JOHN LOUDON: A Tea Party President in 2012?

ADVICE TO REPUBLICANS from Stacey Campfield.

CHANGE: Red-Light Cameras See Cities’ Support Fading. “Democrats were not the only losers on Election Day. Traffic cameras designed to catch red-light runners also took a ballot box beating as they were voted down in Houston and at least four other cities nationwide.” Red-light cameras lose pretty much every time they’re put to a vote. Voters understand that they’re about revenue, not safety.

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. (Bumped).

YOUTUBE: Jack Webb on the TSA.

BYRON YORK celebrates transparency. “Readers would have no idea what [University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles] Franklin really thinks about the voters whose opinions he’s measuring and commenting on. But now they do.”

Meanwhile, Franklin responds.

LIBERTARIAN PIONEER DAVID NOLAN has died.

CHANGE: Ireland Breaks Down, Requests Euro Bailout.

AN HONEST MAN: Dave Talley, a homeless man, found $3,300 in cash in a backpack left behind at a light rail station in Arizona. Despite being tempted to keep the money, Talley tracked down and returned the backpack to its owner.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: The Conservative Cloward-Piven Strategy, Annotated.

DON SURBER EXPLAINS IT ALL.

DO YOU THINK? Asking The Wrong Questions: Public Acceptance of New TSA Procedures Has Been Exaggerated.

Related: “Getting on a plane has turned into the theater of the absurd.”

Also, “Enron had better PR” than the TSA.

BLOGGINGHEADS TV: Ann Althouse talks to Jacob Weisberg about his new book. “Why ‘Palinisms’ after his famous ‘Bushisms’ — why not ‘Obamisms’? And many other questions.” Answered in the comments this way: “One big reason he chose Palininsms is because – as Althouse has discovered, the woman is a goldmine. Biden may actually say more stupid things, but who is gonna buy a book about Biden, other than Biden?”

AIRLINE SECURITY and animal behavior.

EXPOSED: Steve Benen, economic wrecker.

MORE NISSAN LEAF DRIVING IMPRESSIONS.

NOW THEY TELL US (CONT’D): Consumer Risks Feared as Health Law Spurs Mergers. “Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.”

MARKDOWNS IN nutrition and fitness.

C-SPAN: Newt Gingrich on Presidential Politics. “There’s no possibility that I would ever go to a debate and have Olbermann or Chris Matthews asking questions. I watched the debate a couple of years ago and it was an embarrassment because they were so relentlessly hostile and they were so left-wing that every question they asked of the Republicans was designed to embarrass and divide the Republicans. And every question they asked the Democrats was designed to make them look good. Well why would we participate in that?”

TSA CHIEF: Forget It, We’re Not Going To Change Anything.

COLOMBIAN FARC LEADER confirmed dead.

GREEN AND DISAPPOINTED: Low Rolling Resistance Tires Don’t Meet Consumer Expectations. This seems a function of expectations, mostly. They do make a difference, though. Back when I was still driving the Passat wagon I switched from the Michelin Energy low-rolling resistance tires to the higher-rated XGTs and the difference was noticeable. (One indicator — when the car was in neutral in my driveway, it would roll backwards with the Energy tires, but stayed put with the XGTs). It was about a 1 mpg difference as far as I could tell.

GREG MANKIW: The blur between spending and taxes.

THE DECLINE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES: An interview with William McGowan, author of Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means For America. I talked recently to an acquaintance who just left the NYT and he said that however bad you think the management is from the outside, the view from the inside makes clear that it’s ten times worse.

A SINGLE-MOLECULE COMPUTING DEVICE?

IN THE MAIL: From Walter Erickson, Almost Paradise and Soliloquy.

IF YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY ON SIRIUS/XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest PJM Political is now online.

ANALYST: TSA methods ‘will kill more Americans on highway.’

As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

“Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,” said Horwitz. “The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.”

This seems plausible to me. Of course, a few thousand extra highway deaths don’t produce the national trauma of a 9/11, and that’s a reasonable thing to factor in somehow.

UPDATE: Moe Lane: “It’s the qualitative difference between ‘tragedy’ and ‘atrocity,’ Glenn.”

BRIAN DOHERTY: What Can Rand Paul Do? The Tea Party libertarian will likely prove a more effective figurehead than senator. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

UPDATE: Some pushback in the comments.

