If a strong Category 4 storm such as Ivan made a direct hit, he warned, 50,000 people could drown, and the city could cease to exist.

"This could be The One," Maestri said. "You're talking about the potential loss of a major metropolitan area."

Now I knew this was bad, and I knew that New Orleans is below sea level, but this is just insane...predictions for a city ceasing to exist? Sounds kind of like the dire Y2K predictions.

Oh yeah...how long before Kerry latches on to Blair's comments on global warming and urges the president to sign the Kyoto treaty? But then again, he probably has already taken two stances on the global warming issue (though I'm not certain).

URL: HoustonChronicle.com - New Orleans prepares for worst as Ivan slowly approaches coast

So, tonight, while Dan Ra^ther continues to stonewall and say the documents are not forged (which they obviously are as anyone can plainly see when compared to MS Word replicas and as DefeatJohnJohn's pot is now up to $37,900 for anyone who can reproduce the memos using 1972/1973 equipment), I was reading some articles regarding the fallout and came upon the one linked below. In it, we see that ABC's website, Noted Now which I visit frequently insinuated that before 60 Minutes even finished airing, questions were being raised about the authenticity of the documents. Running with this insinuation, NPR (which I used to enjoy listening to - and one of the main reasons I bought a Sirius Satellite Radio) and other sites have come up with a far-fetched idea that...now read this all to bask in the absurdity...the Republicans leaked the memos, knowing they were fake, and then, when used on 60 Minutes, the Republican attack machine leaked to right-wing bloggers the fact that they were fake. So, in the end, it's not 60 Minutes' fault for not verifying the veracity of the documents, it's the GOP's fault. Just think about that for a second and realize the insanity. Whereas many sites have used Occam's razor to discredit the documents, we can apply it here as well. Via Occam's razor, the simplest explanation usually is the correct one - the simplest explanation being 60 Minutes was fooled and aired the documents without any fact checking rather than it being another in the litany of right-wing conspiracies.

Oh yeah, the post was posted a full two hours after 60 Minutes finished airing on the east coast (a mistake Noted Now has correct) - yet NPR and the other outlets that ran with this conspiracy charge have failed to mention.

Speaking of the forgeries, I usually don't watch local news (not home in time, nor do I really care that much when I can get world news from the Web, newspaper and cable news channels) nor do I watch the liberal nightly news broadcasts (most notably that of Dan Rather on CBS - as his credibility is seriously in doubt). So, my question is, has this forgery issue been raised anywhere other than the web? I'm sure it's probably been mentioned on FNC (though I haven't seen it). But has it gotten any air time on CNN (noticably liberal) or the "big 3" (CBS - other than Rather denying the forgeries, NBC or ABC)?

URL: Patterico's Pontifications: NPR and Media Matters Can't Tell Time