Some more things to add on...

That earlier post may have been my harshest words toward the President and the Governor.

Chris Carpenter picked up his 20th win tonight against the Astros. The Cardinals announced that $2 of every raffle ticket purchased for the implosion of Busch Stadium will go towards the relief efforts. Albert Pujols became the fourth player to collect 100 RBI during his first five seasons. Pujols joins Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Al Simmons. Tyler Johnson, a 34th round 2000 draftee, was called up to St. Louis. Catcher Mike Mahoney was also called up. Seven players will participate in the Arizona Fall League.

Boston now has had 49 players take the field this season. The Red Sox have partnered with the Red Cross and will collect funds until September 11, 2005.

Why does the left hate Israel? It's a good read if you ask me.

Paul McCartney fans can see three tracks performed live.

Reuters speaks with Sir Paul McCartney. He's very personal it seems.

Q: When you meet new people, not just in work but socially, you must have to take the lead. You must be aware that an awful lot of people are completely daunted by meeting you at all.

A: It's true, yeah. It'd be like when I met Phil Everly. He was such a figure from my youth that I went all daft and said, "Err, I used to be you...John was Don ...," and all the most stupid things, and he got thoroughly embarrassed.

But I am very aware of that, even to people at the newspaper shop. I do a sort of Liverpool thing, which is (jokingly), "Look here, I don't want any trouble off you," or whatever. I'll be in their face, and they'll go, "Oh, he's just ordinary," and we soon get at ease. It comes in handy in situations like that.

People always expect you to be riding around in stretch limousines all the time, but I will sometimes take public transport if it's convenient, and it does surprise people, you see the heads turn.

I was in New York and I needed to get uptown, so I took one of the uptown buses. A few people noticed, and this black lady said, "Hey, you Paul McCartney?," and started getting quite loud. I said, "Yeah, but I don't want any trouble off you, babe," and she laughed.

I said, "If you're going to talk to me, come over here, sit by me." So she did, and I heard her entire history, how she was going to visit her sister and all this stuff.

Sir Paul speaks on songwriting.

With a piano and acoustic guitar to hand, the former Beatle set out to explain the art of songwriting, with reference to songs on his forthcoming album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, released on 12th September. Naturally, no discussion on Paul's latest batch of tunes could leave out the huge influence, on his current songwriting, of songs he wrote for The Beatles.

As some keen McCartney fans may perhaps already know, the new LP contains a song called "Jenny Wren", described by John Wilson as "a little sister of Blackbird" in its acoustic, folky, finger-picking style. Though this style was often said to have been influenced by Donovan during The Beatles' 1968 trip to Rishikesh, McCartney played down that influence on Blackbird by citing its real genesis, in a classical tune by Bach, a party piece performed as a duo by Paul with George Harrison in their young teens.

Paul admitted to the guitar-playing in Blackbird being a Macca-patented "fudge" version of authentic finger-picking technique: "almost it, it sounds like it, but isn't quite it", and, with his guitar, went on to demonstrate to John Wilson how the memory of a tiny 3-note section of the "fudge" Bach piece inspired him in 1968 to first wander into the notes that became the main riff of Blackbird.

The head of FEMA was fired from his last job.

From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted "czar" of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown's background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.

But as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brown now faces furious criticism of the federal response to the disaster that wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He provoked some of it himself when he conceded that FEMA didn't know that thousands of refugees were trapped at New Orleans' convention center without food or water until officials heard it on the news.

"He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm," said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. "The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience."

Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating.

"I wouldn't have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now," said Tom Connelly, a former association president.

Brown's ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown's in Oklahoma. When Bush ran for president in 2000, Brown was ending a rocky tenure at the horse association.

Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he'd be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush's campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.

That's political patronage if you asked me.