Midday open thread; Cal Berkeley event tonight

In case you're in the Bay Area and want to see me, Lakoff, Joan Blades, and Robert Reich tonight:

The Rockridge Institute cordially invites you and a guest to a panel discussion 7:30 p.m., Thursday, October 26 at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium on "What Are We Voting For?" with George Lakoff, Senior Fellow of the Institute and UC Berkeley Professor of Linguistics; Robert Reich, UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy; Joan Blades, cofounder of Moveon and Momsrising; and Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos. The discussion will be moderated by Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley's Center on Politics, which is a cosponsor of the event.

It's a free event and should be lots of fun. Just show up. It's first come, first served. No RSVP necessary.

And yeah, this is an open thread:

• The newly conservative ABC news network continues to insist that Democratic ads are just as bad as Republican ones without offering any proof. All their examples are, of course, Republican. They can't find any equivalent Democratic ones.

  But when you are trying to emulate Fox News, you don't need to be bothered by pesky things like the "truth" and "accuracy".

• In Bush's mind, only 25 percent want out of Iraq. It must be comforting creating one's own reality.
• OH-02: Mean Jean Schmidt is really stupid. And I mean that in the most objective way.
• More Republican lies, this time in Ohio. If I was aspiring to be a respected national news outlet like ABC, I would also report that Democrats will likely do something similar sometime in the future.
• Jerome looks at the GOP's racist media-meisters, Scott Howell and Jim Davis.

Update: Reich won't be attending the panel tonight. His mother died yesterday. My condolences to him and his family.