering aggression before it was too late.... Now Pollack is back with The Persian Puzzle, telling us that something must be done about Iran's nuclear capabilities before--well, you can sketch in the rest. And as with Iraq, we're now hearing ominous reports from Iraqi exiles, talk of secret facilities, words of firm resolve about the need for action, should diplomacy fail (as it inevitably will, should the Bushies get their way)...."

[LINKED @ 1:34 PM EST 11.18.04]

PANDAGON (Jesse Taylor)

"Jon Henke really, really doesn't get it ... Jon's forgetting one teensy aspect of the argument: people still need health insurance... When I have no money, I get sick of eating generic cereal, but that doesn't mean that I go start eating glass. When I'm tired of having a hole in my roof, I don't go live on the street. When my back hurts, I don't break my spine so that I can't feel anything from the neck down. It's the most classically facile of political arguments: if X is a problem, then you must support not X. Unfortunately not X takes a bad system that gives people something and turns into a gaping black hole that gives people nothing. It seems to be the Bush plan, too..."

[LINKED @ 11:44 AM EST 11.18.04]

FEMINISTING

"As an update from my post a wee back on recent bizarre trends Playboy has taken on, including neked video game characters, this week they have introduced their brand-new “hamburger honeys”, otherwise known as McDonald’s employees. Sigh."

[LINKED @ 10:38 AM EST 11.18.04]

LEAN LEFT

"Jon Stewart: President Bush's election victory, combined with GOP gains in Congress have given America's Christian conservatives, well, whatever it is they get instead of boners. In the immortal words of Say Uncle, Heh!"

[LINKED @ 9:59 AM EST 11.18.04]

ATRIOS

"Holy Crap - Really. I don't even know what to say about this [administration scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance]. I think the fact that insurance is linked to employment is a bad way of doing things, but this obviously isn't the way to solve it... bye bye health insurance for a hell of a lot of people."

[LINKED @ 8:56 AM EST 11.18.04]

TALKING POINTS MEMO

"Just pick a Republican member of Congress, call the number on their website and ask. Don't be rude or confrontational. Just a simple question: Did Congressperson such-and-such support the DeLay Rule in the GOP caucus meeting on Wednesday. After you get your answer, drop us a line and let us know what you hear. Did they vote for the DeLay Rule or are they members of the Shays Handful?"

[LINKED @ 12:53 AM EST 11.18.04]

DIGBY

"Christopher Hayes spent time with undecided voters in Wisconsin and lived to tell the tale. His experience confirms my impression that these people were pretty stupid, but they are stupid in interesting and unusual ways I didn't expect." [LINKED @ 12:01 AM EST 11.18.04]

METEOR BLADES (Daily Kos)

"With November likely to be the bloodiest month of a war that has cost the lives of 1,212 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, rumor has it that George Bush’s connection with his pal Vladimir is about to pay off. This could be BS. Stratfor's July report that the White House was negotiating with Russia for 40,000 troops in Iraq didn't pan out (or was utterly bogus). The latest report comes from a Russian weekly whose reliability is unknown to me." [LINKED @ 11:15 PM EST 11.17.04]

TALK LEFT

"A Kansas judge yesterday told a 24 year old marijuana possessor that he could either go to jail or join the military." [LINKED @ 9:44 PM EST 11.17.04]

MEDIA MATTERS

"The discussion board at FreeRepublic.com, a prominent right-wing online forum, contains numerous posts from members advocating violence against NBC News correspondent Kevin Sites, who recorded and reported the close-range shooting by a U.S. Marine of an unarmed and wounded Iraqi insurgent." [LINKED @ 8:27 PM EST 11.17.04]

JAMES WOLCOTT

"It is fitting and proper that Condi Rice replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Putting a black face on the rock formation of white arrogance and prerogative represented by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-et-al shows a shrewd consistency. But the face that Powell fronted for Bush's diplomatic charades was an open, amiable, somewhat ambiguous one. It offered the faint hope that someone in the administration could be reasoned with and would convey allies' concerns back to the Cowboy Jesus, that there was at least one listener in the bunch." [LINKED @ 6:25 PM EST 11.17.04]

TAPPED

"FUN WITH NAMES. You have to hand it to George W. Bush: He has a very sophisticated sense of humor. Naming a “Spellings” (his former education policy advisor in Texas, Margaret Spellings) as education secretary? Next, perhaps someone named “Nucular” to replace former energy secretary Spencer Abraham?" [LINKED @ 6:08 PM EST 11.17.04]

NOT GENIUSES

" I'm for tax simplification. Everyone is. The question is what kind. We can't have a battle over tax simplification. We will lose. We cannot let Republicans conflate "tax simplification" with "flat tax" or "national sales tax" the way they have conflated "moral" and "conservative" with "homophobic" and "seeking to bankrupt the country." [LINKED @ 5:57 PM EST 11.17.04]

