CHARLES GASPARINO: Printing Money To Save Euro Socialism.

PHONY SALES? GM Channel-Stuffing Surges To All-Time Record. “Because when economic growth at all costs is needed to demonstrate just how viable America is, and a semi-nationalized car marker is one of the only conduits to ‘generate’ economic growth, it does not matter if the end product is actually demanded or will simply corrode and rust in some dealer showroom in perpetuity. After all it is the act of building the car that matters for various monthly PMI, CMI, regional Fed and GDP purposes.”

Related: GM willing to buy back Volts. “General Motors will buy Chevrolet Volts back from any owner who is afraid the electric cars will catch fire, the company’s CEO said Thursday. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, CEO Dan Akerson insisted that the cars are safe, but said the company will purchase the Volts because it wants to keep customers happy. Three fires have broken out in Volts after side-impact crash tests done by the federal government.”

UPDATE: Ronnie Schreiber emails:

Only one fire has broken out in a crash tested Volt. The other fires were in battery packs, not cars. One Volt that was tested earlier in the year by NHTSA, and after a 20mph side impact into a pole, followed by a rollover test, it caught fire three weeks later. Within the last month NHTSA performed additional testing but from my reading of the press release it appears that the testing was on battery packs alone. Since the battery pack in the Volt that caught fire had been penetrated during the testing, NHTSA tested three batteries by damaging the cases, cutting the coolant lines, and then rotating the batteries. The experiment was designed to replicate the conditions of the Volt that burned. Of those three batteries, two experienced “thermal events”.

I think that’s the source of the “three fires have broken out in Volts after side-impact crash tests” meme. . . One battery started to spark and smoke soon after the damage and inversion, one battery initially showed a temperature increase and then a week later caught fire, and one battery didn’t do anything. According to some reports, the battery that sparked and smoked extinguished the fire itself. While there were two “thermal events” in the battery testing, it appears that there was actually only one fire. So, rather than “three fires have broken out in Volts after side-impact crash tests” it’s really more like one fire in a crash tested Volt and one fire in a crash tested battery pack.

GM crash tested the Volt plenty before sending it off to NHTSA. NHTSA and also IIHS, the insurance industry highway safety trade group, performed many more tests. In all that crash testing, only one battery caught fire, and then only after 3 weeks of sitting there with the battery still holding a charge. GM’s protocols with the Volt call for discharging the battery in the event of a serious accident, which wasn’t done by NHTSA on the Volt that burned so it’s possible that in GM’s own crash testing, the exact conditions of the NHTSA fire never existed. Perhaps the NHTSA test revealed an unknown vulnerability in the Volt design or perhaps it was just a rare combination of circumstances. The part that intrigues me is the intrusion into the battery pack in the original crash test. I’m wondering if GM, NHTSA or the IIHS ever observed that kind of intrusion in any of their crash testing. If not, I don’t think that GM can be faulted for not anticipating something that their own testing never produced. Of course learning from unanticipated failure is called engineering. I’m sure that Volt version 2.0, if there is one, will have a steel jacket around the battery pack, like the Nissan Leaf.

Ah.

INTERNET FREEDOM: Bill Would Curb Exports of Spyware. “A bill that would restrict U.S. exports of technology that can be used by repressive regimes to censor the Internet or conduct surveillance on users will be introduced in the House soon. The sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.), said the proposed legislation is in response to reports that some governments have used American products to crack down on dissidents.”

Is it just me, or is Congress better on Internet freedom abroad than it is about Internet freedom at home?

A VICTORY FOR THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Paying People for Bone-Marrow-Derived Stem Cells Extracted from Blood (Not Bone) Is Legal, Rules the Ninth Circuit.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION. Really, an agency in need of repair, or replacement. Or abolition.

SLANT: ABA Journal, listing 100 law blogs, identifies 2 as “conservative” and none as “liberal.” The two “conservative” blogs are Althouse and the Volokh Conspiracy.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Reader James Stovall writes: “When you post about the higher education bubble, I think you should note that ROI should be the primary factor driving prestige of schools in the future. Schools like my alma mater (Georgia Tech) consistently come out on top. We could cut costs as well, but are giving the best value out there.” Yes, when school costs as much as it does, ROI has to matter a lot.

BUT DO WE BELIEVE THEM? Energy Dept. defends air pollution regulations, says new rules won’t crash power grid. “The Energy Department said Thursday that upcoming air pollution regulations will not threaten the reliability of the country’s electric grid, the latest effort by the Obama administration to counter claims by Republicans and industry officials that the rules could cause power outages.”

THE HORROR OF MEEBO.

BYRON YORK: Voters like new Newt but wait to see if he’s real.

JIM TYNEN: Obama And His Caste. “I know Hyde Park, the president’s former home. It is an enclave, a bubble, plunked into the South Side. I’ve worked on campuses and in downtowns. The modern government and corporation seal themselves off from the less tidy aspects of life, as they seal themselves off from bad weather and noise. . . . Obama is like that: the cocoon of his mind and thoughts and ideology blurs out the unseemly sights and smells of cities or, say, failed stimulus programs.”

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, controversy over John Mearsheimer. More from Pejman Yousefzadeh.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama Campaigns On The Taxpayer Dime.

INFLATION WORRIES: Haunted by ’20s Hyperinflation, Germans Balk at Euro Aid. “F’or the average American, inflation means the home price is increasing and the value of debt is going down,’ said Peter Bofinger, a prominent economist on Mrs. Merkel’s independent council of economic advisers, ‘whereas the German invested in life insurance and sitting in an apartment he rented is much more vulnerable to inflation.’”

BRYAN PRESTON: What’s Eating Mitt Romney?

ROGER SIMON: What Was Herman Cain Thinking? Plus, this: “When it comes to politicians, caveat emptor. They are almost all very flawed human beings. The incumbent president is a good example of that.”

ANDREW MALCOLM: A Strangely Desperate New Obama Campaign Speech.

JAMES TARANTO: For liberal baby boomers, it’s always 1972.

“ARAB SPRING:” Landslide: Islamists on track to dominate Egyptian parliament.

UPDATE: A Tunisian Islamist Looks to the Future.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Airport security a few months after 9/11.

STEVEN CROWDER: MICHELE BACHMANN’S REVENGE.

A READER POINTS OUT ANOTHER CHANCE TO PLAY “NAME THAT PARTY!” New York Times: Ex-Governor Is Said to Be Focal Point of Inquiry. “Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico who ran for president in 2008, is being investigated by a federal grand jury for possible violations of campaign finance laws, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry.”

If you scroll down far enough you see this: “Some experts likened the investigation of Mr. Richardson to that of John Edwards, another candidate in the 2008 Democratic race.” But that’s as close as they get to identifying Bill Richardson as a major Democrat and Clinton cabinet member.

A COLD WINTER’S COMING: At Amazon, 60% off sweaters and fleece. For men, women, and children.

MICKEY KAUS ON Mitt Romney on immigration.

AFTERBURNER: Bill Whittle on Newt Gingrich on Education and Character.