A little late getting to this, but the resignation of the Attorney General calls for some comment that hasn’t been heard in the mainstream media. The event actually went by without much noise. Maybe it was because several pieces of the Bush machine already had fallen off, but I think it was just because the story had cooled off with time, and in that way, it represents a small win of the only kind that’s available to the Bush Gang at this point. Gonzales was in an intense media glare not long ago. Every day was a new story of which high ranking politician was demanding his resignation, but when a story gets pounded that hard, it’s not just the readers and viewers who get tired of it, the media get tired of it too, and they move along to the next cattle call for reporters and photographers. What’s left of the Gang dug in its collective heels on Gonzales, waited out the storm, and let him walk away without too many jackels on his heels, a microcosm of the Gang’s stance on the Iraq War. A few diehards were crowing "good riddance," but Dub was, for the most part, able to do what he wanted without any public nod toward overwhelming opposition.

I read a review from the NY Times of a new book out this week about the Bushwhacker. Sounds like a sympathetic portrait, but a quote from Bush jumped right off the page. He said that the goal for the remainder of his presidency is to get in a position where "The presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence and stay longer." He was talking about Iraq, of course, and it’s a grim reminder that this isn’t a stickup; it’s an invasion and occupation. It’s not about filling the tank; it’s about owning the oil wells. To ensure that the favored oil companies get the opportunity to drain Iraq dry, the US military is planning to stay as long as it takes and shed all the blood it takes, and Bush is suggesting that whoever plants his or her butt in the Oval Office after he’s gone will be prepared to follow the same policy. A quick look at the few candidates who have any chance at winning reveals that it will take a lot more than an election to prove Dubya wrong.

I’ve been doing some reading lately about "peak oil," the widely held belief that production of motor vehicle fuel will peak at some unspecified time in the near future, and not only will the world economy go in the toilet thereafter, but some pretty ugly things will happen even before the peak is reached. Military invasions of every country with oil reserves by the well armed countries which need the oil is one popular prediction. Looks like that trend already has started, but remember, the US also is a country with significant oil reserves. The simplified theory is that after the peak, fuel prices climb rapidly, it becomes impractical to move goods, services and people from one place to another, and economic activity crashes like dominoes.

People working on alternative fuels are motivated by the peak oil concept. Not to deflect any well deserved praise from alternative fuel ideas, in general. They are a big part of our energy future, but there are some other ideas floating around which suggest that peak oil may be neither all that catastrophic nor all that near. I read one piece which pointed out that world oil reserves were estimated at 521 billion barrels 35 years ago. Nine hundred billion barrels have been used since then, and the so-called experts now say there are another 1.3 trillion barrels still in the ground. In truth, no one has any clue how much oil there is. Another writer pointed out that the US is sitting on huge, unmeasured oil reserves off the Pacific coast if someone can figure out how to pump it out without destroying everything around it.

A story from the Associated Press business desk this week noted the patenting of a storage battery that will make it possible to plug your electric car into the wall over night and drive it 500 miles before you need to charge up again. That begs the question of how much coal was burned to generate that charge, and leads to the conclusion that electric cars probably are not a big part of our energy future. That brings us to global warming, widely acknowledged to be caused by burning petroleum products. If we really are rapidly running out of those products, changing our extravagant ways to save the planet will no longer be optional. It’ll be a colossal vindication of the capitalist manifesto that a free market corrects itself. When the oil flows no more, the glaciers will flow again.

When Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, was released earlier this year, we said it would provoke a lot of dialogue about health care, and it has. Every single politician in the country now is in favor of health care reform. Unfortunately, every single politician in the country is in favor of health care reform which continues to enrich the health insurance industry. The primary theme of Sicko was that we don’t need those guys. We’ll get better health care at less cost if we shut down their scam and do it ourselves, but to do that, we need to throw out all those politicians and elect some different people, and to do that, we need to reform campaign financing, and to do that we need to throw out those politicians and . . . I’m feeling a little dizzy. I think I’ll make an appointment with my primary care physician so I can get a referral to a psychiatrist so I can get my Prozac prescription doubled.

I read this week that only two percent of the people who admit to being Catholics ever go to confession. That’s disillusioning. The rite of confession used to be the biggest of all the Catholic bells and whistles. It was the ultimate expression of the Saturday night/Sunday morning syndrome. Sin all you want. Confess to a priest, say a few hail Mary’s and our Fathers, and you’re absolved. But where the Catholics are losing their grip on their own traditions, there’s sure to be an enterprising protestant to fill the gap. Numerous web site confessionals have sprung up with names like Daily Confessional, My Secret, and my favorite, Iscrewedup.com. Now you can be absolved without ever taking your eyes off your screen, even if your only sin is never taking your eyes off your screen.