A CAR FOR THE CHINESE .01 %: Chevy Volt will cost $78,000 in China, go on sale in eight cities.
Archive for 2011
November 23, 2011
ADVICE ON HOW TO get better customer service.
AT AMAZON, Black Friday Deals in Toys & Games.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): CNN Poll: Blue collar Democrats’ support for Obama drops. What, they’re not moved by class-solidarity with the #Occupy protesters? But note this: “The poll indicates that there has been some change when Democrats are asked whether they want to see their party renominate Obama, with 26% of Democrats saying that they would prefer the party to nominate another Democrat for president next year, up from 18% in October.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Tough economy means another scaled-back Thanksgiving. “Some are holding potluck dinners instead of springing for the entire feast. Others are staying home rather than flying. And a few are skipping the turkey altogether.”
I guess things aren’t living up to those 2008 hopes.
ON MARS ROVER, tools to plumb a methane mystery. “There are no cows on Mars. Of that, planetary scientists are certain, which leaves them puzzling over what could be producing methane gas detected in the thin Martian air. Methane molecules are easily blown apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, so any methane around must have been released recently.”
IN RESPONSE TO THIS MORNING’S TURKEY-FRYER WARNING FROM WILLIAM SHATNER, reader Laurie Myers writes:
The answer to safe turkey frying is this. I bought one last Sunday at BJ’s and paid $119, so Amazon’s price [$89] is fantastic. We used it on Sunday and the turkey came out great. I can’t imagine frying the turkey the way it is done in the video.
Too late for Thanksgiving, but worth noting. And there’s always Christmas.
WANTED: Open Access For Heart Defibrillator Data. “Collection of biological data used to be the sole preserve of scientists doing research. But with sensors and communications networks getting so cheap bottom-up biological and biomedical research is already starting as a result of increasing numbers of individuals uploading their test data web sites. Already this trend is yielding published research with valuable findings.”
USA TODAY: Poll: Voters want court to kill Obama health care law. “A new poll shows that most voters want the Supreme Court to overturn President Obama’s health care law, with opposition and support falling largely along party lines.”
UH OH: GERMAN BOND AUCTION FAILS. Maybe people think they’re better off putting their money into hard goods.
UPDATE: Bad Economic News Trifecta Hits: Jobs And Core Durable Goods Worse, Savings Rate Higher As Consumers Hunker Down. “The economic data dump is here. In order of appearance, first we have jobless claims which rose from an upwardly revised (of course) 391,000 to 393,000, worse than expectations of 390,000. That is Seasonally Adjusted. Not Seasonally Adjusted claims exploded by 74,214: good thing nobody looks at the unfudged number.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Europe’s $30 Trillion Problem.
MORE: Euro on ‘Death Watch’ After Investors Spurn German Bonds.
FIRE ENGINEERING: Don’t Get Overly Excited About Those Chevy Volt Fires. “All vehicles have the potential of fire regardless of the type of propulsion they use. Firefighters have been dealing with gasoline and diesel fuels as a vehicle fire hazard for more than 100 years. Electric power stored in a battery is not that different than a tank of gasoline. In both cases, large amounts of energy are stored for later use in the propulsion of the vehicle. When a gas tank is compromised and leaking, an ignition source is all that is needed to ignite a fire. If a high-voltage battery is damaged in a collision, the potential of a direct short within the battery can cause heat build-up, potentially leading to a fire. However, high-voltage (HV) batteries are designed with safety systems that should prevent a thermal event from becoming a run-away battery fire. In contrast to this single Chevrolet Volt battery incident, 12-volt Lead-Acid cell batteries, found in every car and truck on the road today, are a common cause of vehicle fires, and are a caustic acid spill hazard whether or not the vehicle has been damaged.”
“ALL OUR MODELS ARE WRONG:” ClimateGate 2.0: A Fresh Trove Of Embarrassing Emails. “There was always an element of tragedy in the first ‘Climategate’ emails, as scientists were under pressure to tell a story that the physical evidence couldn’t support – and that the scientists were reluctant to acknowledge in public. The new email archive, already dubbed ‘Climategate 2.0’, is much larger than the first, and provides an abundance of context for those earlier changes. . . . To their credit, some of the climate scientists realised the dangers of the selective approach politicians demanded, which meant cherry-picking evidence to make it suitably dramatic, and quietly hiding caveats.” Others, however, not so much.
