This Week's Link Post

In February, we learned that Airbus won a prized Air Force contract. Boeing, of course appealed. Now there is a website designed to Keep Our Tank (In Mobile, AL). It's been a little amusing watching the political reaction to a logical extension of the globalization policies promoted by the US government for decades.

In July 2007, Jim Davis attended a sermon given by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. When he wrote his article in August, he reported that Barack Obama and Wright had already had a discussion about the candidate's distancing himself from his religious mentor:

Political pundits have suggested that Obama's problems with Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic nomination. Obama's ties to Wright and the activist African American church helps in that effort....

"If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me," Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. "I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that might have to happen.'"

Sex education in America is almost as hot a political potato as sex scandals. The issue has become one of policy in this Administration, which has promoted abstinence-only sex-ed. A new study from the University of Washington reports that teens who "receive comprehensive sex education are half as likely to become teen parents as those who get none or abstinence-only sex education."

Does anyone reading this expect a little factual research to influence government policy in 2008? Nah, I didn't think so.

Finally, make gasoline expensive enough, fairly quickly, and consumers will modify behavior as direct and indirect costs take a bite out of the collective wallet. Despite the fact that we put more cars on the road every year, gasoline consumption dropped 1 percent over an eight-week period in 2008 compared with 2007. It should have increased 1.5 percent just to keep up with more cars on the road.