Vis Susie Madrak at Suburban Guerrilla:

• Maxspeak, you listen.

• Atrios and the best Thanksgiving post ever.

• The full 18 minute version of Alice's Restaurant on YouTube.

I'm not in a particularly upbeat mood this Thanksgiving. I know we just won an election and hopefully have started on a path to end the War in Iraq and take back our country from the right-wing extremists who have ruled since 1994. I'm thankful that the days of appointing right-wing ideologues to our federal courts and the Supreme Court may be behind us.

But I live in a peculiar world, one that is filled with days spent visiting mostly non-violent prisoners in jails, and it saddens me that for them and their children and parents, I see little hope.

What's cooking at your house today? Are you home or away for the Thanksgiving holiday? And what are you most thankful for this year?

There's no cooking at my house, I'm going out to friends tomorrow evening for Turkey this year. I've also got clients all afternoon and the TL mom went back into the hospital yesterday afternoon, so it will be my second Thanksgiving Day in a row spent with her and the medical personnel who spend their day taking care of others.

I'll be blogging a bit through the holiday, so if you're on line, stop on by, add some good thoughts, and have a great holiday.

Don't forget to tune in to your local radio station tomorrow which is bound to be playing Arlo Guthrie's Alices' Restaurant about the draft way back when....and check out the Wall St. Journal today ( link) which profiles Alice and what she is doing today.

Dean Barnett says:

And Kos is different?

Yes. Although he rips Democrats when he’s of a mind to do so, he also brings something else to the party. He brings volunteers and money and buzz. Although my modem might well explode as I type these words, Jon Tester would not be a senator starting in January if it weren’t for the Daily Kos. Same for Jim Webb. He never would have made it out of the primary.

4) Okay. So we should be more like Kos?

Not me. I have no interest in being a tool for the Republican Party, or at least not anymore so than I already am. But, and again my modem might explode, there is no denying that the Daily Kos is an asset to the Democratic Party in terms of winning elections. Or at least it was this past cycle.

See also James Joyner and Ed Morrisey, and George Allen's blog man Jon Henke.

h/t Conn Carroll.

I'm in court today, so here's an open thread for you.

I'm still busy at work so here's an open thread. There's also some good diaries this weekend:

• November 19, 2006 - Cheney Says Dems Can't Stop Bush's War With Iran
• November 17, 2006 - Keisler must be blocked.
• November 17, 2006 - New Report Finds Bush Banned Rights Before Military Tribunal Law Enacted By Congress
• November 16, 2006 What Do Hunger & Torture Have In Common? No Pain Equals No Existence.

Since I'm traveling today, I think an open thread is appropriate.

To set the mood, here's a Friday Funnies I received by e-mail:

In honor of Trent Lott's return to power, coffee shops are bringing back the popular "Trent Latte."

It's separate but equal parts of milk and coffee.

Also, Poor Man begins the pre-nominations phase for Golden Wingers Awards.

I'm heading back to Omaha Friday where I'll be until after court ends Monday afternoon. This sculpture [larger version here] is my favorite of the many public art works there. It's a tribute to the workers in the labor unions that helped build Omaha and is the second largest labor memorial in the country.

It's the Tuesday open thread, where readers take over to post their thoughts. With last week being election day, we missed it, so hopefully some of you have enough pent up to get a thread going. If you don't, or even if you do, hopefully TChris, Big Tent or LNILR will keep you updated. Enjoy.

I'm recovered from the election frenzy and thinking about the direction TalkLeft will take between now and the 2008 election, which is not far away.

Personally, I'd like to concentrate as I've always done, on the politics of crime, the crime in politics, civil liberties, criminal justice legislation in Congress, prisons, sentencing, the detainees and the War in Iraq. I haven't asked, but I suspect TChris and Last Night in Little Rock feel the same.

But I'm also grateful to Big Tent Democrat who posts on TalkLeft on politics and often exposes the non-liberal media, and glad that he has agreed to continue posting on TalkLeft even though the elections are over. After all, 2008 is right around the corner.

But, let's take a poll.

Bob Stein, a long time magazine editor, has joined the New Media, starting his own blog, Connecting.the.Dots. Here is Bob's bio:

ROBERT STEIN, editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher, is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever. We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality." This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective. The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Bob is a wise old man. Very much worth reading.

Where did the time go? I left Denver on Monday to be in D.C. for CNN's election night blogger party. I returned late Wednesday, and have court this morning at 8:30 a.m. I feel like the elections hijacked my life. I'm sure my clients feel the same way.

So I hope readers will forgive me as I take a day to re-enter my life, which as much as I sometimes wish could be spent blogging 24/7, just is not the case. In truth, it's a privilege to do both -- to have an opportunity to effect change in the real world of criminal injustice and opine here in the virtual world.

Major thanks to TChris and Big Tent Democrat for their great contributions here -- hopefully they have a bit more energy and time than I do today. In case they don't and even if they do but something else is on your minds, here's an open thread for you.