Wednesday 1227 September 7, 2005 What with last week's timely topic on the world with $100 bbl oil and the coincidental disaster in the Gulf states, WN #1226 was a very full evening. We encourage you to look at the write-up on www.wednesday-night.com/Wed1226page2.asp. Oh, yes. There is the death of William Rehnquist and the nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice, but any storm around the Supreme Court will pale by comparison with the fallout from Katrina. Even the revered BBC leads with the story that Bush will head the enquiry into Katrina (now there's an impartial chair) and posts Cheney's announced Thursday visit to the disaster area as breaking news, along with a think piece on "Why does the world's richest country need foreign aid?" Speaking of foreign aid, in case you have missed it, we have been amused by three offers of assistance which must have the State Department grinding its collective dentures: (1) Cuba's Castro who has offered to fly 1,100 doctors to Houston, Texas, with 26 tons of medicine to treat disaster victims (can't you just see Castro enjoying this joke?), (2) the UN's offer to help coordinate international relief (how galling for John Bolton and the rest of the UN-bashing Neocons!), and (3) Iran's envoy to OPEC said his country was ready to send up to five shiploads of crude oil to the US. But he said this could only happen if US sanctions were lifted first. And what is happening here? Alberta goes dry in bid to head off water crisis leading us to wonder if we could set up an interprovincial exchange of water for oil. The Prime Minister is happily seeing off the ships that are carrying aid to the Gulf states, before the state visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao, who can't go to Washington this week, but at least gets to visit Ottawa, where, presumably he will want to talk about oil. Lest we relax too much, consider that doctors are again in the news. This time it's the results of a Canadian Medical Asoociation survey in which nearly 50 per cent of doctors who responded were in an advanced stage of burnout. While no doubt Katrina and oil will again be on our menu tomorrow, be assured that there will be other topics.