Convention Opens!... sort of...

It's Monday, September 1st, and that means it's the opening of the Republican National Convention... or is it?

Although Convention was ready to go, Mother Nature made other plans, and Hurricane Gustav is wreaking havoc with the convention schedule. Although it seems now that the brunt of Gustav is missing New Orleans, it's still too late for today's activities. McCain's called off any convention activities besides the absolutely necessary business, so as not to be seen celebrating while a hurricane destroys the southern Louisiana coast... AGAIN. So they'll be going about the details and procedures of officially convening the convention, and making sure that the convention is valid.

While that's all well and good for the Republicans, it throws a HUGE spanner in the works for the media here, ESPECIALLY the NewsHour. So today's kind of nuts, as we are uncertain as to what the heck is actually going to occur. We also are down to 3 anchors/correspondents, to make matters even more interesting. Jim Lehrer decided to return to Washington after hearing that Gustav would be throwing things out of whack, and Margaret Warner was unable to make it to this convention. This leaves only Gwen Ifill, Ray Suarez and Judy Woodruff to man the fort here. There's still PLENTY of crew too, but the on-air group is now reduced to those three.

At the moment, Gustav is going to be the ONLY thing on CNN, so we're watching that around keepign the show afloat, which is being made even more interesting because the cable is cutting out for a few seconds every so often. Then again, this is bound to happen when pushing a signal through hundreds of new TVs across the center.

Anyway, that's where things stand as of this morning; more to come as things get going!