ENOUGH MATERIAL to make 775 nuclear weapons.

COMING: BOMBSHELL INSIDER-TRADING PROSECUTIONS? Alas, despite all evidence, members of Congress are unlikely to be implicated, as they’ve managed to exempt themselves from the law.

EDUCATION: BOARD FLOATS VOUCHER PLAN: “‘These days, you can build a custom computer. You can get a custom latte at Starbucks,’ said board member Meghann Silverthorn. ‘Parents expect the same out of their educational system.'”

THE RACISM OF BRITAIN’S ELITES:

This kind of repellent snobbery and prejudice was captured in an extraordinary outburst from newspaper columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Condemning white working-class Britons as “either too lazy or too expensive to compete” in the new era of multi-racialism, she wrote that “tax-paying immigrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers on their couches drinking beer and watching TV”.

Such comments are not only offensive, but also factually incorrect, since levels of unemployment and welfare dependency are actually much higher in certain immigrant communities. According to the Office of National Statistics, 35 per cent of Muslim households have no adult in employment, more than twice the national average, though no liberal columnist would dream of ever writing about “Muslim scroungers”.

Of course not. That would be racist.

ANOTHER CREDIT COLLAPSE? India Microcredit Faces Collapse From Defaults. “India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor.” Show me a credit collapse, and there’s probably a politician behind it somewhere . . . . On the other hand, if you loan money to people with no ready means to pay it back, you’re bound to face collapse. The earlier microcredit experiments made a big point of ensuring repayment, but that seems to have gone by the wayside, which is unfortunate.

UPDATE: Reader Phil Manhard notes that, as usual, The Onion got there first.

JAMES DELINGPOLE: On the anniversary of Climategate the Watermelons show their true colours.

DANIEL FERNALD: Liberty, TSA, and the Technological Society. “Are we to be subjects? Or citizens?”

MICKEY KAUS: GM’S IPO: Suckers, Found! He’s not very optimistic:

Suckers: GM found a lot of them, even though a) by its own admission, it lacks “effective internal controls” over its finances; b) it’s still saddled with the UAW, which is already pledging ‘no more concessions’ and even making some trouble; c) its Opel subsidiary is hemorhaging money at a rate of billions a year; d) a high Opel official declared the IPO “premature” while noting that “there is still too much red tape and inefficiency;” e) it has surrendered a majority stake in its promising Chinese joint venture to its Chinese partner f) its bailout plan assumes it will maintain a market share of 19 percent, but its share most recently fell to 18.3 percent, part of a decades-long decline; g) who knows what accounting gimmickry was used to dress up the books; h) the government has intervened in GM’s decisionmaking more than it’s let on; i) we don’t know if GM’s new products (like the Chevrolet Cruze) will have traditional GM reliability–the company better hope not; and j) the name “General Motors’ is now so tarnished that the company is removing it from auto show displays, hoping buyers will not associate “Buick” or “Chevrolet” with such a negative brand …. P.S.: GM stock purchasers won’t be suckers, of course, if their shares rise. So far, they’ve risen 3.6 percent, even though the NYT reported that “several of the people involved in the offering said they expect to see a potential 10 to 20 percent jump in the share price on Thursday, typical for an initial offering.”

More at the link.

REUTERS: Obama’s Democrats in disarray over expiring tax cuts.

CHINA: THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF STATISTICS: “One of the enduring mysteries of the Chinese economy is, well, all the enduring mysteries about the Chinese economy. Which is to say, good statistics are very hard to come by.”

AMAZON: We’re leaking our Black Friday deals early. And just a reminder that when you buy anything from Amazon through links on this site (or the search box over in the right sidebar), you put a little money in my family’s pocket at no cost to you.

BUSINESS INSIDER: These Are The 15 Housing Markets That Will Get Crushed The Hardest By 2012.

PROF. JACOBSON: NY Dems Pull Voting Machines Out Of The Trunk In State Senate Race. “We all have heard of ballots being found in the trunks of cars, and elsewhere during recounts. In a hotly contested race for the State Senate in New York, Democrats have gone one better, and found two new (and uncounted) voting machines.”

MORE OIL: Tyler Formation could be one-third to one-half the size of the Bakken oil field.

FOUND: An extragalactic exoplanet. “Astronomers have for the first time discovered a planet in the Milky Way that came from another galaxy. The planet, which has a mass of at least 1.25 Jupiters, orbits an elderly star that was ripped from a small satellite galaxy some 6 to 9 billion years ago.”

BUSINESS IN AMERICA: Moving Forward In Uncertain Times.

“HARD-CODED BIAS” IN GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS?

TYGHE TRIMBLE: The Problem With Prosthetics And Airport Security. “A survey of 7300 amputees conducted by the Amputee Coalition of America in June showed that travelers with limb loss have been subjected to inconsistent, unfair, abusive and often embarrassing screenings by TSA employees.”

ANN ALTHOUSE EXPLORES TSA conspiracy theory. I don’t think the TSA folks are smart enough to mount a good conspiracy — but that’s probably what I’m supposed to think . . . .

Plus, a poll.

FUTURE TEACHERS most likely to cheat in college?

HOW BRAIN IMAGING could help predict Alzheimer’s.

ENTITLED: “Shared sacrifice” is for the little people. “American Federation of Teachers president Rhonda ‘Randi’ Weingarten has issued a statement slamming proposed cuts from the congressional deficit commission for not pushing shared sacrifice among the wealthy, but an AFT spokesman has told The Examiner that Weingarten will not be taking a paycut from the total $428,284 she received in salary and benefits during fiscal year 2010.”

“THE RECESSION IS OVER? SAYS WHO?” Rich Vail could use some help. I donated. Even better would be if somebody in Maryland could help him find a job.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Andrew Traver: Is Obama’s choice for ATF chief an ‘antigun zealot’?

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.