Separately, an oil pipeline junction was attacked and set afire north of Baghdad.

Oil has been creeping back upward the last couple of days.  The main reason:  hurricane Ivan's march towards the Gulf Coast and therefore the bulk of U.S. oil production.  Today's second reason was the Iraqi pipeline attack.

Again, though this article doesn't go into it:  world oil useage has crept up over time.  Now it's very near what the world is able to produce regardless of oil quotas in OPEC, etc.  Any hiccup in production means oil prices go up.  The craziness caused by Bush's war ensures lots of hiccups in production.  Add that to the other worldwide hiccups that come up, and oil prices have a tough time going down.  My feeling is that they simply won't go down--not down to the high-$20s where they were before Bush's war.  If we're lucky and things settle down a bit in Iraq and other worldwide factors don't come into play, we may see the mid-$30s again.  But I wouldn't count on that either.  (Full disclosure:  I currently hold a bullish position in ExxonMobil, largely because of my belief that oil prices won't fall soon or far.)

I still think it's hilarious that the press gives any coverage to Bush's lip service on alternative fuels.

I don't think simply letting the assault weapon ban lapse is the best move.  And I don't like the way the Republicans just let the ban lapse overnight, and without debate.  It smacks of some of their dirtier legislative tactics of recent years, such as holding the votes open while they strong-arm Congressmen until they get the numbers they need, or holding votes at 3 AM when no one will see them voting.

So, while powerful weapons in the hands of the responsible are fine, the question is how will we keep them from the criminals?  While I think the assault weapons ban went too far in keeping regular folks away from guns, it must be said it did a fair job making assault weapons hard for most criminals to get a hold of--except the most desperate or well-connected.  With the lapse of this law, we have a legal vacuum with nothing else being put in place.

The impeachment power hasn't been used in Britain since 1806.

Three hurricanes in a month.  No power, and high heat.  Yeah, I'm glad I don't live in Florida.

I remember the one time I vacationed there, a storm passed through.  The rain came down in sheets.  I don't think I've been through rain anywhere else that hard.  And I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for a long time now.*

Between living under a second Bush, the heat, and the hurricanes, I don't think I would want to live there.  Beautiful state, though, at least when a hurricane hasn't been through.

* We usually get gentle rain, almost a mist, but we get our share of genuine rain storms too.

Cheney's role in the Bush campaign is to say the ugly, nasty things so that Bush can look "Presidential."  Or, at least, as Presidential as Bush can look.

Cheney said:

The more memos from the period that come out, the more Kerry's service record shines--and the more the lies told against him are proven false.  The more memos from the period that come out, the more Bush's "service" record is shown to be a sham--and the more the lies told to protect him are proven false.

In other words, the facts are all on Kerry's side, and the lies are all on Bush's side.  The honorable service is all on Kerry's side, and the cowardice and shirking is all on Bush's side.

We're also starting to hear from those who got Bush placed ahead of other people to get into the Texas Air National Guard--as happened on "Sixty Minutes."  They themselves are calling it "preferential treatment" and seem uneasy about their actions--as they should be.

At "Caption This!" you saw screengrabs of whatever was playing on the Sci Fi Channel at the time--including ads, old "Star Trek" and "Twilight Zone" episodes, old bad horror movies, and even "Mystery Science Theater 3000" itself.  Then you could enter a humorous caption and send it off for other folks to laugh at, and you could check out theirs.  It was a continuous process.  If you Google "caption this" you can find collections of peoples' favorite screengrab captions.  Making fun of "Star Trek" was especially fun because it's a cultural touchstone and it made it easy to make funny references.

But with MST3k ending its run a few years ago, and more recently with reruns of the show ending on the Sci Fi Channel, apparently they've decided to stop that part of their site.  I haven't found it moved to another site or anything.

If you want to know what "Caption This!" was like, check out Inventing Situations.  It's the same concept, but instead of grabbing from a station, it grabs from old copyright-expired movies and shorts.  It's a lot of fun, too.

But I'll miss "Caption This!" as it was one final link to that late, great show set on the Satellite of Love.

Genesis had a solar collector--a series of disks of pure diamond, gold, sapphire, and other materials.  They captured the solar wind.  Now Genesis came back to Earth.  It was supposed to deploy chutes and be caught midair by a helicopter.  Instead, the chutes never deployed.

The name "Genesis" comes from the Biblical book about the mythological creation of Earth.  NASA's Genesis, because it would have many important clues about the formation of the solar system and of Earth, has rough parallels leading to the name.

Now, though, if they find the collector at all, it may be smashed open.  Since the solar wind only left a few milligrams of material on the collector (thus the need for the purity of the disks), any contamination at all would make it difficult at best to salvage any science from the mission.

It's a shame.

Personally, this isn't my favorite issue to attack Bush on.  But hey, maybe some people don't respond to lies about life and death, massive crookedness with respect to being in bed with corporations who profit by their decisions and vice versa, and losing the war on terror by being dragged into a war with a country that didn't support terrorists.  Maybe they're more worried about the deficit or Medicare or the loss of jobs.  Sometimes all people see is what's in their wallet and what's in their paycheck.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia has decided to sell some oil at below-market prices, in an attempt to get prices under control.  However, they are only selling the heavier, less desired crude at the lower prices, so the effects may or may not be substantial.