MAX BLUMENTHAL

"Brad Carson's article on how Crazy Tom Coburn defeated him is a must read. Here's an excerpt which provides a pretty startling snapshot of the Christian right's domination of Oklahoma politics..." [LINKED @ 3:52 PM EST 11.17.04]

NOAM SCHEIBER (TNR)

"...the broader point I'd make is that Democrats' cultural problem with seniors is taking care of itself pretty quickly, and without us having to do much about it. (Everything we know about gay marriage suggests that the earlier you were born, the more likely you are to oppose it. So it's only a matter of time before...) If you only have a serious problem with one group on culture issues per se, and that group is dying off pretty quickly, it doesn't make a ton of sense to think in strictly cultural terms about what you do going forward." [LINKED @ 3:13 PM EST 11.17.04]

BOPNEWS (Glenn Smith)

"Amid the controversies about election fraud, hacked voting machines, bizarre vote-counting procedures, and statistically impossible results in some jurisdictions, an ugly fact is often forgotten: Americans do not have an absolute right to vote. None of us." [LINKED @ 2:17 PM EST 11.17.04]

TALKING POINTS MEMO

"Gonzales goes from White House Counsel to Attorney General; Rice goes from NSC to State; Spellings goes from Domestic Policy Advisor to Education Secretary. Each of them defined mainly by their loyalty to President Bush. As we wrote earlier, the shift is not toward right, left or center, but toward more direct White House control and the silencing of dissident voices in the civil service." [LINKED @ 1:05 PM EST 11.17.04]

BOB FERTIK (Democrats.com)

"Stolen Election 2004: Wednesday Update - Bev Harris storms Volusia County FL, home of Daytona Beach. Volusia was the scene of the least-known crime in Stolen Election 2000, when the county's Diebold machines registered NEGATIVE 16,022 votes for Al Gore. That "error" caused the Gore campaign to believe Gore lost Florida, prompting Gore to call Bush privately to concede." [LINKED @ 12:12 PM EST 11.17.04]

SISYPHUS SHRUGGED

"[NSA nominee Stephen Hadley] Ignored the threat of terror in favor of a push for missile defense? check. Allowed al Qaeda to go unpunished for the murder of US citizens on the Cole? check. Ineffective manager? check. Ignored warnings from the CIA that the case for WMDs in Iraq was shaky and arranged for the President of the United States to lie to the world about it in his State of the Union address? check. Sounds like a terrific choice." [LINKED @ 11:40 AM EST 11.17.04]

JUAN COLE

"Jim Crane of AP expresses healthy skepticism about the US military's hopes of making friends in Fallujah after they had flattened parts of the city. He also predicts that information about the true extent of civilian casualties will start coming out soon, when the Marines' grip on the city lightens." [LINKED @ 11:25 AM EST 11.17.04]

BULL MOOSE

"Today, the lower chamber elephants are expected to change their rules to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in leadership posts. And this is the party of law and order? This rule change is being done to make certain that the Chief Exterminator Tom DeLay is not removed as Majority Leader if a Texas jury indicts him since it has already thrown the book at three of his political cronies for allegedly laundering campaign contributions. And this is the party of morality opposed to relativism? " [LINKED @ 9:45 AM EST 11.17.04]

HECATE (ESCHATON)

"Say what you will, I like Kerry's style. No one would have been surprised if he'd decided to take a long vacation, but he's back doing the people's business. Thanks, John Kerry." [LINKED @ 9:05 AM EST 11.17.04]

KALEJA (DAILY KOS)

"The Republican Party is the party of "fuck". The Democratic Party should become the party of "shit". We need to start using the word "shit" when it's called for. As in "Mister McClellan, this press briefing is bullshit; can we get some real answers?" As in "our soldiers in Iraq are in the middle of some pretty serious shit." As in "full of shit." As in "cut the shit." Because I'm tired of this shit. America is in deep shit, and we need to get our shit together..." [LINKED @ 11:15 PM EST 11.16.04]

JULIAGOOLIA (DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND)

"Anyone catching these nutjobs on cspan! The christian defense coalition

Patrick Mahoney - a nut job pulling power plays with Frist." [LINKED @ 11:09 PM EST 11.16.04]

KEVIN DRUM

"THE SPECTER SHOW....You know, this whole Arlen Specter thing is turning out pretty well for Republicans, isn't it? At this point, despite a hail of criticism from the pro-life forces, it looks like he's going to win the Judiciary Committee chairmanship after all. A triumph for moderation!" [LINKED @ 9:09 PM EST 11.16.04]