The suspense is over for absurdly-priced caffeine freaks: Starbucks names all 600 stores to be closed

… California will now lose 88 stores with two each in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and 10 in San Diego.

If you had lived in San Diego you would understand.

Actually they are closing half the stores in my county, and I don’t know why they didn’t close the other one. It’s only a block from a Whataburger, and there aren’t enough people in the county willing to spend an hour’s wages on a cup of coffee to justify it.  The old money drinks sweet tea and the working class goes to Tom Thumb.

CBSNews.com producer David Morgan actually does some fact checking: “Not One Drop Of Oil Spilled”? Not Quite

… As former Sen. Trent Lott told MSNBC on Tuesday, “We didn’t have one drop of oil spilt when we had the biggest hurricane in, you know, recent history, Hurricane Katrina.”

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., also told Fox News on June 27, “When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico. So we know that the technology to drill offshore is extraordinarily safe and environmentally friendly. And it’s not something that we have to be as worried about as we do a refinery on shore or some other type of issue.”

Newspaper columnists and editorial boards also jumped on the “not one drop” bandwagon. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on June 12 saying, “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”

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Oil is still dropping according to an article on CBS: Analysts Ponder If Oil Bubble’s Burst

Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell 41 cents Friday to settle at $128.88 on the New York Mercantile Exchange – well below its trading record of more than $147 a week earlier.

The average price of a gallon of regular gas fell about a penny for the day, to $4.105 according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Diesel prices dipped three-tenths of a cent to $4.842 a gallon.

So, oil comes down over $18/barrel while gas drops a penny. Not only that but:

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Position: 33.7 N 77.4 W. [1 AM CDT] Updated
Movement: Northeast [030°] near 6 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph.
Wind Gusts: 55 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 85 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb.

Currently 35 miles East-Southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina moving parallel with the coast.

Our old friend, Bertha, has made it back up to hurricane status with 75 mph winds, but will be severely weakened before it reaches Iceland, possibly on Monday. [Tropical storms in Iceland, but don’t forget: Al Gore is overweight.]

Tropical Depression Three has formed off the coast of South Carolina and may bring heavy rains and gusty winds to the coastal region of North Carolina before heading out to sea. The sea temperature, shear winds, and dry air over land argue against much strengthening in the near term, nor an inland spread of rains that would help the interior of North Carolina.

The underachieving Invest 94L might make it to tropical status before it smacks into the Yucatan. Whatever’s left will head towards the Texas-Mexico boarder area.