Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been very concerned for the residents of the gulf coast. Hurricanes are not pleasant events. Your Maximum Leader knows that of which he speaks. He’s weathered out a few, and fled from one or two as well.

Before he opines. Give to the American Red Cross. Help the people affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Your Maximum Leader cannot add anything to the reports from other bloggers and news outlets But he will opine on one very annoying tendency he’s observed over the past 24 hours. The uncanny ability of news readers to cut people off who are “callling in” or giving “expert” opinion; but then not go to a commercial. Over the past few hours he’s watched Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. On all three networks they’ve had people on the phone who were commenting on the Hurricane. Sometimes they were people in a flooding building in New Orleans. Sometimes they were engineers discussing the leaky roof at the Superdome. In each case the guests were talking and the news reader/host cut them off and switched to a reporter in the field. The problem with this is that the reporters in the field have been saying the same thing for nearly 12 hours now. Nothing new is being added.

Why not let the guest talk on for a little bit? You’ve got all the time in the world. The storm is slow moving. You can’t get more video feed than you’ve got. Replay the feed and let the guest talk. You don’t need to visit Steve or Brian or whomever standing in the rain in the hotel parking lot to give you the update on how things look from there. Again.

You’ve got time. Let people talk a little more. The reporters in the field will still be there in 5 minutes…

Anyho…

Help out those affected by the storm. Give to the American Red Cross.

Carry on.