SOUNDS A BIT TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: New invention ‘harvests’ electricity from background radiation and could be used to beam power to remote locations or recharge phones wirelessly. How much energy could there be in the background microwave flux?

MARK KNOLLER, THE TSA, and an eggbeater.

OUT: HOUSE-FLIPPING. In: Dog-flipping.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 185.

THE OBAMA ECONOMY AND A NEW ARISTOCRACY: Is Downton Abbey The Future Of The US Economy?

Steinsson and Nakamura aren’t the only ones looking to employ people in service jobs. While they seem to pay people for one-off tasks or on a part-time basis, the WSJ reports that demand for full-time live-in domestic help is growing rapidly, including for chefs, housekeepers, estate managers, and even maids and butlers. The return of butlers and maids is attention grabbing enough, but the story is full of many other eye-popping details. The pay, for instance, can rise as high as 200,000 dollars thousand a year for a butler, and some agencies say families have begun to build separate kitchens in their houses for the kitchen staff in order to maintain family privacy.

These Downton-esque luxuries may seen irrelevant to the wider trends deciding the future of American employment, but in fact they represent the growing class of service jobs that could become a significant part of our economy, especially if we find ways to facilitate the transition to a service-based economy. As manufacturing and clerical jobs decline, creating enough demand for service labor will push wages up to good levels. It is the relationship of supply and demand which is fundamentally behind the stagnant wages we see today. Figuring out how to change that will get living standards moving in the right direction again.

There’s nothing dishonorable about domestic service, but this isn’t the Hope And Change we were promised. Then again, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

MEGAN MCARDLE: How Conservatives Can Fix Poverty and Win Elections.

DRUG WAR: Documents show depth of U.S. concern over Mexico violence. “The findings, detailed in U.S diplomatic cables obtained by the National Security Archive, an independent research organization, further corroborate long-held suspicions that Mexican cartels, often in cahoots with corrupt Mexican authorities, have posed a grave danger to the country’s national security.”

ANDREW MCCARTHY: If Obama were a CEO in the private sector, he’d be prosecuted for fraud.

AN AWFUL LOT OF SENIOR OFFICERS SEEM TO BE GETTING THE BOOT, LATELY: The Hill: Report: Two U.S. admirals implicated in Navy bribery probe. “Two United States admirals, including the Navy’s top intelligence officer, were placed on temporary leave and stripped of their access to classified materials on Friday after being implicated in a widening probe into a Naval bribery scandal. . . . They have not, however, been charged with a crime or service violation, and there’s no indication they leaked classified information. The two retain their ranks as the probe continues.”

FBI LOSES SNIPER RIFLE, M-16 TO TEENAGED BOY, pays $20,000 to get them back.

Remember, only trained law enforcement professionals can be trusted with firearms.

THE REAL WAR ON WOMEN: 357,000 Fewer Women Held Jobs in October; Female Participation Rate Hits New Low.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Jobs Report Shows Biggest Drop in Labor Force Participation Since 2009. “If government workers had been counted as employed, and labor force participation had remained at the prior month’s level, the unemployment rate would have risen to approximately 7.5 percent.”

HALL OF HYPOCRISY: Wall of Shame: Net Worths of 100 Left-Wing Millionaire and Billionaire Celebs.

Maybe it’s time to repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!

HOPEY-CHANGEY: United States of Underemployment: Dead-End Jobs Prop Up Employment Growth.

To say the October jobs report was a surprise doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. Not only did the headline reading on this most-important economic barometer come in twice as strong as analysts were expecting, but the monthly snapshot of American labor has once again found a way to simultaneously encourage, confuse, anger and confound — depending on where you look.

On the surface, the addition of 204,000 new jobs looks pretty good, in fact, it’s statistically above the 190,000 average of the last twelve months. The fact that it came at a time when the government was shut down and its elected caretakers were within inches of defaulting on our debt makes it all the more, well, unbelievable.

“It’s a weird report” says Zachary Karabell, the head of global strategy at Envestnet and founder of River Twice Research in the attached video. “It’s people tending bar. It’s lower wage retail jobs. It’s lower wage health services jobs” that the economy is creating, and “a lot of these are not particularly well paid and they don’t have a great future.”

And that’s a problem. Not only for the 14-million American who are still out of work and looking to get hired, but more broadly, it undercuts the entire economy.

“If you’re earning $18,000 a year as a bartender, that’s not going to translate into massive consumer spending,” Karabell says.

Nor is it going to generate massive taxpaying either, which is needed more than ever to contend with the nation’s burgeoning debt and deficit, including pricey new entitlement programs like Obamacare.

Nope.

A SOLUTION TO THE “LOW INFORMATION VOTER” PROBLEM: White conservative male wins in an “overwhelmingly black” district after running a campaign that implied that he was black. 21st Century racial politics in a nutshell: Now it’s the white people who find it advantageous to “pass.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS: Why Is Female Sex Tourism Embraced By Society? “One would assume that since society views men who visit prostitutes in a negative light they would also be critical of women doing the same thing. In the case of sex tourism, both older men and women from developed countries make trips to the developing world to pay for sex with partners far younger than themselves. However the way society and the media view the men and women doing the same thing couldn’t be more different. Male sex tourists are depicted, at worst, as criminals or, at best, as low-life scum taking advantage of poor desperate women. Meanwhile, the media practically celebrates women who do the same thing—in the form of films and articles—while the at-large society seems to accept this glaring double standard.”

Female sexuality is always to be celebrated, unlike that icky and dangerous male sexuality.

“OFFICIALS DON’T HAVE A PLAN:” That’s pretty much the ObamaCare story in a nutshell.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: How Obama Blew The Entire Last Year.

STEPHEN HALBROOK: What made the Nazi Holocaust possible? Gun control.

I read a prepublication version of his new book, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State.” Well worth your time if you’re interested in this subject.

REPUBLICANS DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS PROCESS STUFF: J. Christian Adams: Will Gov. Bob McDonnell Cost Mark Obenshain the Virginia AG Seat?

IT’S COME TO THIS: Thieves steal and gang-rape pet dog whose owner had tied it up outside supermarket as she did her shopping.

HISTORY: How The World Shrugged Off Kristallnacht. It’s easier to understand, as I see the kinds of things people are shrugging off today.

UPDATE: From the comments:

When I read about the comments Soviet apparatchiks made in the 30s as the collectivization imploded and millions died — Those damn wreckers and saboteurs! — I used to think they were just lying to get along. Now when read the comments at the Washington Post by people absolutely enraged that Obamacare is not working due to “Republican obstructionism” I am not so sure. I think people are capable of deluding themselves much much longer and more deeply than any reasonable person suspects.

The rhetoric is eerily similar to the early 30s. Let us hope the outcome is different, this time, and we do not have to go through a wretched period of totalitarianism to rediscover why moderation and moderate expectations are a good idea, and hungering for a strong man to Put Things Right is the most amazingly dangerous folly.

Indeed. As I wrote in 2010: “They’ll be going after ‘hoarders and wreckers,’ next.” And note this.

JENNY ERIKSON: Ethan Hawke Thinks Monogamy Is ‘Childish’ but It’s Actually a Decision. Why would anyone take marriage advice from actors? Relationship success is not their forte.

UPDATE: From the comments: “I’m supposed to take relationship advice from the guy who couldn’t make it work with Uma Thurman?”

FIVE REASONS WHY Thor Is A Second-Rate Superhero Franchise.