ONLY CHILDREN tend to be happier.

ROKU BOX TEST DRIVE: Okay, I finally hooked up my Roku Box (this older model, not one of the released-just-after-I-bought it newer models) and it was as simple and pleasant to use as advertised. Watched a couple of shows from Amazon on Demand last night (An episode of Grey’s Anatomy and This Is Spinal Tap — found the latter much more believable) and the picture was perfect. I kind of wish I’d bought the newer model now, but I’m not sure why as the one I bought works perfectly. Glad I don’t own stock in video-rental stores.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Schubart writes: “Glad you are enjoying your Roku player. We use ours for Netflix, Pandora, and Amazon Video primarily, but new stations are being added all of the time. Hulu Plus just became available for a subscription as well. Beyond video rental, glad I do not own any cable TV stock.” Indeed.

And Jim Treacher writes: “I’ve been watching Hulu on my Roku. I like it so much, I don’t mind that I can’t talk about it without sounding like I’m making baby noises.”

CLAIM: Inflation much worse than CPI shows. “While the Fed may prefer to look at core inflation, the rest of us live in a world where we buy food and consume energy. And for those in the lower part of the income spectrum, the rising cost of food and energy is disproportionately high.” Well, I just bought the turkey and 2 legs of lamb I’ll be cooking for Thanksgiving, and the total cost was about 30 bucks higher than last year. And I paid a buck more a bottle for the same wine I bought last year, too.

UPDATE: Reader James Hicks writes:

Anyone who shops knows that prices are going up and feels it already. The WSJ quoted an analyst Fri. as estimated commodity expense inflation running from 2% at Heinz to 12.9% at Sara Lee. The CPI relies disproportionately on housing, which distorts the inflation picture. Housing is not liquid so, despite the collapse in prices, my housing costs are marginally greater as added insurance and taxes are added to the fixed payment. Utility and cable costs are greater. Tuition for college for my children has increased. Food prices are jumping alarmingly for staples. Because the CPI is flat we will not get a COLA this year. Yes, if I cut the kids loose and walked away from my mortgage I could lower my housing costs and have a flat overall inflation rate. I am troubled by the moral hazard of people being forced into that by the Fed.

They seem to merely add the collapsed housing prices to commodity prices and see no inflation. Look at it this way: when Colorado housing prices collapsed (I believe in the 90′s) to the point you could buy a condo for $5K, the Fed’s methodology would have led you to believe that if food prices spiked 20% Colorado would have been in a deflationary environment and increasing food and energy costs would prevent further deflation. They would have been wrong. It would have created more defaults, devastated those on fixed incomes and slowed the recovery.

Yes, unfortunately it’s hard to play the inflationary and deflationary sectors off against one another. Overall, though, it seems like what reader Matthew Hennessy said a while back: “Inflation in food prices is explained by deleveraging: stuff you NEED to have that’s paid for in cash goes UP in price (inflation), while stuff you WANT to have that’s paid for with borrowed money goes DOWN in price (deflation).”

ALAN SIMPSON LOOKS FORWARD TO a debt-limit bloodbath.

CAR LUST: Remembering The 1977 Chevy Nova Concours. For much of the time I was practicing law in Washington, I drove a 1976 Nova sedan with the straight-six engine. It was reliable, drove fairly well, hauled a lot, and was good for chasing away women more interested in “checks appeal” than in me. . . .

PHILIP LONGMAN: Global Aging: A gray tsunami is sweeping the planet — and not just in the places you expect. How did the world get so old, so fast? “Ehrlich’s predicted holocaust, which assumed that the 1960s global baby boom would continue until the world faced mass famine, didn’t happen. Instead, the global growth rate dropped from 2 percent in the mid-1960s to roughly half that today, with many countries no longer producing enough babies to avoid falling populations. Having too many people on the planet is no longer demographers’ chief worry; now, having too few is.”

I’ve had some thoughts on how to address this.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN: “A BUMPER CROP OF SORE LOSERS.”

CHRIS CHRISTIE shows how it’s done.

ANN ALTHOUSE:

They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn’t that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people? You wallow in self-love, and what is it you love yourself for? For wanting to shower benefits on people… that you have nothing but contempt for.

A lot of this seems to be compensation for high-school unpopularity or something.

UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley emails: “They don’t seem to be getting any more popular after all this compensation, do they?” Er, no.

FROM KEN ANDERSON MORE ON THE INDIAN MICROFINANCE COLLAPSE:

One can pile up important similarities, but one that is perhaps less noticed is something that, as someone who works out in the gym in Fannie Mae’s basement, I heard a lot over the past dozen years: a tendency to play a self-deceptive bait and switch between doing good and doing well. I.e., the many conversations with Fannie Mae senior staff who, when things were going well, thought (what they thought of as) their mixed social-profit model must be great, and as things weren’t going so well, took comfort in the idea that they were doing good and this was merely a cost of doing “good” business. Something like that seems to have been present here — which hardly surprises me because I confess to having been tempted to it many times, working in or advising organizations with similarly mixed motives.

The invitation to self-deception is high, in other words. Bertolt Brecht wrote a play — famous in its day, and one of his writings that deserves to live on — The Good Person of Szechuan, in which a young woman of tender and generous heart inherits a tiny shop, but discovers that she cannot keep it afloat because she cannot say no to all the need around her. So she goes on a journey and then her cousin comes to run the shop — ruthlessly and with an iron hand to make it profitable again. And so it goes several times round. Brecht thought of this as a condemnation of capitalism; it is perhaps rather more instructive of the virtues of not mixing motives.

Read the whole thing.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON:

Remember, when you hear about how important it is that the next Republican nominee for President have “gravitas,” the following have been designed by people with gravitas:

* The TSA’s scanning and groping system.
* Obamacare.
* Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mortgage bubble.
* Our tax code.
* Our federal and state budget deficits.
* Our immigration system.
* (feel free to add more in the comments)

We need gravitas, because gravitas has worked so well so far.

Ouch.

CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: Kathleen Parker needs a refresher course in American history.

OH, THIS IS JUST WORKING OUT SO WELL: TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine: ‘I was absolutely humiliated,’ said bladder cancer survivor. “Every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.” Apparently, they did.

See, the problem with this whole thing is that people don’t respect the TSA, because it’s an idiotic organization. And with reason, apparently.

HOLLY BECK IS trying to help out a boy in Nicaragua.

A BOB ETHERIDGE /PHIL HARE / BARON HILL ELEGY: Video Killed The Congressional Star. “Army Of Davids 3, People Who Forgot Who They Work For 0.”

UP TO 70% OFF on Tools and Home Improvement gear.

VOLKSWAGEN LOOKS AT alternative car models.

NO HONEYMOON FOR YOU:

It was to be the perfect end to a perfect day. Hillary and Jason Martin had just gotten married. They arrived at Bakersfield’s swank Padre Hotel — the bride in her wedding dress, the groom in Marine Corps dress blues.

They were 18 and in love.

They were 18 and out of luck.

The two were old enough to marry. Jason Martin, on leave after completing boot camp, was old enough to join the Marines. The Padre Hotel’s age policy, however, required them to be at least 21 to get a room.

They were nicer at the Doubletree.

LEGAL NEWS: EXCLUSIVE: Copy of Restraining Order in Palin vs. Gawker Copyright Lawsuit.

UPDATE: Sarah Palin follows Gawker’s advice.

“DOESN’T EXACTLY HAVE A DAZZLING PERSONALITY.” Maybe I should put that blurb up top . . . .

UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails: “Yeah, put it right next to ‘lacks fire.’” Heh. My favorite is still this one.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Obama’s Foreign Policy Triumph: Missile Defense! They told me if I voted for John McCain . . . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: Down on the farm in China. “There is nothing to cure you of the romance of farming like a visit to a poor farming community. As someone whose grandparents came off the farm, I have a healthy respect, even a reverence, for what farmers do. But it is hard, backbreaking work, unremitting and too often unrewarding.”

MARK SHIELDS admits he slept through the Bush Presidency.

GLENN GREENWALD PLAYS VICTIM. He’s not a victim. He’s a perpetrator. “No one is saying Greenwald cannot criticize Israel or its advocates. The issue is why Greenwald feels the need to go much further, and accuse supporters of Israel — particularly American Jewish supporters of Israel — of being disloyal to the United States through the use of the term ‘Israel-firsters,’ or accusing Eric Cantor of pledging allegiance to Israel. When Greenwald uses this language, he well understands that he is moving beyond the merits of his arguments into emotional territory which plays upon age-old stereotypes of Jews, both here and abroad.”

