Combo update: high MPG in trains, taxes and economic growth get along, discipline beats IQ

Freight trains have doubled fuel efficiency since 1980
Cars are the big news in fuel economy because of the recent increase in CAFE standards, but it's trains that really scoop the efficiency scores.  One ton of freight ( on a train moves 480 miles per gallon.  For comparison, and Honda Accord would have to get 320 MPG to match it).  That's probably why liberals love commuter rail, beneficiary of $9.3 billion in stimulus dollars.

High taxes don't cause growth, but they don't kill it either
A nice chart by Paul Krugman exploding the conservative-spread myth that high taxes and growth aren't good bedfellows.  Also note that the federal debt wasn't rising back then, either.

Hard work trumps natural ability
In the long run, it's hard work that matters, not innate IQ (and IQ can be increased through study).  A study of students found that "Students who were more self-disciplined and were able to delay gratification performed better than their peers who had higher IQs."  In other words, keep at it.

Obama: turning the tide in the war on brains?

Nicholas Kristof opines on the impact of having an "out of the closet, practicing intellectual" as our president-elect. 

An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

...as Mr. Obama goes to Washington, I’m hopeful that his fertile mind will set a new tone for our country. Maybe someday soon our leaders no longer will have to shuffle in shame when they’re caught with brains in their heads.

Amen

Would a larger army make us safer?

Many of the Democratic candidates for president are arguing for increases in the size of the standing army. Barack Obama has a specific figure - 92,000 troops - and Mitt Romney and other Republicans are advocating for "at least 100,000." But what will a larger army buy us in an age of terrorism?

This bipartisan consensus -- which even includes Bush, who recently unveiled his own five-year plan to enlarge the Army and Marine Corps -- illustrates the inability or refusal of the political class to grasp the true nature of our post-9/11 foreign-policy crisis. Any politician who thinks that the chief lesson to be drawn from the last five years is that we need more Americans toting rifles and carrying rucksacks has learned nothing...

[The] second consensus consists of two elements. According to the first element, the only way to win the so-called global war on terrorism, thereby precluding another 9/11, is to "fix" whatever ails the Islamic world. According to the second element, the United States possesses the wherewithal to effect just such a transformation. In essence, by employing American power, beginning with military power, to ameliorate the ills afflicting Islam, we will ensure our own safety.

As the author says, "this is sheer twaddle."

The failure to protect ourselves on 9/11 was an intelligence failure, not a military one. Investing in more troops with limited resources simply means a smaller focus on what items actually protect us.

Second, we have proven rather effectively that a military solution to the threat of terrorism (or Islamic extremism) is a failure.

To those arguments against the strategies in the war on terror, I'd add that we're less likely to have our volunteer men and women deployed to foreign wars by swashbuckling presidents if there are fewer of them to go around. A bigger standing army is no way to reign in an extralegal president.

Superb Iraq War journalism

In an era of 24-hour news, you rarely see the kind of in-depth investigative reporting that reveals the truth about society and government. The mention courtesy of Shadoweyes, this Mother Jones timeline exposes what we knew about Iraq and when we knew it, with particular attention to how the Bush administration ignored its own intelligence to lead us to war. It gives you a chilly sense of foreboding as you see the inexorable move to war amidst all the evidence against it.