TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Four More Years! Four More Years!...Without the Olympics.

Weather Kicks Our Asses 2.5 million people have been asked to evacuate their homes in Florida as the state braces for the second category four hurricane in less than a month. It's hard to be a dick about something like a massive hurricane (the last one, the ineptly-spelled Hurricane Charley, killed 27 people), so I won't. If you're in Florida, I hope you're okay.

Voodoo Will Win This One, Even if Relief Pitching Doesn't This one is for Marcus-Marcus: Red Sox fans, consulting the inscrutable events of the world like a bunch of oracles at Delphi, belief that the dread Curse of the Bambino may have been broken this season in an odd coincidence. A teenager who lives at Babe Ruth's old house was attending a game at Fenway Park when he got beaned with a foul ball (and lost two teeth). Is this a sign from the baseball gods that the curse is over? I don't know, but I was just tickled pink to see the Yankees lose 22-0.

RNC Wrap-up Special #1: Zell Miller, Act Like a Bitch and Get Treated Like a Bitch What's the matter, Zell? Your new friends not as accomodating as you'd hoped? Miller, the "Democratic" Senator and former chief of staff for Lester Maddox (the axe-wielding last segregationist governor in America), gave a crazed performance at the keynote address on Wednesday. As I predicted, it has backfired: In the face of immediate criticism, the Bushies are now kicking Miller to the curb. The charge was led by dragon lady Laura Bush, who dissed Miller on TV early Thursday; by last night, Miller and his wife were quietly dropped from the list of people who would get to watch Bush's speech from the president's private VIP box. Now, the Republicans are saying that Miller "spoke only for himself." Really? The guy who delivered the keynote address at your convention spoke only for himself? That's certainly a novel way of doing things.

RNC Wrap-Up Special #2: At Least We Don't Have to Worry About a Jenna Bush Presidency The reviews are in: Everybody in America hated the Bush twins' speech on Tuesday as much as I did. Even Karl Rove: "Whoever approved this, I'm going to put on a slow boat to China," the Roveinator said. That would be longtime Bush aide Karen Hughes, who didn't only approve the performance, but actually wrote it herself, including cringe-inducing references to Sex & the City, Bono, and the president and first lady "shaking it like a Polaroid." I'm so glad that, if so much has changed in America, at least we can be relied upon to loathe spoiled rich people when they reveal themselves to us in all their hideousness.

RNC Wrap-Up Special #3: West, Toward All Darkness So Bush and Cheney have spoken, the protests have happened, the stories have been written, and still the most memorable thing about this convention is the intense, vitriolic hatred the Republicans expressed for America. They hate our stubbornness, our unwillingness to dream the great dreams of empire, and most of all they hate us for not being what they want us to be: docile, quiet servants of the ruling class. Gazing on the nihilist abyss that was the GOP convention, a New York Times columnist gets it right: "But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity." This election is about those of us who respect our nation, its laws, and its traditions, and those who despise those things and seek to wreck them. Want proof? Read the papers. Hell, read this story about how a Republican company is eliminating secret ballots for voters in the military, and refuses to submit to public scrutiny. "I will not allow the public to invade the privacy of the employees" of the company, the CEO - who has donated thousands to Bush - says. This is what Nov. 2 comes down to: "the public" - that is, the people, the citizens, the res publica - against the presumed ability of private companies to treat us like dopes, servants, and canon fodder. Don't let them.

-Consider Arms