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| Latest Commentary: | Volume VII, Number 75 |
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McCain Backs Zero Emission Cars, Battery Contest -- Senator John McCain is making a bid for the green vote, a vote that Republicans have ignored since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. He will suggest today a $5,000 tax credit for people who buy zero-emission cars, and he will offer a $300 million prize to anyone who can develop a battery system that makes an improvement on current electrical car technology. Both are admirable ideas, but they will bring him into conflict with free-market fundamentalists in his own party.
Tsvangirai Withdraws from Zimbabwe’s Sham Election -- Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has decided not to participate in the run-off election with President Robert Mugabe on Friday. Having won the first round, allegedly not by the 50%+1 needed for outright election, Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision means that Mr. Mugabe will be president for a while longer. However, Mr. Tsvangirai has proved that there is no electoral solution to the country’s troubles so long as Mr. Mugabe is in power. The time for a government in exile has come. Saudis Promise More Oil, Price Rises Anyway -- The week-end meeting of OPEC countries and their customers amounted to a nice photo op and little more. Saudi Arabia promised to pump an extra 200,000 barrels of crude a day, a 2.1% increase. Worldwide production is 85 million barrels a day. This Saudi increase is a drop in the bucket. Clearly everyone wanted to be seen to be doing something about oil prices, but when the nations involved showed just how little they could do, the market took the price of oil back up. Short-term political gimmicks like this meeting aren’t going to alter the facts. George Carlin’s Heart Fails -- To people of a certain age, mostly males, there is a definite memory of sitting in a basement somewhere between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans listening to comedy albums on a stereo. Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers and Bob Newhart could make a boring afternoon sail by. And then, there were George Carlin’s records. Second only to Richard Pryor in changing stand-up as an art form, Mr. Carlin went from clean-cut 1950s humor, to 1960s and 1970s counter-culture laughing to 1980s and 1990s social criticism. He passed away yesterday all too soon at 71. © Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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