NOBODY’S PERFECT: MythBusters Misfire Sends Cannonball Bounding Into Neighborhood.

JOURNALISM: Better-looking Politicians Get More TV Time.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR: “I simply do not know where the money is.”

APPARENTLY, “GREEN” AUTOWORKERS AREN’T MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE OLD-SCHOOL KIND: Using a forklift, the people in the videos crush a bodyshell against the wall, drop on from on high and then put it into a dumpster. At the end of the first video, someone says, “None of this shit ends up on YouTube.”

UPDATE: In the mail, a press release from Aptera Motors. Key bit:

The videos were taken approximately eight months ago at Aptera’s Oceanside facility, which the company officially exited in May 2011. However, the posters of these videos have tried to portray these clips as an angered response from Aptera employees at the recent closure of the company. These claims are completely false.

The bodies in question were not slated for demolition because on any ill will or malice from any member of the company present or past. These particular 2e’s were defective and/or obsolete development properties that no longer had any value to the company. We destroyed the bodies because they were unsafe for use as a vehicle — with high potential for loss of life if they were involved in a crash. (This is evidenced by the upper body and lower skins separating from each other on impact.)

While the company often engages in technology sharing with academic institutions (area elementary, middle and high schools, universities and museums, we never released vehicle assets that had the potential of being misused and resulting in physical harm or loss of life.

Contrary to the stories that have been written recently, there was no destruction of company property during the closure of Aptera.

Well, good. I have to say, though, the video did look bad.

THE GROUP OF 88 WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Duke lacrosse accuser can be tried on murder charges. “Crystal Mangum, the former stripper who falsely accused members of the Duke University lacrosse team of sexually assaulting her in 2006, is competent to stand trial on murder charges in the death of her boyfriend, a Durham judge ruled Wednesday.” Reader Michael Greene writes: “Nifong got disbarred but what happened to Duke and the federal regulators who lowered the bar from presumed innocent?” Not much, alas.

Then there are the problems of Nifong’s successor.

THE EURO AND the Tragedy Of The Commons. “Is it any wonder that the currency zone encouraged profligate debt?”

KENNETH ANDERSON: US Citizen Indefinite Military Detention in NDAA?

More from Robert Chesney.

TRIFECTA: Scott Ott, Bill Whittle, & Stephen Green on Tim Tebow.

GOOD NEWS: Weekly jobless claims drop to 9-month low. Of course, they’re still not all that low.

UPDATE: Reader Duane Simpson writes:

The unadjusted number suggests something isn’t quite right about the new 9-month low. From the report:

“The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 523,642 in the week ending December 3, an increase of 151,002 from the previous week.”

That’s some adjustment! Unadjusted, we have an increase of 151,002. Adjusted we have a decrease of 23,000. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I don’t believe the number. Incidentally, the market spiked on the headline then crashed on the report.

Lots of people are charging chicanery at BLS. They may be right, but so far I’ve been unable to uncover anything.

UPDATE: The Return of the 400K Myth:

We have been bouncing between 380K and 410K for the last several weeks, which is an improvement over the level we saw this summer of 420K or so. However, this essentially brings us back to the level seen in Q1 before the impact that rising gas prices and the tsunamis in Japan had on the economy. Not coincidentally, the overall economy has returned to about the same level of health, with a stagnation-level 2.0% GDP rate in Q3. It’s an improvement, but only a marginal one, especially in the context of the continued exodus of working-age adults from the workforce and the lowest level of civilian participation in 30 years.

However, that still hasn’t kept media outlets from heralding the 400K level as an indicator of job growth, which is — as I have repeatedly shown — a myth. . . . Nowhere in this report does Reuters mention the decline in the labor force, which puts the context of the “drop” in unemployment in a completely different context. National Journal goes a little farther, claiming that going below the 400K level brings the job market into a place where it can “dent” unemployment. That is simply not so, at least not directly correlated to the 400K level. If anyone needed a check on that, all we have to do is look at the unemployment rates from Q1 when we spent several weeks at the 380K level and the jobless rate never dropped below 9%. Otherwise, we could take a look at the historical correlation between weekly jobless claims and job-growth levels, which show that we have to go much lower to indicate real job creation.