Remember when it was unspeakably wrong to question people’s patriotism? Of course, that was back when protest was patriotic.

POPE: Hey, maybe condoms aren’t always so bad.

WHAT PLASTIC SURGERY can do.

UPDATE: Reader George Pepper writes: “And Photoshop. Don’t forget about Photoshop.” Oh, yeah!

SO IS THIS CONSOLATION, OR DOES IT MAKE THINGS WORSE? TSA Agents Absolutely Hate New Pat Downs, Find Them Disgusting And Morale Breaking.

MIGHTN’T THIS STATEMENT BY JUDGE KIMBA WOOD ON A BRIS BE CONSIDERED almost anti-semitic? Would she have said something similar to a Muslim lawyer?

UPDATE: Readers email: What Wood said is not so bad as the groveling by attorney Epstein. But I repeat: Would she have said something similar to a Muslim lawyer? I’m guessing not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader — and Rabbi — Zvi Hollander writes:

I’m a daily reader of instapundit (yes, even when I recently was in Israel for the wedding of my son . . .) and had to comment on tonite’s post and link on Judge Wood’s response on the bris issue.

So sad when Jews, illiterate in their own tradition, defame it so. Would that lawyer Epstein should know that Jewish tradition revels in the birth of a girl, and a festive celebratory meal, known as a “kiddush”— meal of sanctification– is held the Sabbath after a girl’s birth, usually in synagogue after the morning services. If the mom is too weak to attend then, it may be pushed off, til she can share in the joyous occasion, too.

Sorry, no such meal is held for a the birth of a boy. Reverse discrimination? I think not. But now is not the time or place for long explanations . . .

Well, happy to help dispel ignorance.

MORE: Reader Ronnie Schreiber emails:

To expand on Rabbi Hollander’s email, a brit milah [covenant of circumcision] is a private family celebration. Girls are named in public, in the synagogue, at the climax of the service, the Torah reading.

Attorney Epstein is an ignoramus who, in his ignorance is defaming traditional Judaism. I live in the heart of the Orthodox community here in Detroit, many of my friends are Chareidim, what the MSM would call “ultra orthodox”, and while Orthodox Jews accept the concept of differing gender roles, I’ve never once heard an orthodox father or mother express ‘disappointment’ at the birth of a daughter. I’ve only heard the phrase “as long as it’s a healthy baby” in the context of parents expressing a lack of preference over an impending baby’s gender.

The reality is that for all the patriarchal image of traditional Judaism, women rule the orthodox community. They determine who is accepted as a member of the community by virtue of who gets invited for Shabbat and holiday meals and rigidly enforce community standards.

Meanwhile, I’ll just note that I still think we’d have been better off with Kimba Wood as Attorney General than we were with Janet Reno.

MARKDOWNS ON most-gifted movies and TV.

THOUGHTS ON THE TSA AND ZERO TOLERANCE: “The individual TSA agent is technically not allowed to make any tough calls. He must simply implement policy, regardless of the result. This strikes freedom-loving individualists as stupid and cowardly. It makes us mad. Ironically, these policies do not stop agents from using their discretion. All it does is cover their butts whenever they choose to more strictly enforce the policy than they usually do.”

STUXNET WORM really quite clever. So far as messing with the Iranians is concerned, that’s great. But there’s this:

Widespread distribution of the Stuxnet code could lead to disaster. Equipment made by Siemens and its competitors is used around the globe to manage virtually all of the world’s transportation, power distribution and communications systems. Joe Weiss, managing partner at Applied Control Systems, a consulting firm based in the Silicon Valley that organized the conference in September, said he was concerned that computer security organizations were not adequately conveying the potential for serious industrial sabotage that Stuxnet foretells.

“I just want the lights to stay on and water flowing, and people not dying,” he said.

Amen.

HEH: Funny Area 51 “user reviews” on Google Maps.

BRUCE SCHNEIER TO THE TSA: TSA Scans Won’t Catch Anybody.

ABOUT TIME: Judge Orders Cops To Stop Harassing Superheroes.

IN THE MAIL: Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America.

POLIWOOD: Black Swan : Will Darren Aronofksy’s Latest Film Dance Away with an Oscar?

SPACE.COM: Private SpaceShip Two Heads For New Territory.

