The scary story of Catherine Engelbrecht

The government went after her.

"Catherine Engelbrecht is a small businesswoman who three years ago, for the first time in her life, got politically active. In short order, she attracted an IRS audit of her personal taxes, and of her business, and the full proctological monty of her non-profit — plus visits from the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.

"The most powerful government on the planet decided, for no valid reason, to go fishing in the Engelbrechts’ lives in a sustained effort to turn a law-abiding couple into criminals, and determined not to rest until they’d got the goods on them.

"There are no goods to be got, but to America’s shame this is now a land in which there are laws against everything — or, at any rate, regulations (we’re way beyond laws at this stage) — and any one of us is in non-compliance with something or other any hour of the day. So, if they’re serious about getting you on something, anything, eventually they will. And they’ll take as much time as they want: The process is the punishment.

"Meanwhile, who regulates the regulators? The president’s senior communications adviser dismisses media queries as “offensive“; the attorney general sneers at attempted congressional oversight as “unacceptable“; and the IRS commissioner insists that to target individual citizens for bureaucratic harassment on the basis of their political beliefs is “absolutely not illegal.”

-- Mark Steyn

How to detect a scandal

You'll like the Big House, Steve.

Your first clue is a Washington politician who is breathing.

Here are some other clues, from John Fund:

1. The passive voice. 

The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,” i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.” Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.”

Note that the passive voice allows the speaker to avoid putting a person in the sentence.

Astonishingly, the Internal Revenue Service resurrected the Nixonian expression within hours of its clumsy revelation that it had targeted tea-party groups and other organizations with “patriot” or “9/12” in their names. “Mistakes were made initially,” the official IRS statement on May 10 read, implying that the mistakes ended after a short “initial” period.

2. No one seems to be able to name the players.

Last week, former acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller claimed he had identified “rogue” employees at the IRS’s Cincinnati office who were at the center of the scandal. But an IRS staffer at the Cincinnati office at the center of the scandal told the Washington Post this week: “Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.” 

Perhaps that’s why on Friday, Miller had this exchange during his House testimony with Representative Kevin Brady (R., Texas). 

Brady: “Who is responsible for targeting these individuals?” Miller: “I don’t have names for you.”

Steven Miller is a very creepy guy, perfect for Obama's administration.

3. Critics are discredited.

In July 2012, months after he was made aware of the targeting scandal, Miller testified before a House committee and dismissed the complaints about the IRS’s targeting and intrusive questioning as mere “noise.” He said many of the groups applying for tax-exempt status “are very small organizations, and they are not quite sure what the rules are.” In other words, any groups that complained were just too dumb to understand the law. In reality, it was the IRS that was making up the rules as it went along.

Additional resources: How to Spot a Liar 

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Monday, May 20, 2013:

Humming along.

The business of better sound

You should never pay these credit card fees

Good food that reverses the signs of aging

Which hand do you use to hold your cell phone?

Are we diagnosing too much mental illness?

We're all going color blind (but we don't know it)

Idiot of the day: Scott Pelley

Obama's umbrella problem

IRS official: it all comes from the top

Of course it does

And Obama is lying about it

Does your insect repellant really work?

A dirty bomb detection network using cell phones

A dictionary for nameless emotions

Avoid these refinancing mistakes

You do know what's in swimming pool water, right?

Pronking with the springboks:

St. Thomas Aquinas: charity

"Charity is the form, mover, mother, and root of all the virtues."

-- St. Thomas Aquinas

Vespers: Will the circle be unbroken?

What is it about the First Amendment you don't understand?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That's the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. You might have heard of it.

The Obama Administration apparently missed that one.

His Internal Revenue Service demanded of an organization, according to Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., "Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers."

At least they said please.

Rep. Schock asked acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller about this. Miller didn't express concern about this. He said he would be surprised if such a question were asked. This is a wholesale abuse of federal power, an anti-constitutional display of authority, and the response is a smug shrug. 

Look at this guy. This is the face of tyranny.

The Spirit of truth

From The Lectionary:

Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you."

["I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."]

-- John 14:8-17 (25-27)

This just in ...

Close.

WASHINGTON—Speaking at a nationally televised press conference from the White House this morning, President Obama explained to the nation how they load all those cars onto the trailer of one of those big transport trucks.