We’ll see happy talk, whether warranted or not, as the main theme until the election, at the very least.

IS THE CHEVY VOLT headed for a recall?

UPDATE: Not so fast.

BIG BROTHER DOING YOUR TAXES? That’s kinda what it sounds like. “The goal of this initiative is to improve the tax filing process by reducing burden for taxpayers and improving overall compliance upfront. Under the vision of a real-time tax system, the IRS could match information submitted on a tax return with third-party information right up front during processing and could provide the opportunity for taxpayers to fix the tax return before acceptance if it contains data that does not match IRS records.”

UPDATE: Link was broken before. Fixed now. Sorry!

I THINK THIS QUESTION ANSWERS ITSELF: Dan Mitchell: Why Are American Tax Dollars Subsidizing a Paris-Based Bureaucracy so It Can Help the AFL-CIO Push Obama’s Class-Warfare Agenda?

#OCCUPYFAIL: Chris Christie heckles ‘Occupy’ protesters in Iowa.

“Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago… politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.”

Christie called them disillusioned and said he “feels bad” for them.

“Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves,” he said.

In other words: Hey, rubes!

HEY, THIS SUPPORTS NEAL STEPHENSON’S PLOT GIMMICK IN REAMDE: Well, it does. Two-Thirds of Lost USB Drives Carry Malware.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Neal McCluskey: White House Denial On College Cost Crisis. “Want to do exactly the wrong things to fix US higher education? You can’t do much better than the recent offerings from Education Secretary Arne Duncan. To a system blackout-drunk on taxpayer money, the Obama administration would deliver even more booze while only whispering about tough love. . . . Ultimately, none of Duncan’s prescription will make college much cheaper or more effective. Only taking the jet fuel — federal student aid — out of college pricing, and being frank about the real value of higher education, could do that.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Five Big Lies in Obama’s Economic Fairness Speech. “One thing is certainly true about President Obama — no matter how many times people point out the falsehoods in his speeches, he just keeps making them. Case in point: his latest ‘economic fairness’ address. In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama’s argument rests on a pile of untruths.”

TODAY ONLY: 50% off select Melissa & Doug toys.

DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND AGAINST ETHICAL OIL: Obama threatens veto if pipeline decision is added to payroll tax cut.

Call his bluff.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Guns That Fit In A Stocking.

I like the Glock 26. I also like a Ruger LCP, which is really little. If you get either — or any of these small guns — you might want to consider adding a Crimson Trace laser sight. They’re surprisingly easy to install, in my experience.

FASTER, PLEASE: Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer. “Fortunately for the rest of us, the cost of turning pieces of DNA into digital information has improved: The costs dropped a hundredfold in the last three years. The tipping point before widespread use is believed to be $1,000 per individual genome, which is a reason for the major investment in reducing its cost. Given such dramatic improvement, we could soon afford to sequence the genomes of the millions of cancer patients, which only billionaires could afford a few years ago.”

PHIL BOWERMASTER: Renaissance and Recovery.

SURE LOOKS LIKE IT: John Hinderaker: Was Fast And Furious All About Gun Control? “We certainly want to be fair to the Obama administration officials who were involved in Fast and Furious. But a fundamental question has never been answered: why in the world did the Obama administration not just allow AK-47s and other weapons to be shipped across the border to Mexican drug gangs, but encourage and even finance such transactions, over the objections of jittery gun shop owners and its own veteran agents? If the Obama administration wasn’t trying to set up an argument for more gun control, then what was it trying to do?”

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: “If Hinderaker’s conclusion seems extreme, consider that it could be easily refuted by a clear statement from the Obama administration disclosing the true and legitimate purpose. The absence of such a statement propels us toward the extreme conclusion.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Law School Stimulus: $54.3 Billion Student Loans Through 2020. The graphics on graduate debt levels are just plain scary. Just remember: Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Three Layers Of The European Debt Crisis.