ERIC SCHEIE: Libertarianism is dictatorial collectivism. And freedom is slavery. And you can spot the fascists, because they’re the ones calling for a smaller government!

UPDATE: Related item. “Killer angels?” We sure are seeing a lot of “eliminationist rhetoric” from the pro-Obama crowd, aren’t we?

NANOTECHNOLOGY LEADING TOWARD Spin Computers. “Advances in electronics and spintronics will mean cheaper, more powerful computers, which will advance both computational nanotechnology and the development of artificial general intelligence. Further, a vigorous incremental nanotechnology industry will provide a fertile infrastructure for funding efforts to develop advanced nanotechnology.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: The Allure Of Techno-Glamour. “In those glamour shots, wind power seems clean, free and infinitely abundant. Turbines spin silently and sometimes appear barely taller than a child. The wind blows constantly and in exactly the right amount—never so much that it piles up unwanted power and never so little that it requires backup supply. The sky is unfailingly photogenic, a backdrop of either puffy clouds or a brilliant sunset; the landscape is both empty and beautiful; and there are no transmission lines anywhere. . . . The problems come, of course, in the things glamour omits, including all those annoyingly practical concerns the policy wonks insist on debating. Neither trains nor wind farms are as effortlessly liberating as their photos suggest. Neither really offers an escape from the world of compromises and constraints. The same is true, of course, of evening gowns, dream kitchens and tropical vacations. But at least the people who enjoy that sort of glamour pay their own way.”

A TALE OF FOUR TAX CHEATS: “One of these four men is going to jail for three years for not paying his taxes. (The other three are politicians.)” Taxes are for the little people.

BEST-PACKAGED DVD and Blu-Ray Sets of 2010.

REASON TV: The Great TSA “My Ding-a-Ling” Sing-Along!

MATT LEWIS: Subprime Mortgage Profiteers Angle For An Education Bubble.

STRANGLING INNOVATION WITH RED TAPE:

As a Democrat whose politics are undeniably liberal on social issues, I lamented the outcome of the midterm elections. But as an entrepreneur with two software start-ups under my belt, I couldn’t help but celebrate – and more than a little. As the fall campaigns wore on, I had found myself listening closely to the Tea Party, nursing the hope that its message would push both major parties to change the way they do business.

To understand my motivation, pick up the November issue of Washingtonian magazine. The annual Salary Survey notes on Page 81 that top trade association leaders (industry lobbyists) make multimillion-dollar salaries to “keep tabs on what the federal government was doing or might do.”

These outsize earnings are symptomatic of a disease that is slowly killing the American economy. We are creating so much regulation – over tax policy, health care, financial activity – that smart people have figured out that they can get rich faster and more easily by manipulating rules on behalf of existing corporations than by creating net new activity and wealth. Gamesmanship pays better than entrepreneurship.

This will always be true as the government grows more powerful. The solution is obvious, but the government — and those who get rich by manipulating it — are unlikely to be persuaded.

UPDATE: As the economy continues to tank, blaming hoarders and wreckers. Boy, I never saw that one coming . . .

TROUBLE WITH THE LAW: Graduates of American law schools are finding that their chosen career is less lucrative than they had hoped.

THIS year “The Apprentice”, a television show in which contestants compete for the privilege of working for Donald Trump, features 16 who are down on their luck, having lost previous jobs or otherwise having to start anew. No fewer than five of them are lawyers. The legal-job market in America remains dire. But the numbers applying to law school are still soaring, and students are taking out ever bigger loans as tuition fees grow faster than lawyers’ salaries. Increasingly, they are graduating into a world of overblown expectation and debt.

Between 1996 and 2008 private law schools’ median tuition fees almost doubled, to just under $34,000 a year. At public law schools fees grew even faster, albeit from a lower base: for those going to schools in their home state they almost trebled, taking the median to around $16,000. Starting salaries at the biggest firms—those with more than 500 lawyers—roughly doubled, to $160,000. But such plum jobs are hard to get, especially for graduates of the less prestigious public schools. At smaller firms starting pay has for years failed to keep up with soaring tuition fees, and of late has fallen (see chart).

Read the whole thing — especially if you’re thinking of going to law school. I’m not saying don’t go to law school, but don’t go into big debt in the expectation that big bucks will pay it off easily.

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.