LONESOME RHODES SPEAKS! National Review maintains its audio soapbox for Presidential candidate Fred "Ah got me a deep voice an' ahm on the TV" Thompson. His latest is about the global warmin', which Ole Fred is agin:

Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

Ask Galileo.

I did ask Galileo, and he asked if Jonah Goldberg is still Editor-at-Large of National Review. I said that he was, and Galileo handed me this Goldberg column:

The head of the Inquisition was a Galileo supporter, who hoped to get the whole thing over with quickly by just giving him a formal reprimand. Unfortunately, rabble-rousers and opportunists turned the heat up. The trial is very complicated but the result was that Galileo got house arrest, which is where he did all of his research anyway. He was permitted to correspond with any scientist he wanted and he wrote the Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences while under the Man’s thumb.

...The Church had the same problems of any major political institution and other challenges unique to being the Catholic Church. It had to contend with politics and intrigue and in-fighting and cravenness. But it also had legions of people fighting for truth and fairness in a difficult time beset with bizarre politics. Marxists, like Bertold Brecht, and liberals, like all of your (non-Marxist) college professors, seized upon the notion of a monolithic and superstitious Church because the aim was to discredit the Church specifically and religion in general. Religion with its faith in the unprovable and the perfection of the hereafter is, and always has been, the greatest threat to those who believe we can perfect the here and now through “scientific methods.”

So they arrested him! They still let him have a pencil and paper, even though people who supported Galileo were like totally Marxist. At least it wasn't like Oz! You remember that show? It was rilly funny. Oh, look, a donut.

Thompson's bizarre citation of Galileo perfectly fits this tween-election period, which is all about denying reality. Gun nuts support the virulently anti-gun Giuliani and the NatRev claims a pro-science mantle for its opposition to scientific consensus. By early 2008 the careerist rat bastard Giuliani will be hoisting rifles over his head at NRA photo ops, and National Review will be loudly declaiming the scientist-homosexual alliance. You read it here first!