Yep, George Bush admitted it. He's a complete moron. "Oh, shucks, I guess I finally understand. You mean if we keep heating up the earth, pretty soon the ice will melt? Ah shucks, why didn't anyone explain that to me before?"

That's almost a direct quote.

Georgie-boy, none of us are going to forget your May 2001 policy statement, best summed up as "drill more wells". Or your later handouts to the oil industry because, golly gee, they aren't making enough money as is. None of us are going to forget you spent 7 years telling every scientist on the planet they're all lying idiots. "God told us to multiply, god damnit, and that means I need more cars, bigger cars, and more money for my buddies in the oil industry! God bless us all."

Georgie, I can't wait until you go home forever.

And we're not going to see them that good again for a very long time.

One reason: oil.

Prices are going to continue to go up. And up. And up. And everything we do requires energy. It requires energy to harvest the natural resources that go into the products we make and the foods we eat. It takes more energy to transport those items to the manufacturing plants, which then consume enormous amounts of energy to transform the raw materials into finished goods. We then transport those finished goods around the globe.

At that point, the products go into stores -- which use energy to light the products, run their computers, heat or cool their buildings, and do all the other things involved in operating a store.

We then drive to the store -- burning energy. When we get home, we heat or cool our houses and use electricity to run our lights, our computers, our various appliances.

The end result is clear -- as the cost of oil goes up, the cost of everything else is going to go up.

We won't find equilibrium, as we're chasing after a diminishing good.

The result will be that everyone is going to be squeezed. More and more of our money is going to go into energy. Similarly, our employers will spend more money on energy, leaving less money to pay salaries. Or alternatively prices go up but salaries remain flat.

Either way we're squeezed, squeezed, squeezed.

When does it end?

When oil stops defining our economy.

According to a CNN story, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary (that issues decisions on matters of conscience and grants absolutions), the Church continues to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and pedophilia.

Interesting that the Church has served as the largest haven for pedophiles. They claim they're doing a better job with that now. He claims they have reacted with "rigorous measures" to the problem. Of course, that was after 50 years of covering it all up.

Ultimately, the new list includes drugs and pollution -- both of which I think truly are sinful -- and genetic manipulations. The last one shows the church continues to be led by Luddites.

Good luck, Catholicism.

Kat and I are trying to do some fairly extensive remodeling to our house. We can do it because we do most of it ourselves, reducing costs down to the cost of materials. None of this is rocket science after all.

But some of the plumbing is tricky. I want to make sure it's done right, so I've been trying to hire a professional to help with the trickiest parts and to make sure I'm going to do it right.

None of them want the business. They all tell me (in one way or another), "All or nothing."

I'm sorry, but what a bunch of jerks!

I got one of them to explain it all to me on the phone today, but all he did was piss me off and make sure I never call his business again. Basically his argument was, "We went to school to learn this stuff, and we spent money on tools, and we like acting like a bunch of elitist jerks and maintain a monopoly on our services."

Well, screw you, too!

I went to college for 4 years. I started studying computer programming in high school. They have tools, but I have tools, too. And where their tools are saws and wrenches and other simple pieces requiring about 20 words to learn to use, I need a 2-inch-thick book just to learn the basics of the tools I use. And I have book cases full of those books in an industry that changes by the hour.

And if a client asks me to show them how to set up a web page, I say, "Okay" and then figure out how much help they really need. I'll show them how to create a template and make their own changes.

And I can bet that same plumber that won't help me make sure I'm doing my work correctly is MORE than happy to ask the neighborhood computer programmer "How do I hook up my computer network?"

None of you people are getting my business. I'm doing it myself, and you can kiss goodbye the hundreds of dollars I was going to give you on the first job and the thousands you would have gotten on the remaining jobs.

In Sudan, a British school teacher allowed her students to name a teddy bear "Mohammed". She has been convicted of insulting Islam and given 15 days in jail. It could have been worse, but to westerners, the entire thing is ridiculous.

But now "hundreds of angry protesters" are demanding she be executed.

And people wonder why everyone else thinks Muslims are insane.

But then we get this report:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/12/03/sudan.teacher/index.html

The president of Sudan pardoned the teacher, and she has been released. I'm not sure what the British government promised the Sudanese. And the woman served 9 out of her 15 days, which is just insane in itself. But she should be on her way back to Britain soon.

There would have been no problem if the guy had followed the lawful order of the police.

But no! Everything that followed after that is not the fault of the police, its the fault of the idiot student who wouldn't follow a simple request -- "you're done, please sit down."

This wasn't about freedom of speech. This wasn't about police brutality. This was about some idiot who wanted to make a scene and was able to do so.

But I think this one stands out. I'm not sure the Republican party understands how they are perceived by folks outside their party. This bumper sticker sums it up entirely.

If you're a republican, you need to think about why the rest of us agree with this bumper sticker. You need to decide if that's the perception you want us to have. You need to decide what you're going to do about it.

Hey Jerk! Send our boys home and we'll butt out. But as long as our boys are dying to prop up your government, you can damned well bet we want our Senators poking their noses anywhere they want.

The Pope: All you non-Catholics aren't real Christians. Your worship of God and Jesus Christ is "wounded" because you don't recognize the primacy of the Pope. It is "difficult to see how the title of 'Church' could possibly be attributed to" Protestant churches.

There you have it.

The Catholic Church has returned to the Church of the One True Way. Everyone else is wrong. The Pope said so. And because the Pope said so, the rest of us should quiver in our boots for our immortal souls, which are certainly forever stained by not kissing his ring.

And of course, he doesn't have a vested interest in feeling that way, or in wanting the rest of us to feel that way.

You know, if I were still Christian, I'd probably suffer a moment of panic, offense, or perhaps just gastrointestinal discomfort. But then hopefully I'd remember something.

This Pope is delusional and best ignored.

This is the same Bloomberg who left the Democratic party in 2001 because there were too many Democrats running for the job he wanted. He joined the Republicans, then financed his own mayoral race.

Now he has left the Republicans, having gotten what he wanted from them.

Way to show your loyalty, Bloomberg!

This is also the Bloomberg who brought us mass violations of civil rights during the most recent GOP convention in 2004. People were arrested and kept in unsanitary conditions for the crime of speaking their mind or talking to the press. Yep, folks were arrested while talking to the press.

Bloomberg, you won't have my vote.

Like, duh!

A lot of people have talked about dwindling oil supplies since the 1970s, but the vast majority of people kept their heads in the sand.

In the same CNN article, someone complained what it takes to keep her SUV running.

Like, duh!

You all had plenty of warning.

Thank you, Toyota, for selling me a car that gets 50 miles per gallon. A nice car that fits my entire family. I think I could even take the two oversized dogs, but it would get cozy in back.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/04/27/school.newspaper.flap.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us

It's not the teacher who should have faced losing her job.

A woman in Texas is fighting a hospital that wants to remove her terminally ill (and likely in pain) baby from a ventilator. The woman wants to keep him on the ventilator so he can die "naturally, the way God intended."

Yes, that's right. God intended for your baby to die hooked up to a bunch of machines.

This is a CNN article about a school in southern Georgia. No, it wasn't written 30 years ago.

They actually used the word "colored people".