Jeff Masters left behind his wrap-up of the 2008 hurricane season as he heads to Puerto Rico for a vacation, totally unconcerned about Invest 96 which has been hanging off the coast of Panama for several days.

It would be nice to have a really boring season next year, one with no new records.

In other weather news, The Los Angeles Times reports on the heavy rains about to hit the areas that were devastated by the fires. While the rains will ensure that the fires are definitely out, the lack of vegetation to hold and slow the water will result in mud slides and flooding in the areas trying to recover from the fire devastation.

Many of the same people who just evacuated because of the fire threat, now must leave because of the flood threat.

CBS ran a story on Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year: bailout

So how does Merriam-Webster define “bailout”? As “a rescue from financial distress.” But Morse says those who looked it up also seemed to want to know whether it had negative nuances or suggested irresponsibility or blame.

What nasty people, wondering if giving hundreds of billions of tax dollars to corporations that were running a Ponzi scheme that is driving billions of hard working people into financial distress had “negative nuances”. What could be negative about destroying the long term viability of once thriving financial institutions by creating mythical assets that absorbed the money of people who actually work for a living.

Echidne has the staged photo op of the banks when government decided to take off the training wheels. All of those pesky rules and “red tape” that were preventing the overpaid gamblers of Wall Street from impoverishing the world as they had in the Great Depression.

One would hope that the lesson has been learned – they cannot be trusted and must be regulated, because every time you allow them to act on their own they bring chaos and ruin.