READER STEVE BRISENDINE says that I should have mentioned this coffeemaker in my big coffeemaker roundup. First I’ve heard of it, but it gets good reviews.

A RECORD HIGH FOR THE DOW: What does the market know that I don’t know?

SENATOR WARBUCKS?

JOE MALCHOW: “Want to talk about politicizing war?”

DANIEL DREZNER:

Gingrich intrigues me — he’s far more complex and interesting a thinker than the nineties stereotype of him suggested. And if Hillary Clinton can remake herself as someone who’s learned from past mistakes, I see no reason why Gingrich can’t as well.

However, I can’t shake the feeling that because I’m so interested in a Gingrich, he’s doomed to fail.

I know that feeling.

CHINA VOWS TO “PURIFY” THE INTERNET: (Via BoingBoing.)

A STATE-OF-THE-UNION ENERGY CONSERVATION REALITY CHECK:

Twenty percent less gas in 10 years? Sounds nice, but what will it really take to make it happen? I didn’t hear any answers to that question, beyond the standard ethanol speech, which is all well and good, but there’s still little discussion of the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). People who claim that a gallon of ethanol replaces a gallon of gas are forgetting a few truths: To grow the corn (our current feed stock for ethanol), you need nitrogen-based fertilizers that demand copious natural gas inputs, and you need lots and lots of diesel to run the tractors, combines and trucks it takes to get the corn to market. And then you have to refine it. Fact is, corn-based ethanol has a fairly poor EROEI (some studies suggest that we’re burning nearly a gallon of fossil fuels to make a gallon of ethanol).

Other feedstocks show more promise: switch grass, biomass, wood chips and (so I hear) chicken fat. But we’re not there yet, and it’s hard to believe that we’ll be able to cut our gas use by 20% in 10 years on ethanol alone.

Ethanol, at the moment, is pretty much liquid pork. That could change, but I remain unimpressed.

UPDATE: A downside to ethanol?

Soaring international demand for corn has caused a spike in prices for Mexico’s humble tortilla, hitting the poor and forcing President Felipe Calderon’s business-friendly government into an uncomfortable confrontation with powerful monopolies.

Tortilla prices have jumped nearly 14 percent over the past year, a move the head of Mexico’s central bank called “unjustifiable” in a country where inflation ran about 4 percent.

Economists blame increased U.S. production of ethanol from corn as an alternative to oil. The battle over the tortilla, the most basic staple of the Mexican diet, especially among the poor, demonstrates how increasing economic integration is felt on the street level.

Feeding people is more important than feeding cars. If we’re going to emphasize ethanol, it should come from waste biomass, not corn, Charles Grassley’s lobbying notwithstanding. (Via ThreeSources).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Complicating the story, at Cafe Hayek.

QUESTIONS on the latest anti-gun research from Harvard.

A NEW IOWA POLL: Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards are in the respective leads.

HUGH HEWITT IS ENCOURAGING PEOPLE to pledge not to support any Republican Senator who votes to oppose the surge. There’s a pledge website here.

The pledge reads:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

It will be interesting to see if this makes an impact. This is the sort of grassroots pressure that Democrats have been feeling for a while, but it’s new to Republicans. I think that Hugh’s right to start this drive. Opposition to the surge is wrong (see what Petraeus said) and it’s also political suicide for the Republicans.

THE BBC REFERS TO “Instapundit’s Stephen Green” in its roundup of State of the Union reactions. But though I’d like to claim him, he’s his own man.

Meanwhile, the speech polled well: “78 percent of speech viewers reacted positively; 67 percent think Bush’s policies will move country in right direction.” I don’t think it’ll make much difference, though. Some perspective here.

UPDATE: Heh: “If only all those layers of taxpayer-funded editors could be trusted to figure out which blog he actually runs.”

MOHAMMED FADHIL REPORTS from the streets of Baghdad.

UPDATE: Plus, an email from Michael Yon: “We need to kill Sadr.”

WE WON’T HAVE JOHN KERRY to kick around any more: “Senator John F. Kerry plans to announce today that he will not run in the 2008 presidential race, and will instead remain in Congress and seek reelection to his Senate seat next year, according to senior Democratic officials.”

OUCH: “The Democratic response by Virginia Sen. James Webb was also memorable, in a different way. Whenever a politician puts out to the media that he has thrown away the speechwriters’ draft and written the remarks himself (as Webb did), it is often a sign of approaching mediocrity. This was worse.” Of course, it’s a speechwriter talking, and not just any speechwriter.

MAX BOOT: “Although most of the foreign policy debate in the U.S. has been riveted on Iraq, some within the Pentagon have been touting recent events in Somalia as an alternative model of how to fight Islamo-fascists. Everyone recognizes that there will be scant appetite in the near term for sending huge numbers of U.S. troops to occupy any more Middle Eastern countries. Might not the U.S. be able to achieve its goals by taking advantage of local allies backed by American airpower and small numbers of commandos and intelligence agents?”

Yes, but there are some caveats.

NEWBERY AND CALDECOTT AWARD WINNERS announced.

ADAM BONIN BOOTED FROM REDSTATE: I’ve worked with him on the FEC blogging freedom stuff and found him to be quite a reasonable guy.

OLD CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: “Rumsfeld and Bush should have listened to the generals.”

NEW CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Shut up, generals.

BAD NEWS FOR David Shuster.

JACKSONIANS ON THE WAR: Disappointment over unwillingness to fight hard enough? That sounds right to me, as I’ve observed a similar phenomenon and commented on it in the past. It’s certainly Bill Quick’s complaint: “a half-assed, one-hand-tied-behind-our-backs, safe haven, ‘war’ he has neither the guts nor the intention to wage to the fullest, or to completion.” I’m not quite sure that was Webb’s point, though.

UPDATE: An alternate text for Webb. Heh. Webb’s brave, but not that brave.

WITH BUSH TALKING BIOFUELS, it’s worth reminding people of how the numbers crunch on a variety of alternative fuels.

IN THE MAIL: Jan Crawford Greenburg’s new book. She says Clarence Thomas is much more influential than generally thought. Orin Kerr says her book is a “must read.”

RUTH MARCUS: “Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush’s new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform — if he introduced Hillarycare itself — and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.” And if he announced a troop surge that Harry Reid was urging just last month, they’d denounce that. Oh, wait . . . .

NIFONG UPDATE: The ethics charges against him growing out of the Duke (non) Rape Case just got a lot stronger.

UPDATE: Much more here.

PATROLLING IN KHADIMIYA: At Hot Air.

These reports are much better than we’re getting elsewhere. Don’t miss ’em.