Various thoughts

For all its intensity as a Category 4 storm, Ivan could have been a lot worse. It's still holding together now 17 hours inland, and our family in northern Georgia told us a while ago that they're starting to get pounded by the thing. We'll probably begin getting it sometime tomorrow. Meanwhile Jeanne weakens over Hispaniola but looks to strengthen once back over water: it may hit the eastern seaboard in another few days. And the twelfth tropical depression of the season is now firming-up way out in the Atlantic, in that spot off of West Africa that usually spawns the ones that come this way.

My own journalism career has never been more than a fraction of the years that most senior CBS correspondents have racked up, but even I know better than to accept at face value - and with remarkably little reservation - a news source that's been faxed from a Kinko's.

A few days ago a close associate hit on something that hadn't crossed my mind at all and may not have occurred to most folks. Yet it's so very obvious and makes utterly perfect sense, and it's not a far stretch at all to see this happening: about why the results of this year's elections - all of them - may not be anything like what the media is telling us to expect. I'm going to think it through more, and write more about it later.

That's all for now. Going to enjoy the rest of the evening while the wind picks up outside as Ivan comes a'knockin'!