Things that did not surprise me today

• Clay Aiken is gay. (Not that I particularly care, though I hope he lives up to what he says he wants to do about teaching his child to tell the truth and not to hide. This is, after all, the twenty-first century.)
• John McCain tries to chicken out of Friday's scheduled presidential debate. Given the way his poll numbers have been going lately, I can certainly understand his not wanting to do anything to raise his own visibility.
• George W. Bush decided (a week and a half after the "crisis" started) that it might be a good idea to talk to the nation about it. (And for the record, neither will I be surprised to learn, tomorrow, that hardly anybody bothered to tune in and listen to what The Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer had to say.)
• Congress allowed the 25-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling to expire at the end of this month. (Somehow I doubt that the ban will stay dead past the end of this year. Nor do I expect that any of the oil companies, despite all their whining and posturing on this issue, are going to be in any big hurry to start exploring drilling on any of the lands that will soon be open to them.)
• Faced with a looming economic crisis, the start of a recession, and a federal budget deficit that's already projected to hit half a trillion dollars next year before taking the Wall Street bailout into consideration, the Republicans propose cutting taxes yet again.