Why the Jeremiah Wright story deserves more attention

That, obviously, is a huge difference -- larger than the net worth of Bill Gates or the GDP of Italy. There's no grounds for saying that two plans' costs have something "in common" when they differ in cost by at least $3.8 trillion, but to understand this you need to understand what you're talking about. After all, if one candidate was offering budget-busting on the Democratic scale, and another candidate was offering $2 trillion in deficit reduction nobody would have trouble distinguishing between the budget hawk and the deficit spender. But the difference in magnitude is the same in either case.

Now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, however, McCain is marching straight down the party line. The economic package he has laid out embraces many of the tax policies he once decried: extending Bush's tax cuts he voted against, offering investment tax breaks he once believed would have little economic benefit and granting the long-held wishes of tax lobbyists he has often mocked.

McCain's concerns -- about budget deficits, unanticipated defense costs, an Iraq war that would be longer and more costly than advertised -- have proved eerily prescient, usually a plus for politicians who are quick to say they were right when others were wrong. Yet McCain appears determined to leave such predictions behind.

The mass-produced banana first came to the United States in the 19th century. As the next century rolled on, buccaneering banana men pioneered such innovative business practices as propping up puppet heads of states throughout Latin America, keeping them in power through corporate largesse, and exploiting local workers, when not actually encouraging local governments to enslave or kill them. By building railroads, in exchange for land for plantations, United Fruit tightly entwined itself with the economies of many countries, and came to own huge swaths of Central America. Its reach was so extensive that it became known as "the Octopus."

When local leaders threatened taxes or complained about the company's abysmal labor practices, such as paying workers exclusively in company scrip to be spent only at the company store, United Fruit threatened to leave the country, taking its business next door. Mere bribes to local officials were strictly junior varsity in this jungle.

In some countries, United Fruit blatantly paid no taxes at all for decades. In others, when troubled by local officials, it simply installed a more sympathetic government. In Honduras in 1911, the banana men not only staged an invasion to depose the current regime and put in a new one, they had the audacity to demand the new government reimburse the costs incurred in the invasion!

CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources...

The technology has no obvious bottlenecks and uses mostly commodity materials -- steel, concrete and glass. The central component, a standard power system routinely used by the natural gas industry today, would create steam to turn a standard electric generator. Plants can be built rapidly -- in two to three years -- much faster than nuclear plants. It would be straightforward to build CSP systems at whatever rate industry and governments needed, ultimately 50 to 100 gigawatts a year growth or more.

At one level, who can blame Hillary Clinton for going after Obama's mistake? Her campaign looked set to collapse, if not in Pennsylvania then shortly thereafter. Of course she capitalized on his error by accusing him of being elitist.

But something doesn't parse when a Wellesley and Yale Law School graduate whose family made $109 million since 2001 relentlessly assails a former community organizer on the grounds that he is an elitist. (McCain enthusiastically dittoed the charge Monday.) It's also disappointing that Clinton, whose husband bravely battled the National Rifle Association over a ban on assault weapons, now presents herself as a Second Amendment hero.

And not contenting herself with bashing Obama, she denigrated the last two Democratic presidential nominees, John Kerry and Al Gore, at Sunday night's CNN forum on faith.

IT'S NO WONDER medical costs are skyrocketing: Companies such as Merck and Schering-Plough have been brilliantly marketing a drug that hasn't been shown to improve health.

The two manufacturers released the results of a cholesterol study last month that compared Zocor, a generic cholesterol treatment, with Vytorin, a drug that combines Zocor with another drug called Zetia. Despite Vytorin's massive marketing campaign, the drug looks to be no more effective at reducing artery plaque than Zocor alone, even though Vytorin is three times as expensive as generic Zocor...

What explains this belated revelation? The Food and Drug Administration approved Vytorin and Zetia for reducing LDL (the "bad") cholesterol, and they do in fact reduce LDL cholesterol more than statins alone do. However, lower LDL cholesterol itself is not the final goal; the goal is to lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. Only with the new study has it become known that Vytorin and Zetia are probably not superior to statins in improving health. Although another study looking directly at their effects on heart disease and stroke is underway, it looks as if consumers may have been throwing away their money.

The FDA could take some steps to prevent similar waste. When approving drugs, it could make public statements to clarify whether a drug is more effective than similar drugs and whether it should be used first or as a last resort. FDA officials say this type of information is sometimes included in drug labels, but drug companies often bury it.

For drugs that are the first in a new class, as Vytorin was, the FDA could also request post-approval tests to show that the medicines do improve health. Merck and Schering-Plough initiated the Vytorin efficacy study voluntarily. But had they not undertaken a study to directly compare their drug with a competing drug, and had a congressional investigation not scared the companies into releasing the embarrassing results, patients would be none the wiser.