Plus this: “So the mewling infant that we call Climate Science – a 40-year-young offshoot of meteorology – has been thrust into a political role long before it’s capable of supporting the claims made on its behalf. From the archives we can see the scientists know that too, and we can read their own reluctance to make those claims, too. ‘What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation?’ muses one scientist. ‘They’ll kill us probably.’”
JOHN KASS ON OBAMA AND REZKO: The chutes and ladders of The Chicago Way: While Obama climbs high, his onetime pal Rezko is slip-slidin’ away. “Watching the boys I thought about what Rezko must have been like years ago, at 19, coming out of Syria hungry and broke, with nothing but ambition. It didn’t take him long in Chicago to see how things were done, how crooked politics are here, played as politics are played in the Middle East and everywhere else. Everywhere, that is, but in those embarrassing Obama creation myths spun by myth masters from Chicago’s City Hall, all about hope and change and Barack transcending the broken politics of the past. Rezko was of the old broken politics, which is the same as the new, hopeful politics.”
It sure seems that way. Plus this: “Obama will campaign for re-election, and with the media’s help, he’ll levitate above Chicago politics, unstained, as if his feet never got dirty here. And Rezko? He’ll sit in a federal cell, silenced, waiting, hoping for a presidential pardon, buried beneath The Chicago Way.”
JENNIFER RUBIN: Doing the WaPo Ombudsman’s Job.
I then called Toomey, and he too was flabbergasted. “That is a ridiculous charge,” he said of the accusation that Kyl had done more to scuttle the deal than anyone. Toomey, whose plan proposed $250 billion in new tax revenues, was audibly annoyed. . . . Perhaps Democratic Sens. Patty Murray or John Kerry will explain why they never presented an entitlement reform plan or why they didn’t make any move in response to the Toomey offer. Better yet, the White House might share why, for three years, Obama hasn’t put up his own entitlement reform plan. But it doesn’t appear that Kyl was the bad guy here.
Another mark in favor of newsroom diversity.
UPDATE: Reader David Gerstman writes:
The WaPo’s ombudsman spent his column Sunday navel gazing about George Will. No, Will’s wife’s work didn’t affect his columns, but he should have let us know sooner about potential conflicts.
But Jennifer Rubin is writing (as you noted) that Dana Milbank reported a falsehood. Pexton, as yet, hasn’t addressed that.
And while it wasn’t a falsehood, Pexton took Rubin to task for retweeting a post by Rachel Abrams.
So there’s a standard of behavior demanded of the Post’s conservative columnists but none of its liberal ones? What exactly is the ombudsman’s job at the Washington Post?
Camouflage.
I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR A WHILE THAT A CARTER RERUN IS NOW THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO FOR THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY, but Holman Jenkins fills in the blanks. “Mr. Carter had served aboard Navy submarines. He ran a peanut plantation. He served one term as Georgia governor—real jobs that produce real effects. Mr. Carter saw himself in some realistic relation to the world. . . . Mr. Obama’s career has been one in which the main effect has been the impression he leaves on audiences—the main effect has been himself. Familiarity with his country—or any other country—would be helpful at this point, if only to counterweight his mesmerization with the arc of his personal story.”
STILL MORE CALLS for Eric Holder’s resignation. It is time for him to go.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, WE’D SEE A RETURN TO DICKENSIAN HORRORS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! The Return of Debtors’ Prisons: Collection Agencies Now Want Deadbeats Arrested. “As if life wasn’t already tense enough for Americans who can’t pay their debts, collection agencies are now taking advantage of archaic state laws to have some debtors arrested and sent to jail. . . . Jailing debtors for not paying their debts is apparently especially popular in Illinois.”
If only Illinois had had a state Senator who, I don’t know, really cared about people. Oh, well.
POLL: Obama Struggling In Pennsylvania. “If the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney and the election was today Barack Obama would probably lose Pennsylvania, fundamentally reshaping the 2012 electoral map.”
MEGAN MCARDLE ON the standard sorting-methods of the blue-state elites. “These people tend to vote Democratic. Small-business owners, who work in much more diverse environments, tend to vote Republican. I’m not going to speculate on why this might be so–but I suspect that it matters.”
TODAY ONLY SALE: Toshiba Satellite 14-inch Laptop, $599.99.
CAN’T TELL TRUTH FROM FICTION: New Yorker blog confuses All The President’s Men movie with actual Watergate history.
Well, a lot of people think that Inherit The Wind tells the story of the Scopes Trial, too. Hollywood’s good at that sort of thing.
ANNE MCCAFFREY HAS DIED. Sarah Hoyt has the story.
They’re discussing over at John Scalzi’s place.