“Good morning. Those big trucks you always see on the highway use hydraulically operated ramps to get all the cars on the back,” Obama told the assembled White House Press Corps. “What they do is, they have this one retractable ramp that actually comes down from the upper level, and that allows the driver to first load the bigger cars on top. Then they put it back up, and the smaller cars are driven directly into the lower section of the rig.”

Noting that you can usually fit “eight or nine” cars on the backs of one of those big trucks, Obama went on to explain that the process of getting the cars off of the big truck is largely the same process as getting them onto the big truck, only in reverse.

Casual Friday: Eight miles high

Only two working days til Monday.

You, by the numbers

You have no options. You just died.

We take for granted now that, standing in a hotel lobby, we can find the quickest route to our destination, learn the name of the song playing and change a meeting time, all witha few taps, H, James Wilson writes.

We navigate the external world this way. But have you thought much about using algorithms to discover the seemingly invisible and silent world within yourself, of cognition, physiological functioning, and emotions?

More of us will eventually do this. By 2018, 485,000,000 wearable computing devices will ship globally, including smart watches and smart clothing. And don't suspect this just means we'll all be wearing dorky electronic glasses. Sensors will detect everything from the number of steps we take to minutes of REM sleep per day. Many killer apps for wearable analytics probably haven't been imagined yet.

People tend to gravitate toward the health and wellness applications of auto-analytics, Wilson says. But they will be used for "softer" disciplines too, like innovation and creativity. 

Traditionally measures of creativity, cognition, and focus have been a "mysterious art." But many types of wearable computing will allow professionals to migrate from art to science in the way they monitor their work and try to improve the thinking part of their job performance. 

Consider that lab research using EEG headbands already shows users tend to have a measurable spike in gamma-band brain waves 0.3 seconds before the "aha!" moments that spark the creative process. Many of these headbands are coming out of labs and are now available on store shelves, allowing anyone (who's willing to look a bit geeky) to measure their neurons firing and seek patterns in their creative thinking, and adjust your routines to enhance creativity.

I'm already using technology to measure my body. I put on a rerun of NCIS, watch the opening crime, doze off, and wake just as they're solving the crime and going into their inane happy talk. I'm not making this up.

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Friday, May 17, 2013:

Have it your way.

The company that makes fake eggs

Time for the experts to just shut up

Is this pizza healthier than a salad?

Our emotions match music to colors

The IRS scandal started right at the top

How close were we to nuclear war in 1983?

IRS: corrupt and incompetent

Is Big Pharma trying to turn eccentricity into illness?

Shakespeare: gardener, tax-dodger

Can't print the woman yet.

The first ever 3D printed dress

When idiots don't get their children vaccinated

Remember what Obama did to these opponents?

What are the real factors of success?

To stay thin, eat like the cultural elite

Swarthmore descends into madness

Liberal men tend to be wimps

Well, burst my bubble:

Heck, I don't know, either, but I appreciate the question

The times, they are a-changin

It is the best of times, it is the ... well, you know.

Here are some changes underway now that will alter the landscape we've known for decades.

Education. Everything about the traditional four-year college experience is imploding. It costs too much, students are assuming way too much debt, and graduates aren't finding the jobs they hoped would pay for it all. News, books and music have gone digital. Education will follow suit. It's in the news everyday.

Georgia Tech announced yesterday that it is teaming up with Udacity, one of the leading providers of massively open online education, to offer a full graduate program in computer science. For a mere $7,000 dollars—or 1/6 the cost of the equivalent program offered on campus—students who meet the prerequisites can fulfill the requirements of a master’s degree entirely through open courseware.

You're gonna live.

Healthcare. Obamacare seeks to centralize everything and control it. This is happening just as centralized command and control is going the way of General Motors. The action is distributed -- it's out there on the edge of the network, in research facilities and doctors' smart phones.

The proliferation of apps that allow patients to measure and monitor their vital signs represents a revolution in the medical world. Devices like the iPhone will soon be able to pair with ingested or injected sensors: monitoring blood flow, sugar levels, sleep habits, heart rates, and more. 

When one of these sensors picks up data of note, it will be able to contact a patient's smartphone, or even a patient's doctor in order to alert the physician and schedule an appointment. Such technology could cut down on inefficient practices such as mass screenings for things like breast cancer, with patients instead monitoring their own hormone and blood chemistry levels with smartphone-paired sensors.

