WSJ, 10/26/04:

NEWS CORP.'S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.

My favorite polling note of the morning, via mydd.com, Real Clear Politics (a right-leaning site) made this prediction on the eve of the 2000 election, based on their reading of the polls:

"November 6, 2000
Final RCP Electoral College Analysis:  Bush 446 Gore 92
Bush 51.2  Gore 41.9  Nader 5.8"

missed this over the weekend: Friedman on Iraq

"I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott said. "They call American soldiers 'The Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down that street, the Jews set up a roadblock.' "

Chuck Scarborough, in the 11 pm news lead-in: "Tomorrow, Marth Stewart moves into a gated community. It's called Prison."

okay, so I know this guy reads it

Subject: Link Exchange Request - Porn DVD

Dear Webmaster,

I have visited your site saturation.org and I think that your site could be of interest to our web site visitors.

If you would be interested in swapping links please can you email me your link details, such as the URL you would like me to link to as well as any text you wish me to use in the link and I will link back to yoursite straight away

"I don’t have any regrets. It was the best experience of my life."

from Purple Hearts, Nina Berman's new book on Iraq War veterans

via tapped, via andrew sullivan, but maybe you didn't see it:

From: "Baghdad, USConsul"
To: "Baghdad, USConsul"
Subject: Warden Message
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:36:13 +0000

Warden Message - Increased Security Awareness within the International Zone

On October 5, 2004, at approximately 1 pm, U.S. Embassy security personnel discovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Green Zone Café. A U.S. Military Explosive Ordnance Detachment safely disarmed the IED.
American citizens living or working in the International Zone are strongly encouraged to take the following security precautions:

• Limit non-essential movement within the International Zone, especially at night.
• Travel in groups of two or more.
• Carry several means of communication.
• Avoid the Green Zone Café, the Chinese Restaurants, the Lone Star restaurant and Vendor Alley.
• Conduct physical fitness training within a compound perimeter.
• Notify office personnel or friends of your travel plans in the International Zone.
  **** Conduct a thorough search of your vehicle prior to entering it.

Consular Section
US Embassy Baghdad

over at The Corner:

"WOULDN'T IT BE COOL... [Jonah Goldberg]

If Dick Cheney came out tonight and spoke in fluent jive like Mrs. Cleaver in "Airplane!"?"

Yesterday: '"In 1991, when my dad was president, he saw a threat, and that was that Saddam Hussein was going to overrun Kuwait," said Bush...' Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember Iraq actually overrunning Kuwait. Am I missing some subtlety here?

I've been using an argument a lot lately, that one way to interpret (i.e., be encouraged by) this year's polling is to look at what the polling thought of Al Gore in late-October/early-November 2000. I've been saying that right up to the election, most polls had him down 2 points or so -- and I believe a similar under-reporting of Democratic votes is happening, and will happen, in 2004.

This morning I actually looked up the numbers, presented by the essential pollingreport.com. If you look at the last days of the cycle then, Bush mostly led by more than 2 points -- 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 point leads in the last days. (Interestingly, many poll tightened up on 11/6, the eve of the election.) There's some good analysis out there on the "incumbent rule," notably at mydd.com, which predicts that undecideds always skew toward the challenger. Combine the two trends (which I'm sure are inextricably linked and more like 1+1=1.4) and a polled tie looks pretty great.

Photographer Richard Avedon Dies in Texas

Avedon was one of the two greatest living photographers, until today. What I admired most -- well, that 1960s work was pretty fucking incredible -- was that in the past 2 years he got it all back, like that image of Charlize Theron in the New Yorker. Never much liked the fashion work, but, man, he and Irving Penn changed the portrait forever and ever.

As I told a saturation reader recently, there were two books, discovered in a bookstore in 1986 at the age of 17, that propelled me out and into the photographic world: Avedon's In The American West, and Nan Goldin's Ballad. For that I can never repay him.