There are new fires in the San Bernardino Mountains that started this morning. Here are a couple of announcements I found. I can see the smoke rising from the mountains.

All Mountain Roads Closed To Non-Residents
Update: 9:18 AM

Crestline - The California Highway Patrol has closed all mountain roadways, including Highway 18, 330, 138, and 173, to non-residents. Any residents returning to the mountains will be required to show proof-of-residency such as a drivers license, utility bill, or other identifying document. An evacuation center has been established at the Jerry Lewis Community Center in Highland at 7793 Central Avenue, near Fifth Street, for all evacuees.

I know that online polls are unscientific but the results of today's AOL poll is so overwhelming, it goes way beyond any margin of error. On AOL's Daily Pulse They are asking questions about Iraq and Bush, and it's not pretty.

Follow me below for the questions and answers.

The crowd cheers! Sanity reigns! This is good news! The Illustrated Daily Scribble has returned! Charles Fincher now gives us a new cartoon every week, with extras. Save the link and check it out regularly. The immediate past scribbles are easy to find.

Mr Fincher has a good wit and message. This weeks cartoon is about Joe Lieberman, so I know kossacks will want to see it.

Barron's (subscribers only) Alan Abelson describes Dick Cheney as "The Godfather" because he is ALWAYS right in his popular column "Up & Down Wall Street" dated July 18, 2006.

Just recently, the veep took some fierce blasts of heat when he averred that even had he known back in 2003 Saddam didn't have so much a toy mock-up of a weapon of mass destruction, "We'd do exactly the same thing."

More below

You want to know what was so remarkable about YearlyKos? It was the people! They were ordinary. Take away the people running for office, and what you had was a lot of very ordinary people. No rock stars, no movie actors, no one with any reason to expect a national stage. This was a group of ordinary people doing the extraordinary.

How amazing was YearlyKos? What did a lot of regular people do in Las Vegas that was so remarkable?

It is with great sadness that I note the ending of The Illustrated Daily Scribble written by Charles Pubsley Fincher. This was one of my daily stops online and provided me with many a provacative chuckle at the expense of the insanity known as the Bush Administration.

I first found the Daily Scribble after visiting Thaddus and Weez. Sad to say, that had ended as well. But there are great scripts in the archives.

Do something fun for Fitzmas. Every holiday season the Tuba players of the world come together to play holiday music. The first TUBACHRISTMAS was in New York City's Rockefeller Plaza Ice Rink on Sunday, December 22, 1974. Now in it's 32nd year, TUBACHRISTMAS has expanded to 188 cities in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Some concerts are small events with 10 musicians, but the largest number in the hundreds. This year the celebration starts in Boston on November 26th and continues until December 31st in Kalamazoo. Go to TUBACRISTMAS dot com to find a concert near you, or come to all of them! They are FREE!

More below the fold and take the poll