Energy. Despite the best efforts of the Luddites on the left, America is awash in petroleum, and that will change the international order. Those of us who grew up with OPEC-induced shortages will have to get used to it.

For four decades, the geopolitical leverage achieved by large petro-exporting states has been a major challenge for the U.S. and its allies. Now, the rapid growth of oil and natural-gas production from unconventional shale resources in North America is rapidly eliminating this threat, with positive geopolitical implications for the U.S.

Make it in your basement.

Stuff. What's known as 3D printing -- creating an object using a machine resembling a computer printer -- is bringing a revolution to manufacturing.

To anyone who hasn’t seen it demonstrated, 3-D printing sounds futuristic—like the meals that materialized in the Jetsons’ oven at the touch of a keypad. But the technology is quite straightforward: It is a small evolutionary step from spraying toner on paper to putting down layers of something more substantial (such as plastic resin) until the layers add up to an object. And yet, by enabling a machine to produce objects of any shape, on the spot and as needed, 3-D printing really is ushering in a new era.

Don't worry. You'll learn how to do it in a free online course.

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Thursday, May 16, 2013:

Where's the football game?

This is the future of college

How to get the best seat in coach

Log your life with a lapel camera

Loneliness is a killer

And retirement ain't so hot, either

How our brains rewire themselves after injury

Seven Muslims trespassing after midnight at Boston water reservoir

Liar Susan Rice to get a promotion

IRS law-breaker got bonuses

Eric Holder says he knows nothing

Richard Milhous Obama takes no questions

The took even House of Representatives phone records

Avoid these five breakfast nightmares

Why feral pigs are so tough

A brief history of typography:

Robert Heinlein: goals

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."

-- Robert Heinlein

Don't look at me

"I was not the person involved." -- Eric Holder

"I didn't break into the room." -- OJ Simpson

"I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!" -- Sgt. Schulz

Why we can't move on

Kinda harsh, don' t ya think?

Most of us know what it's like to stay in a job or a relationship after it's stopped being satisfying, or to take on a project that's too big and be reluctant to admit it, writes Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, a social psychologist and associate director of Columbia University's Motivation Science Center. 

CEOs have been known to allocate manpower and money to projects long after it becomes clear that they are failing. Think of JP Morgan's "London Whale" Bruno Iksil, who doubled down on a losing bet rather than admit his losses and ultimately cost the bank over six billion dollars. Similarly there was John Edwards, who couldn't bring himself to end his losing bid for the presidency even after his mistress became pregnant.

The costs to a person who does not know when to quit can be enormous, she writes. 

In economics it's known as sunk cost fallacy, though the costs are more than financial. While we recognize the fallacy almost immediately in others, it's harder to see in ourselves. Why?

There are several powerful, largely unconscious psychological forces at work. We may throw good money after bad or waste time in a dead-end relationship because we haven't come up with an alternative; or because we don't want to admit to our friends and family, or to ourselves, that we were wrong. But the most likely culprit is this innate, overwhelming aversion to sunk costs.

What do you do?

Recent research by Northwestern University psychologists Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui demonstrates an effective way to be sure you are making the best decisions when things go awry: focus on what you have to gain by moving on, rather than what you have to lose. When people think about goals in terms of potential gain, that's a "promotion focus," which makes them more comfortable making mistakes and accepting losses. 

When people adopt a "prevention focus," they think about goals in terms of what they could lose if they don't succeed, so they become more sensitive to sunk costs. This is the focus people usually adopt, if unconsciously, when deciding whether or not to walk away. It usually tells us not to walk away, even when we should.

When we see our goals in terms of what we can gain, rather than what we might lose, we are more likely to see a doomed endeavor for what it is, she concludes.

Now I'm thinking I should have wrapped this post up about five minutes ago.

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Wednesday, May 15, 2013:

Time to enjoy salt again

Cardio and weight training keeps the doc away

Delaying Social Security benefits pays off

Who does scandal better, Nixon or Obama?

Now it's the Obamacare scandal

Can Obamacare last?

Five ways to become an astronaut

So guess which state is the greenest

How to leak to the press

U.S. oil will shift the global balance of power

Say goodbye to traditional colleges

So did LBJ kill JFK?

The closed liberal mind

Why do women live longer than men?

