Good morning! On this date in 1952, Richard Nixon delivered his famous — or infamous — “Checkers” speech. Nixon, then running for vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, had come under fire for living large on a fund some fat-cat donors had put together ostensibly to reimburse him for various campaign expenses. Nixon gave a touching speech about his boyhood growing up in poverty, attacked his detractors and urged people to write letters of support to the RNC. And he defiantly insisted that “regardless of what they say about it,” he would never return one gift: “a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate” that his six-year-old daughter Trish had named “Checkers.”

Stat of the day: 14 percent — share of the 1,917 weeks since the start of 1978 that both the House and Senate put in five full days of work, according to an analysis by WaPo.

Expanding air war…

• Hannah Allam reports for McClatchy that the US “and unidentified ‘partner nations'” — which other sources say were Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain — launched a heavy bombing campaign in Syria early this morning. The attacks targeted “not only positions belonging to the Islamic State, but also bases in three provinces of its chief jihadi rival, the al Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.”
• Juan Cole writes that these “shock and awe” campaigns never work. “The ISIL guerrillas will fade away, perhaps inside the city, where you can’t bomb them without killing a lot of civilians (and they will video the victims for you). Then there will just be occasional drone strikes of the sort that were relatively ineffectual in Afghanistan and FATA in Pakistan.”
• Meanwhile, In Iraq, an army base in Anbar province was hit by multiple Islamic State suicide bombers. Loveday Morris reports for WaPo that “between 300 and 500 soldiers were missing and believed to be dead, kidnapped or in hiding.”
• The Israeli air force shot down a Syrian MIG fighter that it says briefly entered its airspace. It’s unclear whether the incursion was intentional. The incident marked the first time Israel has shot down a Syrian aircraft since the early 1980s. Ha’aretz reports that the pilots appear to have ejected.
• And in Yemen, which Barack Obama held up as a model for the Syria campaign, Shiite rebels swept into the capital, where they “seized homes, offices and military bases of their Sunni foes on Monday, forcing many into hiding and triggering an exodus of civilians from the city after a week of fighting that left 340 people dead. Ahmed al-Haj and Maggie Michael report for the AP. ALSO: Vox’s Zach Beauchamp explains why “Yemen is such a disaster.”

Inversions –> At Forbes, Jeremy Bogaisky reports that Obama’s “Treasury Department issued new rules Monday evening to discourage U.S.-based companies from moving their headquarters overseas to reduce their tax bills to Uncle Sam.”

Dropped –> Google announced that it is ending its support for ALEC — and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that when it comes to global warming, the organization is “just literally lying.” Jon Brodkin reports for Ars Technica. AND: Climate scientist Dana Nuccitelli writes in The Guardian about that front page Wall Street Journal piece downplaying the significance of climate change. “The periodical follows the Murdoch media pattern of sowing doubt about climate change threats,” he writes.

Shady –> Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC “misidentified its second-largest donor last month” as a wealth management firm that denied they’d ponied up $300,000. Michael Beckel reports for The Center for Public Integrity that it appears that the money was provided by the parents of Alaska Senate candidate Dan Sullivan.

Good question –> The Nation’s Dave Zirin wonders whether there is a connection between brain injuries among NFL players and their apparent propensity for domestic violence.

Grim –> At Slate, Tara Smith writes that, “nine months into the biggest Ebola outbreak in history, and the situation is only going from bad to worse.” She has the latest on the epidemic.

“What they don’t want you to know about admissions and financial aid” –> In the current issue of Washington Monthly, Stephen Burd and Rachel Fishman offer “ten ways that colleges work you over.”

Toxic conversations –> At Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner takes a deep dive into the yawning divide that the latest Israeli operation in Gaza has opened within the Jewish community — especially between older and younger generations.

Hating democracy –> Caitlin MacNeal reports for TPM that “an armed militia group in Wisconsin plans to confront people who signed the petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) at the polls on Nov. 4.” What could possibly go wrong?

The final frontier –> It took 10 months to travel the 442 million miles to Mars, but NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft entered the Red Planet’s atmosphere on Sunday, and will start studying its upper atmosphere. Via: CNN.

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