All the Time You Know She's Smilin'

… you'll be on your knees tomorrow:

  • Good video from the Golden State Minutemen, where a California constituent confronts her Congresscritter, Pete Stark:

    My only complaint is that the civilian doesn't shut up and let Stark just babble on incoherently in a manner that might even disquiet his most mindless supporters. Let me transcribe her key question about ObamaCare:

    "If this legislation is Constitutional, what limitations are there on the Federal Government's ability to tell us how to run our private lives?"
    Stark has no answer other than (paraphrasing): there aren't any limitations. None he can think of anyway. One would think that might even bother some Democrats.

    Were I a GOP strategist, I would make sure that simple question is asked of every Democrat candidate for high or low office, and YouTubing the response.

  • The NYT, in one of its rare displays of good sense, put Edward Niedermeyer from The Truth About Cars on the op-ed page, and he gives the Chevy Volt a sound thrashing.
    For starters, G.M.'s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt's development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.
    Bottom line: if you're a rich Democrat who's eager to waste some money in attempting to demonstrate your support for the corporate welfare promulgated by your party, by all means, buy a Volt. Don't bother to thank the rest of us taxpaying schmucks who are subsidizing your symbolism.

    I love the accompanying graphic (which I filched, click for full size):

    [Volt!]

    The Truth About Cars is here. For more, see (usually semi-liberal) Slashdot's linkfest "Electric Car Subsidies As Handouts For the Rich." And good old Iowahawk comments as well, contrasting the great old car songs of the past with the two minutes and twenty-three seconds of pain that is the "Chevy Volt Dance."

  • Good entry at the Freakonomics blog interviewing the Street-Fighting Mathematician. I chuckled at this little (oldie but goodie) joke on numerical accuracy:
    In a natural-history museum, a guide was showing the visitors an ancient insect preserved in amber. "How old is that insect?" asked a visitor. "1,000,007 years," said the guide. How can the age be known so precisely, the visitors wondered. "Because it was 1 million years old when I started here 7 years ago."


Last Modified 2012-10-02 3:41 PM EDT