Windfarms kill eagles with impunity

Switzerland's ultimate cow fighting championship

A robin takes care of the nest:

Seneca: difficulties

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."

-- Seneca

What they know from cell phone data

This map of eastern Massachusetts shows overall human density over the course of an average weekday, inferred from cell-phone call and movement data of 200,000 people provided by two undisclosed mobile carriers. 

It shows that in the mornings, people are concentrated in a few regional centers, and then spread out from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Because the underlying data is able to show concentrations of people down to a 300-meter resolution, it can be used to guide regional transportation and urban and suburban planning efforts at a finer scale, says Marta Gonzalez, an assistant professor at MIT who developed the map with a student.

Nancy, we hardly know you

You remember Nancy Pelosi.

Here she is trying to spin the IRS scandal:

The fact is that the law says that as long as the funds, the 501(c)(4)s do not use as the primary purpose politics but instead promoting social well being, welfare. Well, that's what primary purpose means, could be the secondary purpose. And here's what I'm calling for: As we look at this and we should, and I think it's very wrong that they would have targeted them, we should be saying what are these groups? Let's have transparency, disclosure. Who are these contributors, a.? B., Let's have accountability for what it is. This is a very vague law, let's bring a clear definition of what a 501(c)(4) -- is that somebody could give them money and they don't have to pay taxes on it.

Got that?

Okay, here she is praising Obamacare:

So those investments are important. So when we turned away — if you want to call frugality, we're wise about how we spend, OK. If you want to, austerity, cut the public role, that does nothing except hurt the deficit.

Good, Nancy.

Here's something that may be easier to understand: Nancy Pelosi was Miss Lube Rack in 1959. From 2007 to 2011 she was third in line for the presidency. But 48 years earlier she came first. Life Magazine photo caption: Miss Nancy D'Alesandro, Miss Lube Rack 1959, aka member of Congress and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at age 19.

Hillary: scandal expert

(American Digest)

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Tuesday, May 14, 2013:

Way cool Obamaville.

The trailer park could save us all

The UN wants you to eat insects

But if you're allergic to shellfish, don't eat cicadas

What's the deal with the Internet and cats?

A new kind of anti-cancer drugs

"I'm just going to call them lies"

Because they were lies

Nobody died in Watergate

Are they reading your text messages?

Wait til you see what Obamacare will cost you

College is moving online

One reason: what you pay college presidents

Another: their extravagant buildings

Going mad: killing one owl to save another

You could kill them with a wind turbine

How to avoid the worst effects of job stress

Wat lilies blooming:

Robert Louis Stevenson: courage

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

What part of tyranny do you not understand, Barack?

"They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. 

You should reject these voices."

 -- Barack Obama

“This is tyranny. If this is the government, 

a nonpartisan agency

 coming after specific groups, this time it’s real.” 

-- Willie Geist

Where to begin?

The IRS going after conservative groups, groups designed to educate about the constitution, Jewish groups, maybe groups critical of our massive debt. This is the same IRS that will enforce Obamacare. The president has said nothing.

The President of the United States and the Secretary of State stood by while four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed at Benghazi, then blatantly lied to the American people so as not to harm the president's re-election campaign. They're still lying.

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete a new form that will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with Obamacare.

Obama is still hell-bent on registering and controlling guns owned by law-abiding citizens. Obama's Department of Homeland Security is till hell-bent on buying up ammunition to keep citizens from getting it.

The tyranny of tolerance

"A tolerant society is as rigidly moralistic as the most stereotypical band of puritans. It is never at ease unless it has assigned an absolute moral value to every object in its world, no matter how petty, until it represents either good or evil. If good, it must be mandated. If evil, it must be regulated. And everything that is not good, must by exclusion be evil. Everything that does not lead to greater tolerance must be intolerable.

"The FDA is proposing to regulate caffeine. The EPA is regulating carbon emission and encouraging states to tax the rain. Schools are suspending students for the abstract depiction of guns on such a symbolic level that Picasso would have trouble recognizing them. There is something medieval about such a compulsive need to impose a complete moral order on every aspect of one's environment.

"These policies take place in the real world and in response to assertions of real threats, but they are largely assertions of values. The debates over them tap into a clash of worldviews. That is as true of Newtown as it is of Boston. The same tolerant liberalism that can see deadly menace in a pencil or a pop tart, is blind to the lethal threat of a Chechen Islamist. If a gun is innately evil, then a member of a minority group, especially a persecuted one, is innately good. The group certainly remains above reproach."

