No link yet, but apparently MSNBC is reporting that Sen. Tim Johnson D-SD has had a stroke. Ironically, it seems he was very active on just that very issue while in office.

Refresher Course #1
Refresher Course #2
Refresher Course #3 with quote:

After the Republicans have admitted to a thumping, why is it that the only one complaining on the Democratic side is James Carville, who today in addition to trashing Howard Dean, praised the RNC, the outfit that brought us the racist ad that defeated Harold Ford, James’ supposed candidate for Chair? Perhaps he’s not aware that under Dean in this midterm election the DNC has raised record cash —- all hard dollars — including three times as much from major donors, eight times as much online and made a $30 million investment in the ‘06 cycle, three times as much as the DNC put into the last midterm. Not to mention we made an $8m overhaul of our voter file which was successfully used in 47 states and through the 50 state strategy invested in states like Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana and Montana where we had critical victories on Tuesday.

Time to shut your stupid, jealous, whining, insignificant hole. But of course, he won't:

Democratic strategist James Carville says his party should dump Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic Party because of incompetence.

This is one of the best and most complete recitations of why Rahm sucks goats that I've read since the elections. Save it, and throw it in the face of everyone who parrots the "victory for centrists" and "moderate mandate" crap. Here are some highlights:

The failure of Emanuel's strategy can be demonstrated by the numbers. Of the 21 "first wave" picks announced on April 27th, only nine have been declared winners, with one (Joe Courtney in CT-02) holding a 170 vote lead over the incumbent, and three others losing by 1400 (Madrid, NM-01), 2700 (Kilroy, OH-05) and 3600 (Burner WA-08) votes in races that are still considered "too close to call." Four of Emanuel's "first wave" picks lost by over 10,000 votes (Busansky, FL-09; Lucas KY-04; Derby NV-02; and Cranley, OH-01).

Only three of Emanuel's picks received support by the two largest ActBlue organizations (Murphy, PA-06; and Gillibrand, NY-20 both supported by Blue America, with Burner supported by NetRoots.) At least three of the DCCC's "first wave" picks were against incumbents who were directly implicated in the Abramoff scandal (Hayworth, Taylor, Sweeney), and a fourth (Nick Lampson) was running against a write in candidate for Tom Delay's old seat. (Lampson did not run for Delay's unexpired term, but his Write-In opponent received more votes in that contest than Lampson received in the general election.)

What is the solution to the mess in Iraq? This is a question that I've pondered a great deal, and now that we have a Democratic majority, I expect a large number of people are considering anew. I confess: I have almost no hope that there is a way out of Bush's qWagmire that won't be painful, bloody, and expensive.

The facts are depressing. I accept the estimate of nearly 700,000 dead Iraqis, and even if it's half that, we're still talking about a huge population in Iraq that is angry and vengeance minded. One can hardly blame them. Even if not all of the families of the dead "blame America" for their loss, the sectarian bloodshed seems to me to be so well progressed at this point as to guarantee a generation of conflict at the least. Say what you will about Saddam's brutality as a dictator, at least he understood the need to keep a lid on the worst kind of violence. I've seen more than one joke/cartoon opining that what we need now is a strongman who can run Iraq with an iron fist.