AT AMAZON, picks for Best Books Of The Month.

UPDATE: Link was broken. Fixed now. Sorry! And thanks to the folks who wrote to tell me.

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: OBAMA’S RECORD OF BROKEN JOBS PROMISES.

Check out the thoroughly damning graphic:

Conclusion: “As the prospect of yet another increase in stimulus spending for the sake of job creation looms, we need to be reminded that sustainable job creation comes from the private sector.” We need a moratorium on new regulations and taxes, and actual rollbacks of job-killing policies like ObamaCare, if you want to see employment recover. The problem with that approach is that it offers insufficient opportunities for graft and cronyism. Thus, “stimulus” programs instead.

SAN DIEGO BLACKOUT LESSONS: A reader emails:

You called it.

I can’t find the post at the moment, but I believe that you raised this issue recently. I was on the UCSD campus when we lost power yesterday along with the rest of San Diego County. The electric eye-activated toilets and urinals in the new buildings were all nonfunctional, whereas the older models (with actual handles) in place in the older buildings worked fine. Exclusively installing toilets that don’t function without electricity in new buildings just seems like a bad idea.

Yes.

TRAINED PROFESSIONALS: NY Cops May Have Killed Bystander With One of 71 Stray Bullets. “In another example of apalling marksmanship by members of law enforcement, it appears that a bystander who was killed during one of the 52 shooting events that occurred in New York City over the weekend was probably killed by a stray round fired by an NYPD officer. This, in and of itself, isn’t terribly surprising given the population density of the five boroughs. What is notable is that, as nytimes.com reports, eight officers firing 73 bullets at one shooter managed to hit him only twice.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN’S NEW BOOK, In The Wake Of The Surge, is now available on Kindle. (Bumped, because Totten deserves the support).

I’M BEGINNING TO SEE A PATTERN HERE: Obama’s job-training program model in Georgia “nearly bankrupt.”

ATF GUNRUNNING UPDATE: Third Gun Linked to ‘Fast and Furious’ Identified at Border Agent’s Murder Scene.

JUST BE GLAD HE WASN’T NAKED AT THE TIME: Teachers union president says Mayor Emanuel ‘exploded’ at her. “The president of the Chicago Teachers Union says Mayor Rahm Emanuel ‘exploded’ at her during a debate over a longer school day, pointing his finger in her face and cursing.”

FOR OLDER WOMEN, one drink a day may lengthen life. “Women who drank five to 15 grams of alcohol per day (or as much as one drink per day) improved their odds of good overall health when older by 20 percent compared to non-drinkers. Those who drank regularly or at least five days a week were also found to be healthier than occasional drinkers.”

SPINNING WHITE DWARF STARS COULD BE FUTURE SUPERNOVAS: “New research shows that some old stars might be held up by their rapid spins, and when they slow down, they explode as supernovae. Thousands of these ‘time bombs’ could be scattered throughout our Galaxy.” None close, I hope. But wait: “Back in 1998 some astrophysicists claimed a supernova would have to be within within 10 parsecs (30 light years) of Earth to cause us a problem and no star that close to Earth poses will go supernova in the next several million years. But if the original report above is correct in arguing that past methods of searching for supernova precursors aren’t good enough then perhaps some nearby supernova precursors haven’t been identified.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Battery Storage Could Get a Huge Boost from Seaweed. “A binding agent found in everything from ice cream to cosmetics could let lithium-ion cells hold much more energy.”

REVERSING HAIR LOSS with fat stem cells.

JULES CRITTENDEN: Soldiers’ safety was sergeant’s ‘awful burden’ in battle.

SOLARGATE UPDATE: Obama Officials Sat In On Solyndra Meetings. “Officials from the Department of Energy have for months been sitting in on board meetings as ‘observers’ at Solyndra, getting an up-close view as the solar energy company careened towards bankruptcy after spending more than $500 million in federal loan money.” Probably felt just like being back at the federal government, which is careening toward bankruptcy after spending more than $15 trillion in loan money . . .

Related: “Political connections can come back to bite you, when the politicians you were connected to need to gnaw through that connection and run like hell.”

UPDATE: Reader Tracy Cobbs emails:

Once again, real life mirrors Atlas Shrugged. Here’s a paragraph from Part 2, Chapter V, “Account Overdrawn”, describing a meeting of the Taggart Transcontinental Board of Directors:

“A man from Washington sat at the table among them. Nobody knew his exact job or title, but it was not necessary: they knew that he was the man from Washington. His name was Mr. Weatherby, he had graying temples, a long, narrow face and a mouth that looked as if he had to stretch his facial muscles in order to keep it closed; this gave a suggestion of primness to a face that displayed nothing else. The Directors did not know whether he was present as the guest, the adviser or the ruler of the Board; they preferred not to find out.”

Message to the Obama Administration: Atlas Shrugged was meant as a cautionary tale, not a freaking how-to manual.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE POSTAL SERVICE’S ENDGAME: Snail Mail Spam Subsidies Stuttering Towards A Stop. “The USPS is one of the great surviving examples of the blue social model and, not surprisingly, it is going down the tubes. Technological change has made its original mission of delivering vital information and private correspondence obsolete. Judging by what comes in through the mail slot at the stately Mead manor these days, the primary job of the postal service appears to be the delivery of the snail mail equivalent of spam. . . . In any case, to look at the USPS is to see why enterprises built in the blue model heyday are falling apart. The special relationship with the government used to be a strength; now it is mostly a weakness: irrational congressional mandates and regulations tie it down in red tape. The large, unionized workforce used to provide job security to workers and a stable team of well trained and reliable workers for managers. These days, the workers don’t get security, and union rules accelerate the rate at which the whole enterprise is falling apart.”

REVISITING Straw Dogs.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT STRIPS TURKISH SCIENCE ACADEMY OF INDEPENDENCE. To paraphrase Tom Wolfe, anti-science fundamentalism is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always seems to land on the Muslim world.

ECONOMY: Debt Hobbles Older Americans.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

Plus, today only, a special on full-season Instant Video: “Today only, enjoy huge savings on select digital TV seasons at Amazon Instant Video. Full seasons of ‘House’, ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ ‘Downton Abbey,’ and ‘Doctor Who’ are available in standard- and high-definition.”

NORTH KOREA: US Military Plane Forced Down By North Korean Electronic Attack. “A US military reconnaissance plane came under electronic attack from North Korea and had to make an emergency landing during a major military exercise in March, a political aide said Friday. The aide said the plane suffered disturbance to its GPS system due to jamming signals from the North’s southwestern cities of Haeju and Kaesong as it was taking part in the annual US-South Korea drill, Key Resolve.”

NEWSPAPER CHAIN DROPS RIGHTHAVEN: “It was a dumb idea.” Ya think?

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama The Unhappy Warrior: “Barack Obama looked and sounded angry in his speech to the joint session of Congress. He bitterly assailed one straw man after another and made reference to a grab bag of proposals which would cost something on the order of $450 billion—assuring us on the one hand that they all had been supported by Republicans as well as Democrats in the past and suggesting that somehow they are going to turn the economy around.”

UPDATE: James Pethokoukis: Obama’s $447 Billion Re-Election Plan. “There’s been much speculation that President Barack Obama will spend $1 billion to get reelected. Turns out those guesses were off by $446 billion. What Americans heard last night was a $447 billion political plan, not an economic one. It’s purpose was to a) fire up the demoralized Democratic base and b) show independents that Obama is trying to do something – anything – to reduce unemployment.”

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Taking Sarah Palin’s Ideas Seriously. “Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.” That’s why it was so important to thoroughly demonize her right up front.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Global Tea Party And Its Enemies.