more good news-in bullet format today!!

• Well, this hurricane appears to be even stronger, at least at time of writing, than Katrina. Apparently, 1 million have been ordered evacuated from the Gulf Coast. That's all very well, and as we've just seen in Katrina, obviously if people have transportation, they're gonna leave, by and large. At least according to this Houston Chronicle article, "hundreds" of buses had been sent in to evacuate those with no other means of evacuation. Galveston mayor Lyda Ann Thomas stated late Wednesday that the city had used nearly all its buses and so folks on the island would really need to get off it before Rita arrived. BTW, WTF is with giving all these storms nice names? They ruin the idea of nice folks with these names. They should call them something like Jezebel and Agatha and something. Not all these nice names when these things are sometimes killers. OK, well, that's not really that important. Don't know what to say about this impending disaster, although I do feel sorry for the folks who were evacuated to Houston from NO and will now have to leave a second time. Reminds me of my time as a student missionary in Croatia (teaching English as an undergrad) shortly after the War there in the '90s. There were some older people there who were living in one of the dorms at the school where I taught and they'd been evacuated during the Second World War when Germany shelled Yugoslavia, and then, when I was there, these lovely old folks had been in this dorm-and most of them were over 70-for quite a time. Anyway...



• It seems the Dems are stepping up pressure for an independent panel to investigate the fuck-ups of Katrina. See Dems? It's not hard to show backbone. People like it. Yeesh. It's hard work teachin' you Dems anythin'.



• Don't know quite what to make of the claims by the....um, National Enquirer that Dear Leader is drinking again. I was skeptical, as years of seeing Weekly World News headlines with apparently limitless combinations of Elvis, aliens, births, Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, God, and large insects might (should) have prepared. But, according to The News Blog, the Enquirer pays their sources. And according to Jack Shafer of Slate, they vet their stories very carefully in order to shed the trashy image that they have acquired, at least to some degree. Anyway, the story's there, for what it's worth. I would say that if he isn't on the bottle, that it's not very encouraging. I mean, the decisions he's made...not that I'm hoping he is. I would say he's under a lot of stress...but it never looks like it. We saw lots of pictures of Clinton in shirt sleeves, tie loosened, face reddened, hard at work; and he never had Abu Ghraib or 9/11 or Katrina to fend with...coincidence? Anyway. The story is what it is. Steve Gilliard talks about invoking the 25th Amendment, but again I'd say, he's been working at a pathetic level for 5 years nearly, would we really be a lot worse off if he was having a tipple now and then? I think not.



• Crappy news on gas prices. I'm definitely thinking Toyota Prius on my next car.



• Update on Monday entry. I was a bit uncertain as to why Dems wouldn't agree to the Republicans' Katrina commission although it wasn't too hard to deduce. I only said what I thought was reasonable and I felt comfortable enough printing it. I couldn't find-and this is amazing, an article stating exactly what their objections were to the commission and I wanted my article sourced. I thought it was quite a big story but yet Google News-nothing, RawStory-couldn't find a link, tried to remember which blog I had seen it on, and then today I found that it was from Billmon, probably the only blog which I regularly read which I didn't check up. Anyway, just a clarification, fwiw.



• And nothing like a good ol' Tucker Carlson smackdown. The 12 year-old MSNBC host is more irritated that Bill Clinton has the nerve, the nerve to criticize Monkey Boy when things are going so...well. (I woulda criticized him when they were going well, but I don't remember such a time, didn't say Bubba) Carlson claims that he has been holding Monkey Boy's feet to the fire right from day one (shure ya have Tucky) and just can't abide Bubba saying anything about Monkey Boy. It's amazing, the nerve of these GOPers. Their guys are this bad, but Clinton comments on anything and they're beside themselves. I swear, it's a psychological problem. He wouldn't concede that Bubba would not have let Katrina happen. Anyway, Bill Maher has his way with Mr. 12 Year-old. Enjoy.