It's like reliving your old childhood magazine. Something is missing from one of these people. Can you figure out what it is?

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The national media has spent the week covering storm torn Texas' damage from Hurricane Ike. Something that appeared to fall off the radar though was the damage Ike left in other parts of the Midwest. Here in the Greater Cincinnati area, we were hit with high winds last Sunday, gusting upwards of 80 mph. These near hurricane force winds wreaked havoc on an area that isn't used to such weather systems.

By the time the winds died down on Sunday night, our area saw close to a million people without power. Ohio overall saw close to 2 million in the dark, and as of today there are still about ¼ million people without power in the state.

Luckily, I escaped damage to my home. I was without power for about 12 hours, phone for 4 days and internet for 6 days. There are others who weren't so lucky. The picture above is a couple miles from me where a tree ended up crushing a car. This was a common scene around Ohio, and cars weren't the only casualties. Four deaths were caused by the storm in the Greater Cincinnati area and numerous houses sustained massive damage from down trees and limbs.

However the story doesn't stop there. People ended up losing refrigerators full of food. Gas stations had hour long lines, what restaurants that were open were running out of food, and grocery stores had to throw away millions in stock (including Kroger, which is based out of Cincinnati). The saddest part is all the people on fixed income who had to toss away their food. Luckily, state and local officials are working to issue food stamps to these people so they can restock.

At least normalcy seems to be trumping the frantic week we saw. They are hoping to have power back on to all those affected by this Sunday and we might see a normal week of school and work around here. It did take me by surprise that the media was rather silent on this aftermath of Ike. I saw a blurb about it on the crawl of MSNBC in the middle of the week, but that was it. If you have any stories to share about this massive storm, please do so in the comments. It will be interesting to hear how other people weathered this past week in the area.

(Additional photos and video of the damage Ike left in the Greater Cincinnati area can be found here.)

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that the Republicans are considering delaying the start of their convention because of Tropical Storm Gustav, which is expected to become a hurricane before making landfall on Tuesday. The White House is also debating whether Bush should cancel his speech or not.

Gustav is not the only problem Mother Nature is throwing at our country. Tropical Storm Hannah is out there strengthening also, and expected to become a hurricane in the next couple of days and could hit the U.S. towards the end of next week.

As if that isn't enough, there are two more potential storms growing.

(image from the National Hurricane Center)

The yellow area is a tropical wave that has less than a 20% chance of becoming a storm. It has been pretty unstable over the past 24 hours, but has reached a higher potential at times as it does try to organize.

The orange area is a little more serious. That contains a 20-50% chance of becoming a tropical storm. It just developed last night and has become more organized over the past 12 hours.

So we are looking at a very bumpy ride over the next couple of weeks. If the Republicans do delay their convention, I don't know when they will have a clear shot to hold it.

(cross posted at IntoxiNation)

For a preview of what's to come with Biden on the ticket, today he fired back at McCain's multiple homes with a nice little gem.

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This was such a powerful way of working McCain's housing problem from this past week into the current economic situation facing America. Biden delivered it perfectly and the crowd loved it. You can bet the right wing is ready with a counter strike, but I don't think that will faze Biden.

Obama's and Biden's full speeches available here.

You have to love the line "Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets, but we sure do." Oh really, Mr. $100 Million Man? Most family budgets don't include $273,000 for servants. In fact, the average American house is only worth $218,000, significantly less than you pay for butlers.

Just when you thought the wingnut spin on McCain's home ownership amnesia couldn't get any worse, we are presented with this from Powerline:

The latest campaign kerfuffle is Obama's effort to make hay out of John McCain's inability to tell a reporter how many houses he owns. McCain mumbled something about condos and said the reporter should talk to his wife. Predictably, Obama is trying to spin this exchange as showing that McCain is "out of touch." (emphasis added)

First let's refresh everyone's memory with a little audio from McCain's now infamous comments of yesterday. The audio is still here, in which McCain clearly states (the opposite of mumbling) that he would have to have his staff get back to the reporter. No wife and no mumbling.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg from wingnut spintopia. The second paragraph is even more telling:

I can relate, though. For example, if a reporter asked me how many ties I own, there's no way I could answer. Just like McCain, I'd tell him he has to ask my wife. Likewise if someone wants to know how many Wii games my kids have.

Let's overlook the sexist overtone given in that statement; I don't think many wives out there would consider themselves the keeper of inventory for their husbands. Instead let's look at this very poor comparison being made. I couldn't tell you how many socks I own, yet I can sure answer how many houses I own. I believe this is something a vast majority of Americans could claim. Instead, for the Republicans, ties are now the equivalent of homes, which begs the most important question - how many ties are in foreclosure?

The FCC has ruled that Comcast is violating internet rules in their continued effort to block BitTorrent traffic:

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

"The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."

A lot of people hear BitTorrent and think of illegal file swapping. That is a reasonable concern, but there are also a lot of legitimate uses for BitTorrent and for Comcast to punish those legitimate users simply because some people use the technology for illegal purposes is wrong. Of course there are other problems presented here. A main one being the fact that a large portion of this country has no competition in deciding who their internet provider is. If they don't chose a company like Comcast, or any of the other giants, then they are stuck with dial-up internet, or one of the other, more costly, solutions, such as satellite internet.

Hopefully this will put us a step closer to getting some actual net neutrality legislation, something that is long over do.

That has been the meme for that past few weeks when people talked about the Democratic Primary. When Obama would lose a state by 20% or 30%, the media would go into a frenzy about him having a problem with that state's populace, ignoring the fact that there were two very active campaigns going on by two awesome candidates, and one campaign had the power of one of the most popular Presidents in American history behind her.

So let's ask about party unity. Where is it when it comes to the Republicans? Here is the results from last night's Republican primary in South Dakota, almost three months to the day after John McCain became the presumptive nominee:

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UPDATE: (Nicole) Not that we want to slight the states of Montana and South Dakota, but before a winner is declared in either state, the networks have all called Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee. Congratulations to Obama for an incredibly hard fought primary race and we're now off to the general.

During the third segment of Keith Olbermann's interview with Scott McClellan, he reaffirmed what we all have know - FOX is the White House's buddy:

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Another interesting part came during this exchange:

Olbermann: "Were the critics in the media largely right"
McClellan: "In terms of Iraq they were largely right"

Yup but instead these people ended up being called names like "unpatriotic" or "freedom haters", when all along they should have been called "the voice of reason".

From the Huffington Post:

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."

Read on.

I wonder if the media will pay as much attention to this as they did Jeremiah Wright?