John Edwards screwed the pooch

Sure I'm a little disappointed. Well more than a little. But there's shinola to be discerned ...

-- Don't you think he could've done better than this? Seriously? Christ, she looks like Eileen Smith. (That wasn't too screechy, was it?)

-- Now that the National Enquirer is reputable journalism, when do you think the traditional corporate media will begin reporting on Bush's alcoholism? And what it could mean for the next war he intends to start?

-- McBlogger picked a SCAB, and now it's bleeding.

-- Martha is posting peevishly, but the MOMocrats have a cooler head. So does Digby.

-- Who's going to keynote the Johnson-Rayburn-Richards dinner?

-- Sorry if I missed it; did somebody die as a result of John Edwards' lies? Is he still serving in the United States Senate? Introducing legislation such as the Marriage Protection Amendment?

Back in a moment to our regularly scheduled media frenzies, like the Olympics and the brand-new war between Russia and Georgia.

Olympic news

-- Pollution shrouds Beijing as opening ceremonies set

The wall of gray haze around the National Stadium and across the city cut visibility down to a mile. On the eve of opening ceremonies, Beijing’s polluted air took center stage Thursday as the most visibly pressing problem for Olympic organizers who had promised to clean up the Chinese capital. ...

The notoriously dirty air in this megacity of 17 million has been a leading concern since Beijing won the bid for the Olympics in 2001. China has poured 140 billion yuan—$20 billion—into “greening” the city, including doubling the number of subway lines, retrofitting factories with cleaner technology and building urban parks. But environmental efforts have often been outpaced by constant construction and increased traffic.

To help ensure clean air for the Olympics, Beijing officials imposed drastic measures in mid-July, including pulling half the city’s 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, halting most construction and closing dozens of factories.

-- Islamic group issues new threat

Police shut down the bustling bazaar in the capital of China’s restive Muslim region of Xinjiang on Friday amid threats from an Islamic group that attackers might target buses, trains and planes during the Olympics.

A sign at the entrance of the bazaar in Urumqi did not explain why the area, surrounded by mosques with minarets, was off limits as the country prepared to kick off the Summer Games thousands of miles away in Beijing.

Even a KFC restaurant in the shopping area—filled with touristy shops selling carpets and jade—was closed, and a guard sitting on the steps shooed people away.

The sprawling, far-flung western region of Xinjiang has long been a source of trouble for China’s communist government. The rugged, mineral-rich territory is populated by the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority that has had tense relations with the Chinese. Many Uighurs favor independence or greater autonomy for Xinjiang, which takes up one-sixth of China’s land mass and borders eight Central Asian countries.

-- Bush dedicates new embassy, scolds Chinese on free speech

Speaking on China’s turf the very day it hosted the opening of the Olympic Games, President Bush on Friday prodded the communist country to lessen repression and “let people say what they think.”

The president’s challenge, issued as he dedicated a massive new U.S. embassy in Beijing, capped a volley of sharp exchanges between the two nations this week about China’s human rights record. ...

Bush came to Beijing mainly to watch U.S. athletes compete and enjoy the spectacle of the summer games, but a round of political one-upmanship has heavily defined his trip to Asia. He bluntly criticized China’s human rights record in a speech in Thailand, which prompted China to warn the U.S. president to stop meddling in its business.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang admonished Bush just before he got to China.

“We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues,” he said. The spokesman added that “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion. These are indisputable facts.”

-- Human rights protests in Hong Kong

A British man was taken away after unfurling banners that denounced China’s human rights record on a major bridge in Hong Kong ahead of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony Friday. ...

Matt Pearce, a longtime Hong Kong resident from Bristol, England, hung two banners on road signs on Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge that said, “We want human rights and democracy” and “The people of China want freedom from oppression.” ...

TV footage showed Pearce wearing a mask of a horse’s head and a white shirt bearing the Olympic rings while carrying a guitar. His protest ended after about an hour when men in plainclothes hustled him away. ...

Olympic organizers moved the equestrian event from Beijing to the former British colony of Hong Kong because of a rash of equine diseases and substandard quarantine procedures on the mainland. Hong Kong has a prominent horse racing scene.

Oh yeah, there will be some athletic competition going on also.

TV coverage of Fast Eddie worse than the storm itself

Ken Hoffman is dead solid perfect:

1. With the possible exception of the new TV commercial with Big Oil whining that they're really making very little money (yeah, right, and Hooters doesn't want you to notice their waitresses), nothing on TV is funnier than our local stations promising calm, reasoned coverage of approaching storms and hurricanes ... and then hysterically screaming, "The sky is falling! Run for your lives! Women, children and weathermen first!"

