Now that I’ve seen these two new TV ads,
and realized that they really will influence the thinking of millions
of drooling idiots, I have decided to take a position on global warming
which is every bit as clear-headed:

Multinational oil companies, despite the claims of Al Gore and his legion of activists and liberal media types, simply do not exist.

Oh,
sure, you hear all the time about “thousands” of “leading scientists”
from “all over the world” who have concluded that oil companies are not
only “real,” but the result of human activity.

But common sense (defined as what I
personally want to believe) tells us this simply isn’t true.  And
frankly, I’m tired of extremists using junk science and emotional
appeals to push a political agenda, particularly one that might make me
wonder if I am responsible for my own impact on the world.

And even if multinational oil companies really do exist, does that mean they’re the direct result of human activity?  Of course not.

It’s
a well-documented fact that oil companies have spontaneously increased
and decreased in number throughout our planet’s history, dating back to
the dinosaurs (as the Sinclair
logo so aptly demonstrates).  This is an entirely natural occurence. 
For alarmists to claim that the historically-recent surge in the
existence of mulitnational oil companies is somehow related to human activity defies logic, reason, and of course my common
sense.

Besides, industrial civilization, because humans exist in nature, is itself entirely natural.  Therefore, even if multinational oil companies were produced by human activity, they would be entirely natural, and therefore good for the environment.

But let’s not forget (in precisely the manner in which
climate change discussions are usually held) that the historical record
is entirely hypothetical, and secondary (even if contradictory) to the
main premise, which is:

Multinational companies simply do not exist.  Therefore, Al Gore is a self-promoting scoundrel.

That is all.  Please continue to breathe carbon dioxide in massive quantities.  This is entirely natural.

As of 11:41 am PDT.

Just stumbled across this.  No idea how long it has been this way or will remain so.  But for now, whitehouse.gov goes directly to whitehouse.gov/error-404.html, where “The file you have attempted to access cannot be found.”

The White House main page is one big error message.

This seems deeply symbolic.

UPDATE: This also happens when you click on “Current News,” which is supposed to take you to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news.   Of course, if I were Bush, I wouldn’t want to see the word “news” anywhere around me, either.

Can’t even manage a website.  Wow.

Too damn much work this last week.  Most of you are overworked,
too, I know.  Not complaining.  Just explaining my absence.

Much catching up to do on email, the blog, actual work, and everything else. 

Probably seemed as if the post below about the Arsenal football stadium was suddenly the last word I had to say about anything.

I
almost wish it were.  The New-Watergate-Every-Day administration is so horrific
that even generating a list of lesser-reported wrongdoing in a single
week is exhausting to think about.  But there’s also good news I’d like to
share, of many kinds.  Will try shortly.

Yes, I realize many of
you need more pudus, on an almost biochemical basis.  A pudu jones is nothing to trifle with.  Working
on it.  And yes, the “Poll Of The Day” has again become something more
like “Poll Of The Last Three Months.”

There’s at least an
excuse for that.  I was asking what the administration would do to top
itself.  And now it’s coming up with a new and more absurd answer
almost every day.  It’s hard to know when to say “when.”  

Anyhow, thanks for your patience.

Had slipped my mind until a friend pointed it out, but Ambien, the same drug which may have contributed to Patrick Kennedy’s all-night voting spree, has a few other significant users in Washington.

(And btw, let’s at least pay tribute to the fact that when this Kennedy is gorked out of his dome, his instinct apparently isn’t for carousing with starlets, but to drive to the Capitol and vote — frankly, America could use more drug addicts like this.)

Back in the now-forgotten distant murky past — November 2003, to be exact — this is what Colin Powell had to say about Ambien:

They

Common sense says it had to have happened at least once.  Well, it did:

A
man executed by the state of Texas in 2004 was convicted on an
erroneous interpretation of fire evidence, according to a report from
four leading arson experts.

[snip] 

“Each
and every one of the indicators relied upon have since been
scientifically proven to be invalid,” the Arson Review Committee report
states.

[snip]

John J. Lentini,
the former chairman of the forensic science committee of the
International Assn. of Arson Investigators, led the review panel and
said in an interview that he was convinced that Texas had executed an
innocent man.

One of the many ill-conceived
arguments pro-death penalty advocates use is that nobody had ever
proved that an innocent person was legally executed in the United
States.  Not anymore.

Fire is a truly complex and poorly-understood subject.  When I used to work at CSI,
we had a number of discussions about doing an arson case and really
digging into the relevant forensic examination techniques.  But we
never did, at least while I was there.  One big reason was that on
close scrutiny, most of the “techniques” amounted to little more than
unscientific guesswork, more a series of beliefs and habits than any
peer-reviewed analysis, really just one notch up from finding witches
with dunking chairs.  (The other reason we never did such an
episode — probably the main one, as I understand it — was that fire
is really super-hard and crazy expensive to shoot.)

It turns out
— big shock! — that fire behaves in unexpected ways.  Many of
the rules of thumb that arson investigators have used for many years
turn out to be complete crap. 

“Arson is the
only crime for which you can be executed based on the opinion of a man
with a high school education,” Lentini said, referring to the fact that
many arson investigators are qualified by judges as “experts” even
though they lack scientific training.

Back when
Chimpus Maximus was governor, you recall, he signed death warrants with
a bloodthirst unparalleled in modern U.S. history.  If somebody
out there has time to go through the cases looking for arson, there may
be some important history to correct.

Texas has the highest percentage in the country of people imprisoned on arson convictions.

Human
beings make mistakes.  So do judicial systems.  Capital
punishment inevitably involves the murder of a small number of innocent
people. 

Anyone who pretends otherwise is a liar.