Great Chart on Carbon Emissions

I had seen this chart in Business Week (March 10, 2008, it turns out) some months ago then could not find again despite herculean googling. I finally came across the magazine itself while cleaning my desk and now offer it here. It is from a McKinsey study and what I found most interesting about it is that greater and more cost-effective gains are to be made in buildings that in transportation. Slide 4 of this is a great chart. (The reason I couldn't find it is because it is one slide of an embedded slide show. Jeesh. I tried cutting and pasting it in, but it's too detailed to be readable that way.)

The Pattern Continues

The carpetbagger lays it out so clearly here -- the press is covering up for McCain and going after Obama. It soesn't take much of a mental experiment to conclude that if the Mccain adultery story was reversed, Obama would have hell to pay. For Golden John: crickets and tumbleweed. This is the sam thing that happened regardiing Boy George and the National Guard, drunk driving, and sweetheart Texas Rangers deal -- no digging, no priority, and and no followup.

There are lies in McCain's book that have been now documented. How much more obvious can it be? This is clear proof that the MSM is covering for the old man.

The Los Angeles Times did some solid investigative reporting and published a very damaging item yesterday on John McCain’s personal background, which is of course a key part of his campaign. We learned that McCain turned his back on his wife after she was seriously injured in a car accident, committed adultery, and left the mother of his children when he found a younger, wealthier woman.

Worse, we also learned that McCain didn’t tell the truth about this in his own memoir. McCain insisted that he was separated from his first wife before he began dating his second wife. That’s not true. McCain also insisted he’d been divorced for months before remarrying. That wasn’t true, either. (In fact, the LAT reported, “McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.”)

Clearly, this is the kind of salacious story reporters just love. A presidential candidate, running on his personal background, is found to have a messy past. The story has sex, drama, and fairly obvious lies — everything a news outlet needs for wall-to-wall coverage. What does this tell us about McCain’s character? Will voters care about a conservative Republican’s adultery? What will the “family-values” crowd say? How do we reconcile McCain’s untruths with his alleged proclivity for “straight talk”? Will the revelations hurt McCain in the polls? It’s the kind of story the media can obsess over for months.

Not so much.

Clark's Gaffe

This is a particularly insightful analysis of the Clark gaffe, which is, by definition, accidentally speaking the truth. I like the "old inter-service rivalry" angle. It's probably quite true, especially when it involve an arrogant ass like McCain.

Interservice rivalries are not nearly as fierce as they once were. One reason is the Goldwater-Nichols reform of 1986, which among other things required officers to serve on a "joint" (i.e., multiservice) command before getting promoted to general. Another has been the experience of the past two decades' wars, especially the ongoing Iraq war, in which the services have conducted joint operations to an unprecedented degree. Finally, the military budgets have lately been large enough for everybody to get what they've wanted: There hasn't been much need for rivalry.

Still, tensions persist. Some soldiers and Marines resent the Air Force and Navy for shouldering so light a burden in Iraq, bearing only 4 percent of the fatalities and 2 percent of the injuries in this war. (See chart below.)