-- Daniel Greenfield

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Monday, May 13, 2013:

A trip takes several generations.

Those miraculous butterfly migrations

The sun is actually good for you

A user's guide to smoking pot with Barack

Has your home been a good investment?

They fought off diabetes with a strict diet

Obama's political use of the IRS

Globalistical warmening is a killer

How positive emotions lead to better health

California orders girls' locker rooms open to boys

The government won't explain mystery aircraft

Can we help people we care about too much?

The chaos of our healthcare "system"

Why have so few bankers gone to jail?

Your Facebook messages aren't safe from FBI

Should retirees avoid blue states?

Keep yourself and your kids tick-free

Linked In is in a growth surge

Wanna be an extra on Homeland?

Our parasite culture:

Marilyn Ferguson: old age

"Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest."

-- Marilyn Ferguson

Vespers: Vesperae solennes de confessore

Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, was composed in 1780 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was composed for liturgical use in the Salzburg Cathedral. The title "de confessore" was not Mozart's own, and was added by a later hand to his manuscript. It suggests that the work was intended for vespers held on a specific day on the liturgical calendar of saints ("confessors"); however, the saint in question has not been conclusively established. This was Mozart's final choral work composed for the cathedral.

Don't eat, live forever

Not even close.

Fasting has been around forever, and gets plenty of notice in the Bible. It periodically comes into fashion, which it now appears to be doing.

The benefits of fasting have been much in the news again lately, in part due to a best-selling book from the UK that is also making waves in the US: The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer, S Abbas Razza writes.

Mosley is a BBC health and science journalist who extols the benefits of ‘intermittent fasting’. There are many versions of this type of fasting that are currently the subject of various research programmes, but Mosley settled on the 5:2 ratio — in every week, two days of fasting, and five days of normal eating. Even on the fasting days, one may eat small amounts: 600 calories maximum for men, 500 for women, so about a quarter of a normal day’s intake.  

Mosley’s claim is that such a ‘feast or famine’ regime closely matches the food consumption patterns of pre-modern societies, and our bodies are designed to optimise such eating. Drawing on various research projects studying intermittent fasting and weight loss, cholesterol levels and so on, he argues that even after quite short periods of fasting, our bodies turn off fat-storing mechanisms and switch to a fat-burning ‘repair-and-recover’ mode.  

Mosley says that he himself lost 20lbs in nine weeks on the diet, bringing his percentage of body fat from 28 to 20 per cent. He says his blood glucose went from ‘diabetic to normal’, and that his cholesterol levels also declined from levels that needed medication to normal. He also says that he feels much more energetic since.

Wikipedia notes the benefits, and also the risks, of fasting. Seems like something you should talk to your doctor about first. This guy Mosley, for instance, is pursuing a "pre-modern society," but we don't live in one anymore: we have lots of modern medicines in our systems. Here's more.

The love with which you have loved me

From The Lectionary:

Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then he said. "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

-- John 17:20-26

Pythagoras: yourself

"Above all things, reverence yourself."

-- Pythagoras

Can anyone say "delusional?"

A delusion, Wikipedia says, "is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders including schizophrenia, paraphrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression."

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the vice president of the United States of America, says, "The thing I'm proudest of that we were able to get done in the first term was the Recovery Act," said Biden. The "Recovery Act" is also known as the stimulus.

Writing in The New York Times, Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, said on March 2, 2011:

Last week’s final report on gross domestic product for 2010 provides a fresh opportunity to evaluate the stimulus law passed two years ago. The data and economic reasoning suggest that the effect of government spending on G.D.P. was minimal at best. 

As planned, almost all of the tax cuts and public spending increases from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are finished. The Obama administration and its supporters promised that the fiscal stimulus law would create or save more than three million jobs by now. Their stated intention was to provide government spending while the economy was weak, then end the extra spending as the economy recovered. 

But instead of adding jobs, employment is now about two million below what it was when the law was passed in February 2009.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., vice president of the United States of America, also said that he's particularly proud of the "clean-energy programs" that were part of the the stimulus.

Here's what he's proud of:

The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs -- annual operation and maintenance positions -- meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

That's not all:

The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.

