RJ Matson, Roll Call Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune Postura Climatica Tab, The Calgary Sun The G-8 Dario Castillejos, El Imparcial de México Televictim Angel Boligan, El Universal, Mexico City [Admin note: All Cartoons are being published at DI with full permission by Cagle Cartoons]
I wrote about complacency once before. I focused on the complacency of most Americans in the face of the energy crisis that is clearly upon us. We have no assurance that gasoline won’t double or triple in price over the next five or 10 years, throwing our economy into a massive depression. With stakes like these, you would think that prolific energy wasters like us would immediately jump on our energy consumption problem by enacting a national conservation plan to cut our petroleum use in half. This could be accomplished by modifying our wasteful energy usage in dozens of ways. For instance, we really could carpool. We could build up our mass transit systems and encourage their use. We could walk and bike more. We could make our homes much more energy-efficient. Instead of building new homes in existing farm fields, we could renovate homes that already exist. While we’re at it, we could cut our use of all other forms of energy in half too. For instance, the technology already exists to make zero-carbon footprint buildings.
Others have written extensively regarding many methods by which we could reduce energy use. Due to the widely accepted law of supply and demand, cutting our use of energy would also have the effect of lowering the price of energy (relative to whatever it would have been had we not taken such measures), thereby diminishing the financial damage from our perennial trade deficits and budget deficits.
My concern is that so many people …
What's with white people? If you'd like to know, check out this Salon interview of Christian Lander, creator of Stuff White People Like. Here's an example of Lander's sharp sword: "The presence of an improper apostrophe on a menu can ruin an otherwise delicious meal for a white person." As…
I learned about this sculpture in Nature (June 26, 2008 Edition, available online only to subscribers). Scroll down after clicking the link. You won't miss it. The creator is Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. What does the sculpture mean? In the Nature article, Martin Kemp indicates that Cattelan leaves some…
Why would we elect one of the prisoners at Guantanamo as the next President of the United States? Well, the logic is becoming quite clear to anyone who has followed the corporate news media for the past few days. Prisoners at Guantanamo have that special ingredient that John McCain has that makes him an especially good candidate to be president. He was a prisoner and he was tortured! According to many pundits, this confined torture makes McCain a better candidate than Barack Obama.
What provoked this discussion? Recent statements of Wesley Clark that John McCain’s military service doesn’t make him better qualified to be President:
He hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron . . . I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.
Please note, however, Clark’s additional words indicating that Clark nonetheless honored McCain’s military service:
I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world.” Clark continued: “But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air — in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t …