>Considering the energy used in auto manufacturing

>it is never better to buy a new car. Period. End

>of story.

Wrong. As others have already pointed out, older cars are a huge source of air pollution compared to newer vehicles. That pollution causes damage, which requires energy to repair (how much energy goes into treating a single individual for lung cancer, for example).

Older cars also tend to require more maintenance as they age, which comes with its own energy cost - parts, fluids, labor. They also tend to be less safe than newer vehicles with their sophisticated traction and stability control systems, passive restraints, and sturdier construction. Injuries caused by auto accidents also have a high associated energy cost, especially if they cause lasting disability.

On French autoroutes there is a variable speed limit: in dry weather, 130 km/h (80 mph); when raining, 110 km/h (68 mph), according to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#France

Don't bet on a bad economy being good for Hollywood. A couple of major studios nearly went bankrupt in the early '30s. As I recall, Shirley Temple saved Fox and Mae West saved Paramount, but it was touch and go for awhile.

Joan Rivers recounts an interesting story of being one of just a handful of people who bothered showing up for Mae West's funeral in 1980. Not a single executive from Paramount came to the service. As Joan put it, Mae "outlived her fame".

How the World Works has no problem with the theory that in the long run, high prices for food commodities and a completely free trade regime would result in greater production (provided farmers don't run into absolute constraints -- such as a lack of land or water or fertilizer inputs.)

Agricultural production depends more on the weather than it does on "free trade". Global climate change is already having an impact on agriculture, and it's only gonna get worse from here on out.

Beyond that, just because there's demand for a good doesn't mean farmers are gonna produce it. There have to be paying customers, and they have to pay enough to make the good profitable to produce. With the cost of inputs like petrochemicals skyrocketing, it should come as no surprise that food's getting more expensive, and scarce as some customers begin to hoard in order to head off rising prices. Add to that the exploding global population and you have a recipe for disaster.

American consumers are also having to cope with the collapse of the dollar, which is making food far more expensive than it was just a year or two ago. Why sell your grain in the US when you can get more money for it in Europe or Asia?

Anybody else see this article in the New York Times?

Life Expectancy Is Declining in Some Pockets of the Country

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/health/research/22life.html?_r=1&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin

From the article:

"Counties with significant declines were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Texas, the southern Midwest and along the Mississippi River. Life expectancy increases were mainly in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast.

From 1961 to 1983, no county had a statistically significant decline in life expectancy, and reductions in cardiovascular disease led to a generally increasing length of life for both sexes. But after 1983, life expectancy declined an average of 1.3 years in 11 counties for men, and in 180 counties for women."

Well, lookie there. The decline started in 1983. The Reagan Revolution at work.

Checkout the graphs in the article as well. Lifespans started to decline in the Soviet Union about 20 years before it finally collapsed.

Unless you have a lighting fixture that's really hard to reach, I'd stick with CFL's for now. LED bulbs are just starting to become practical for everyday use. There's bound to be a lot more development over the next 5 years, and the price is almost certain to decline substantially. There are also still color temperature issues with LED's that have already been largely resolved in CFL's. LED's are bound to get better over the next 5 years in that regard as well.

The fact that Obama doesn't appreciate this is just another example of his elitism and highlights yet again that he does not have the experience to lead a nation.

I'm sorry - maybe the working class wouldn't need a piddling tax cut on gas if Hillary and her horndog husband hadn't shipped millions of their freaking jobs overseas via NAFTA, free trade agreements with China, and 8 years of the strong dollar policy.

Talk about elitism.

Those of you who are well enough off to scoff at the meager savings of Clinton's proposal, could you please send me $30? My address is 4225 E University Dr., Apt 25, Mesa, AZ 85205. Please inform your friends of my plight and do the Christian thing. Thank you.I am not being facetious.

Those in such dire financial straits they can't afford needed medicines or even the gasoline it takes to go fetch them might do well to consider that Hillary is part of the elite power structure that caused the loss of millions of high-paying manufacturing sector jobs over the past 30 years. Hillary was part of an administration which foisted the strong dollar policy on the American public for the benefit of our crooked financial services sector, at the expense of anybody who produces a tangible good of value for a living. The same administration passed legislation to ensure the oil commodity business is as opaque as possible, meaning we the people are blind to what the big oil companies and enemy states like Saudi Arabia are doing behind closed doors.

Now, after helping to rob the working man of his cake Hillary is offering the proles a few crumbs in the form of a pissant tax cut? Why, how magnanimous of Hillary Antoinette.

Can we break out the guillotines yet?