Charles Krauthammer, the columnist and psychiatrist, observes:

“He [Biden] is an embarrassment,” Krauthammer said. “The only reason I take it seriously and take umbrage is because the guy is so off the wall that you sort of expected [it]. He is like Manny Ramirez for the Red Sox. He catches an out with only one out in the inning, a man on base and he tosses the ball into the stands. You know, it’s Manny being Manny. So, this is a guy that nobody takes seriously. I think there is a fitness problem here. The bar … is [so] low because of all the crazy stuff he says that you got to ask yourself, is this a guy you want a heartbeat away?”

Krauthammer is making nice.

Doctor! Doctor!

A man rushed into the doctor's office and shouted, "Doctor! Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!" 

The doctor calmly responded, "Now settle down. You'll just have to be a little patient."

Just two working days tip Monday

Here's your intense work out

It's 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall. It fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.

“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla.

Work by scientists shows, for instance, that even a few minutes of training at an intensity approaching your maximum capacity produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike riding.

 I'm going to wait til they get this down to a nap on the couch, but you folks go ahead:

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Friday, May 10, 2013:

Who wouldn't like this?

Why we like some brands and not others

Tickling your laugh perception network

Real-life lost lands do exist

Another break-through fitness device

How to use Google like a spy

Rethinking the century-old egg carton

Peppers may reduce the risk of Parkinson's

Hillary's Benghazi whopper

Do you want them looking at your face?

What it's really like to live on a shoestring budget

The seedy underside of the abortion industry

What will convulsive change do to our colleges?

Obama surrounds himself with geniuses

They're making progress against cancer

Giant killer snails attack Houston

Joseph Addison: three essentials

"Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

-- Joseph Addison

Please, I'm begging you, just go away

Somebody tell this pathetic hag that we've already called Obama's sequestration bluff.



Nancy could buy a few plane tickets.

Nancy Pelosi is among the richest members of Congress, with an estimated net worth of approximately $58 million, the 12th highest estimated net worth in Congress, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In November 2011, 60 Minutes alleged that Pelosi and several other member of Congress had used information they gleaned from closed sessions to make money on the stock market. The program cited Pelosi's purchases of Visa stock while a bill that would limit credit card fees was in the House. Pelosi denied the allegations and called the report "a right-wing smear."

A word that replaces thought

Gumbo Blog approved corporate exercise.

If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity” should be recognized as the undisputed world champion, Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes.

You don’t need a speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of diversity. The very idea of testing this wonderful, magical word against something as ugly as reality seems almost sordid. 

To ask whether institutions that promote diversity 24/7 end up with better or worse relations between the races than institutions that pay no attention to it is only to get yourself regarded as a bad person. To cite hard evidence that places obsessed with diversity have worse race relations is to risk getting yourself labeled an incorrigible racist.

Oh, label me. I'm begging you.

How does a racially homogeneous country like Japan manage to have high quality education, without the essential ingredient of diversity, for which there is supposedly a “compelling” need? 

Conversely, why does India, one of the most diverse nations on Earth, have a record of intergroup intolerance and lethal violence today that is worse than that in the days of our Jim Crow South?

Even to ask such questions is to provoke charges of unworthy tactics, and motives too low to be dignified with an answer, Sowell writes. Not that the true believers in diversity could answer anyway.

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Thursday, May 9, 2013:

Me when I was young.

Hey guys: women like guitar players

Gardening: it's good for body and soul

Don't go shopping when you're hungry

Our honeybees are in trouble

The boring university lecture is doomed

Electronic nose can detect apples and pears

How the brain tracks a 100 mile per hour fastball

When you hear the voices

A cure for gray hair

How to become a billionaire

Obama openly sells his radical vision

Idiot of the Day: Elijah Cummings

Global cooling thumps beer sales

What's your retirement number?

Why do we write headlines as questions?

105-year-old woman's secret to long life: bacon
Check out American accents on this map

Madeleine L'Engle: growing young

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."

-- Madeleine L'Engle

It's news to me

Every afternoon James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal rounds up the day's headlines and offers some insight:

Helen Thomas, Is That You?
"Ancient Bone-Headed Dinosaur Found"--headline, BBC website, May 8

You Call That Fair and Balanced?
"Fox That Attacked New Hartford Man Twice Shot Dead by Police"--headline, Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.), May 8

These Very Disturbing Findings Suggest a Pressing Need fo--Oh, Look! A Squirrel! 

