Silence gives assent

Karl Rove in yesterday's Wall St Journal admitted to finally learning this one. The occasion came when no WMD were found in Iraq. One of the reasons for doing Iraq was, do Iraq before Saddam gets nukes, cause doing regime change on a nuclear power is much more dangerous than doing it on a third world cesspool.
When no nuke were found, democrats accused the Bush Administration of lying to the public and starting the war under false pretenses. In the op ed Rove confesses to urging the Administration to just ignore the charges rather than confront them head on. The "Bush lied, people died" sound bite did great damage to the administration.
Welcome to the real world Mr. Rove. Silence gives assent. If the the accused does not deny the accusations, people tend to think they must be true. We the people expect the accused to deny all charges, 'cause we have seen so many clearly guilty bums deny they did anything wrong. If someone doesn't even bother to deny charges, he must be guilty, 'cause an innocent man would have denied them vigorously.
Want another example? Mike Dukakis failed to respond to the Willie Horton ads. Willie Horton, as you may remember was a Massachusetts convict that Dukakis paroled. Willie committed some awful crime while out on parole. The republicans ran a TV ad showing a big ugly convict, and a revolving door and a voice over accusing Dukakis of being soft on crime. Dukakis didn't respond at all. There were a lot of things Dukakis could have said, but he just didn't bother, hoping the thing would blow over. It didn't and Dukakis lost the presidency.
I'm surprised the political mastermind Karl Rove is just wising up to this fact of life now in 2010.

Duh. Electric cars don't use gasoline.

And if they don't use gasoline, they get infinite miles per gallon. If the car has serious battery capacity like the Chevy Volt, it can get you to work and back on pure battery power. You recharge and off you go the next day.
As a publicity stunt, Chevy ran the Volt (or a computer simulation of the Volt) thru the EPA mileage test, and reported that the Volt was good for 230 mpg (pretty damn close to infinite compared to the 20 mpg a minivan gets). The number attracted attention, and then denunciation. As a publicity stunt it was good.
Now, comes a long serious discussion about how to assign an mpg rating to electric or hybrid gas/electric cars.
The real answer is, it depends. Depends upon how long a trip you are talking about. Short trips, where the battery can make the entire trip show infinite gas mileage. Longer trips beyond the range of the battery will show about anything you like. A trip of twice battery range will use less gas than a trip of 4 times battery range. The real answer, is miles per gallon doesn't mean much for electric cars, or at least electric cars with serious battery capacity.
The current hybrids have tiny batteries, just large enough to hold the energy created by braking and feed it back upon acceleration. The "pure battery range" is a few hundred feet or less. For reasonable trips of miles, the car is running on engine power nearly all the time and mpg has some meaning. But for future electrics with serious battery capacity, that can do a daily commute on battery power, mpg doesn't mean much.

Obamacare brings more red tape to all of us

Hidden in the 5000 page Obamacare bill is a requirement for every business in the land to report all purchases over $600 a year to the IRS. In this day and age damn near everything costs $600 over the course of a year. So, the IRS will be able to track nearly every dollar spent thruout the economy. And be able to audit income tax returns in greater detail. Lots of small providers work for cash and don't keep much in the way of records. They will be toast.
Those that attempt to stay in business will be swamped with extra paperwork. It's bad enough paying the bills. Having to report every bill paid to the IRS will make it a lot worse.
The unions loved this one. All those pesky non union small operators who have been taking bread from the mouths of good union workers will get chopped off at the ankles.
There ought to be a law against 5000 page bills.

It ain't the deficit that's the problem

It's the spending, or the lack of taxes. Since WWII US federal taxes have yielded a revenue of about 20% of GNP. In other words one dollar out of every five dollars goes to the government. That's a LOT of money. Up until Obama, the federal government spending was about the same as revenue, maybe a touch more.
Now that we have Obama, spending has jumped up to 25% of GMP, and due to Great Depression 2.0, federal revenue has dropped and the deficit is now 7-8% of GNP and getting worse.
Obama hasn't quite dared ask for more taxes (yet). He'll get around to it sooner or later. He hasn't said a thing about cutting spending. Right now the federal government is paying its bills by borrowing money, and since the it has the best credit rating on the planet, it has no trouble borrowing all it needs. That cannot last. When the unpaid US debt gets too high, lenders will stop lending to us. Then to pay its bills the government will print new money. Which will destroy the value of the dollar. Everything we have saved up for college, retirement, the new house, will turn to wastepaper.
Conclusion. We have to cut spending, cut it down to 20% of GNP, or, jack up taxes to cover the spending. Trouble with that is spending rises to meet income. Raise taxes, the Congress will spend more.

BP gets lucky

Preliminary reports on web & TV say that BP has capped their wild gulf well and the cap is holding, oil tight. Thank the good lord. These are preliminary reports, based largely on underwater video. As of this writing, BP hasn't come right out and said they got it capped. This may be an excess of caution, plus fear that the cap won't hold, but, so far it's looking good. Lets hope every thing stays together.

Winston's War Churchill 1940-1945 by Max Hastings

"And never was heard, a discouraging word". This WWII bio/history gathers up all the discouraging words passed around during the war and prints them. It's all there, British ruling class appeasement, military defeats, labor unrest, anti Churchill members of parliament, and military adventures that either didn't pan out or never got out of committee. The author is a Brit, and he is out to reinterpret the hell out of WWII history.
Despite the load of dirt, the book is unsatisfying. It does not get to the meat of the great wartime controversies. For instance the great Anglo American debate over "2nd Front Now" versus the North African landings is glossed over. It's mentioned, but the author glosses over the issues, assumes the reader is familiar with them which is a little much really. WWII buffs like me know the story but at this remove in time, it is unreasonable to expect the general reader to remember this level of detail. And he omits key details, such how the British view point (do North Africa) carried the day.
The author trashes the British Army for loosing repeatedly, but he never really gets to the root of the matter. Len Deighton did a much better job in his "Blood, Tears, and Folly". Deighton blames a British school system that allowed the bulk of children to drop out in middle school, whereas the German school system prided itself on getting its students high school diplomas. According to Deighton German troops were nearly all high school graduates whereas the British troops were largely high school dropouts.
The book is interesting, but it isn't going to become a favorite due to its downer material.

Toy STory 3

I saw it last night. Charming. This sequel is every bit as good as the preceding Toy Stories were. Gotta hand it to Pixar, they can do good sequels. Their technique improves, the scenes are more and more realistic. The story is a heart breaker, Andy is grown up, 17, and going off to college. Andy's toys are in dire straights, given to a day care center run by a sadistic teddy bear. Escaping from daycare, they wind up in a packer truck headed for the dump. There is a happy ending. By a miracle they escape the dump's incinerator and make their way back to Andy, who boxes them up and donates them to a very little, very cute, girl. Brings a lump to your throat.