While I was travelling around in India I managed to stay informed about Katrina and its aftermath because most hotels got either BBC World or CNN International. Actually, the BBC coverage in particular was a lot better than anything I would have seen here. I still felt isolated, however, because I depend on the blogosphere for the kind of information they don't put on TV.

For example, I really wanted to check out Chuck Taggart's blog Looka! -- I discovered it last year after "War President" broke and lots of people were contacting me to exchange blogroll links. Looka! focuses on New Orleans culture, New Orleans cuisine, New Orleans music, cocktail recipes, and liberal politics. As I had guessed Looka's Katrina coverage turned out to be very good and I'd like to belatedly plug Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans, a 4-CD box set produced, compiled and annotated by Chuck, all profits from which will be donated to New Orleans disaster relief.

Speaking of the kind of story they don't put on CNN, I just missed the hubbub about Bush falling off the wagon, which seems to have started with this National Enquirer piece. Lord knows, I don't want to insinuate that one can't trust the fine investigative reporting of such a prestigious institution as the Enquirer, but I'd like to point out that the most interesting thing about this little side-show is what it says about Bush's popularity among the tabloid-reading demographic. The supermarket tabloids have a deep conservative bias -- Seriously, haven't you ever noticed that those aliens in Weekly World News always endorse Republicans? -- and one imagines that the producers of the tabloids know quite a bit about their readers and skew their product towards the conservative worldview based on this knowledge. The Enquirer turning on Bush, therefore, could be a very significant red flag: it might indicate some seismic shift in the universe inhabited by Rove's values-voters and the so-called NASCAR dads.

I came back on the 23rd and it simply wouldn't have been possible for me to attend yesterday's protests in Washington. But what really annoys me -- I had this idea in India and couldn't do anything about it -- is that I have a few of the huge prints (about 5' by 4.5' or so) of the Bush mosaic just sitting around in boxes in my apartment and I would have gladly mailed them to any activist who promised to use them in the Sep 24th demonstrations. Oh well ... but, anyway, the offer stands, when the next big antiwar event rolls around, if you are an activist who could do something productive with a couple of really big prints of George W. Bush composed from photos of the Iraq war dead, contact me and I'll send them to you.

I was a little too jet-lagged yesterday to do any coverage of the demonstrations but, if you haven't already read it, Left I covered the coverage, which, having not gone, is all I would have been able to do anyway. I agree with Eli's assertion that CNN and CNN Headline News apparently totally ignored the protests -- yesterday I think they did Hurricane Rita literally every minute of the day.

UPDATE: Actually, wouldn't you know it, via Milfuegos, I leaned that "War President" did indeed make an appearance at the Sep 24th demonstations. It's nice to see that the kid has stayed in the picture...