While the Republican national committee treads on thin ice in an attempt to balance politics and hurricanes, the extensive protests scheduled for tomorrow are going ahead as planned. The RNC delegates weren't the only ones with hotel reservations and plane tickets they didn't want to cancel: in the words of a spokesman for the ad-hoc coalition of anti-war and social-justice planning a massive Sept 1 rally, "We expect that tens of thousands will join us in the march on the RNC and say no to the war on Iraq.

ST. PAUL--Just got back from the press conference where John McCain announced, via video, that the RNC will be radically altered due to Hurricane Gustav. After McCain spoke, both Republican Party Chairman Mike Duncan and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis offered a bit more detail on what would and wouldn’t happen.

MINNEAPOLIS--There’s a weird lack of anticipatory buzz at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where RNC delegates (and the press) are currently picking up their convention credentials. Chalk it up to a few factors: it's a Sunday morning; it's Labor Day weekend; the convention’s actually in another city, ten miles away.

It would look bad, period, if Gustav hammered New Orleans and environs while the Republicans waxed ecstatic over John McCain's impending nomination. And it would look especially bad since the current Republican president didn't exactly dazzle the last time a hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast.

But to make matters even worse for those charged with figuring out whether the RNC should happen or not, the theme for the first day of the convention happens to be "Service."

Earlier this week, Blue Mass. Group's Bob Neer concluded--on the basis of interviews with three female, pro-Hillary Clinton Massachusetts DNC delegates--that the prospect of disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters not backing Barack Obama is a bogus invention of the GOP and a complicit media.

I don't expect Rush Limbaugh to acknowledge that George Bush had his own "temple" back in 2004 when he's chortling over the "temple" Barack Obama used last night. But if actual journalists are going to report this particular GOP talking point--which, of course, is just a variation on the old Obama-as-narcissist theme--they really ought to note that fact.

In his column in today's Globe, Kevin Cullen makes the very reasonable point that not all Boston firefighters are bad eggs. But he also says this: "Blaming most firefighters for the state of the department is like blaming American soldiers for the mess in Iraq."

Really? Because from what I've been reading in the Globe, it seems like the BFD brass are trying to whip the "bad systems" Cullen mentions into shape, while the firefighters' union--led by Ed Kelly--is fighting to preserve the status quo. Which doesn't seem to parallel Iraq at all.

In today's Boston Herald cover story, reporter Hillary Chabot writes:

Barack Obama’s divided and poorly timed convention has given him no boost in tracking polls, leaving him in danger of trailing Republican John McCain by the time the GOP conclave ends next week....

Polls showing McCain holding down Obama in the polls despite the nationally televised convention, and no bounce from Obama’s long-awaited running mate pick - an event that pollsters say ususally draws at least a two-percentage point gain.

In today’s Boston Herald, columnist Margery Eagan touches on an interesting point:

This mess just won’t end.

And if it doesn’t end soon--like today--the Democrats will lose in November. Again.

The mess I refer to? Hillary supporters’ continued up-the-ante demands for respect and validation, for hurt feelings to be soothed, voices to be heard, etc.

I know, I know--you don't read Gawker for the facts. You read it for the baditude. Still, Gawker's riff on the possible racism of Harvard's cops cries out for two corrections.

Here they are:

1. Harvard's in Cambridge, not Boston. (Which is one reason faux-modest Harvard students should never say they "Go to school in Boston," but that's another story.

Time really does heal all wounds. Twenty years ago, after Ted Kennedy helped pass legislation that forced Rupert Murdoch to sell the Boston Herald, the paper smacked the senator in a front-page editorial that read, in part: "Kennedy's attitude seems to be: 'To hell with the political process, to hell with the First Amendment, to hell with my integrity, and to hell with The Herald and its readers.

24.5 percent. That's how much advertising revenue at the New York Times Company's New England Media Group--which includes the Boston Globe--dropped from July '07 to July '08.

Yeah, it's a tough time for the industry in general. (The NY Times's own ad revenue dropped more than 15 percent for the same period, for example.