"Study: Distracted Driving Deaths Underreported"--headline, Associated Press, May 7

Cop: 'Can You Describe the Suspects?' Turtle: 'No, It Happened So Fast'
"Deadly Giant Snail Found in Houston"-- NBCNews.com, May 8

Training Bras
"Richard Branson to Buy Female Virgin Trains Staff New Bras"--headline, International Business Times, May 7

Send In the Clowns
"Horror as Bear on a Bike EATS a Monkey at the End of Sick Circus Cycle Race"--headline, Daily Mail (London), May 7

Questions Nobody Is Asking

"Is Breast-Feeding 'Gross'?"--headline, Salon.com, May 8

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking
"Need a Mustache Transplant? Visit Turkey"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, May 7

I use it to check the NCIS rerun schedule

Knowledge is purrer.

"A reader tells me he was floating around the Internet recently and found something funny. The question was, 'If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to him about our present life?' An anonymous respondent said, 'I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.'"

-- Jay Nordlinger

They will find you in the data

The amount of data created each year has grown exponentially: it reached 2.8 zettabytes in 2012, a number that’s as gigantic as it sounds, and will double again by 2015, according to the consultancy IDC. 

Of that, about three-quarters is generated by individuals as they create and move digital files. A typical American office worker produces 1.8 million megabytes of data each year. That is about 5,000 megabytes a day, including downloaded movies, Word files, e-mail, and the bits generated by computers as that information is moved along mobile networks or across the Internet.

I'd never heard that term. 1 zettabyte (ZB) = 1000000000000000000000bytes = 10007bytes = 1021bytes = 1000 exabytes. That should clear it up.

Here's the significance: Much of this data is invisible to people and seems impersonal. 

But it’s not. What modern data science is finding is that nearly any type of data can be used, much like a fingerprint, to identify the person who created it: your choice of movies on Netflix, the location signals emitted by your cell phone, even your pattern of walking as recorded by a surveillance camera. In effect, the more data there is, the less any of it can be said to be private. We are coming to the point that if the commercial incentives to mine the data are in place, that pinpointing people is “algorithmically possible,” says Princeton University computer scientist Arvind Narayanan.

We live in a surveillance society. You can run, but you can't hide.

Is Biden writing his speeches?

"When President Obama virtually ceases all new federal oil and gas leasing on public property, why would he then brag that despite his efforts, private companies on private land increased U.S. oil and gas production to new highs? Is the logic something like, “Thank God, my opponents ignored my efforts and therefore lessened the country’s dependence on energy imports”? 

"When he embraced or expanded almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols he once blasted as unnecessary or unlawful, did his logic run thusly: “Guantanamo, renditions, detentions, drones, tribunals, and the Patriot Act were so bad that I was obligated to keep them in force”? 

"Or why would he boast that illegal entries into the United States had at one point dipped to new lows — obviously not due to his various orders limiting deportations, but rather due to the static American economy. Is that logic, “Thanks to my near-record long economic slowdown, illegal aliens now prefer to stay home”? 

"Now in Mexico he is assailing his domestic opponents while on foreign soil, describing the Second Amendment as a sort of quaint oddity, while blaming his own country for the gun violence in Mexico. Is the logic here, “I know very well that American guns find their way into the hands of Mexican killers, because my administration took elaborate efforts to sell such weapons to such criminals”? 

"Is Joe Biden writing these speeches?"

-- Victor Davis Hanson

Morning rush

Here and there on the Web this Wednesday, May 8, 2013:

"Okay, let's put it back in."

Antibiotics might cure 40 percent of all lower back pain

Do you really need health insurance?

Shhh ... your plants are talking to each other

Climate changers take to burning books

Don't give me all of your tired, your poor

The greatest fighter plane in history?

If you're renting, you still need insurance

Hey Mr. Skeptic, ice chunks really do fall from the sky

Your kids need more sunshine

Uh, gun violence is declining?

Have they found the hanging gardens of Babylon?

If you're going to California ...

What's the word for a battle of titans?

Our "commander in chief" leads from behind

Russian dashboard cams: good people

Louisa May Alcott: storms

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."

-- Louisa May Alcott