2. The 10 p.m. news: Channel 11 went to its bullpen and dusted off Dr. Neil Frank as Tropical Storm Eduardo "inches toward" the Gulf Coast. Anchorman Greg Hurst said Dr. Neil would "put everything in perspective" for us. I wonder how Channel 11's chief weatherman Gene Norman feels about Dr. Neil showing up for the big story? It's like Norman quarterbacks the team the whole season, but Dr. Neil is brought out of retirement for the Super Bowl.

3. Channel 13 weatherman Tim Heller predicted winds of 50-60 mph when Edouard touches down. During Rita, Heller looked like a kid who lost his puppy when the hurricane missed us. It would have been his first big story since arriving in Houston. So it was slightly understandable. ...

4. Whoa, Channel 2 just headlined a story "Survival Checklist." Survival? That's a little hysterical, isn't it? The weatherman said the storm surge would be 3-4 feet. That's not life-threatening, that's rad surfing, dude.

5. Do all the stations do a story from the same Home Depot, or do they spread the free plugs around?

6. I'm watching the Astros game live from Wrigley Field. The weather is much, much worse in Chicago. Lance Berkman just saw a lightning bolt and tucked tail and ran into the dugout. He'll never be a TV reporter. No guts, no ratings.

7. (11 p.m.) Channel 11's Vincente Arenas is on Galveston Island. He just held up a gizmo that measures wind speed. It said 8 mph. You know that ceiling fan at the West Alabama Ice House that gently stirs the air? That's 10 mph. ... Have you seen the billboards for McDonald's new Southern-style Chicken Sandwich? The sign says, "available seven days a week, including Sundays." Hey, if you're going to flat-out steal Chick-fil-A's sandwich, right down to the pickles, you might want to show some respect and not mock Chick-fil-A for giving its employees Sunday off.

8. (After midnight.) At the risk of making a prediction that could backfire, especially if Edouard strengthens and causes pain to our area, I'm saying the storm will be nothing but a heavy rain. I like to err on the side of danger. Caution is for amateurs. ... Why don't my neighbors turn off their sprinklers? It's going to pour buckets Tuesday.

I walked the dog about 2:30 a.m. and it was warm, muggy, and as still and quiet as you would expect it to be at two-thirty in the morning. The storm coverage anchors had all turned in at midnight -- saving their sputtering for the 4 a.m. flash report, I presume -- so there was the usual nada (infomercials) on the tube. I surfed the net until I got sleepy again at 5, sliding off comfortably in the awareness that we weren't going to be endangered no matter what the talking heads on my teevee said.

It was a nice day off. I'll take a hurricane like that any time.

Edouard "inches", "creeps", "plods", "slogs"...

... even "ambles". In some places along the Texas Gulf coast (probably Jefferson County) he is "pounding" and "hitting".

Some are live-blogging -- zzz -- some are Twittering (this is a sample from yesterday's rehearsal, creativity courtesy Julie P at MOMocrats):

8 AM AM
Woke to screaming wind

8:01 AM
Never mind, it was kids, not wind

8:02 AM
Kids were screaming because they heard the wind

8:05 AM
Gave kids prebought premade preservative and sugar laden scones from store.
& bottled water. B/c we dump health and eco @ first sign of mother nature

8:07 AM
Breakfast didn't last long

8:12 AM
Sugar hit, storm too. Kids and winds are engaged in howling competition

8:14 AM
Will keep you up to date until power goes ou...

10:28 AM
Power's back

11:04 AM
Fish are in the yard, and power's flick...

6:22 PM
Everyone's heading to the beer garden in Clear Lake Shores to swap downed
tree stories!

Obviously it never got this bad. Like the batteries and the MREs, we can always save it for the next one. One last thing, from Congressman John Culberson's e-mail newsletter yesterday (bold emphasis his):

Dear Friends,

Tropical Storm Edouard appears headed our way; and some predictions suggest we could start feeling the effects of the storm sometime after midnight tonight.

After the destruction of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, Houstonians know that no tropical storm should be taken lightly. While the winds may not be as strong, the rain can be even more devastating.

Here are some tips I follow to keep my family and home safe during hurricane season:

...

Lie on the floor under a table or another sturdy object.

My batshit conservative Congressman, lying under a table in his house, Twittering.

I can easily picture that.