MemeMachineGo!

The Wall Street Journal channels the Onion, chanting: No blood for oil! Keep cars inefficient!

The leading current proposal, promoted by environmental groups and Congressional Democrats, would raise the standard to 40 mpg by 2010 from 27.5 mpg today. This might save gas, but we know for sure it will cost lives. That’s because a primary way auto companies meet CAFE standards is to reduce the weight of their cars. Research has consistently confirmed that the lighter the vehicle the more dangerous it is in a crash because there is less survival space and less physical structure to absorb impact. […] Raising the standards to 40 mpg could raise to 5,000 the number of annual CAFE-related fatalities, according to a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Yeah, look at how much more survival space there is in an SUV!

Meanwhile, in response to Massachusetts’ decision to standardize on the OpenDocument format, Fox News has this opinion piece by one James Prendergast.

“I am concerned that by requiring OpenDocument that Mr. Quinn [state CIO] may be aligning Massachusetts with what becomes a second-rate file format as Microsoft keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up.” […]

Jim Prendergast is executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, a coalition of technology professionals, companies and organizations that supports limited government regulation of technology. An earlier version of this column failed to disclose that Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL.

Quel coincidence.

Updated 10/7: Citizens Against Government Waste, which receives funding from MSFT, and regularly goes to bat against open source and for MSFT, has issued a press release denouncing Massachusetts’ decision. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.