OH, SWELL: Teaching Cars To Feel Your Pain. As if I didn't have enough problems already....

LA CITY COUNCIL: Yeah, that earthquake was probably caused by fracking.

Dopes.

IN JAM OVER OBAMACARE, Democrats don't know which way to turn.

THE FCC SNOOPING SCANDAL has mostly disappeared from the media spotlight after nearly everyone not in the Obama administration erupted in outrage and caused the program's cancellation.

What was the FCC's newsroom 'survey' really about? Byron York of the Washington Examiner, via PowerLine, offers an explanation. (York's article is here.)

What really disturbed me is the inane blather about the American public's 'critical information needs'. Here are the eight 'critical information needs' as identified in the proposed study's Executive Summary:

1. emergencies and risks, both immediate and long term; 

2. health and welfare, including specifically local health information as well as group specific health information where it exists; 

3. education, including the quality of local schools and choices available to parents; 

4. transportation, including available alternatives, costs, and schedules; 

5. economic opportunities, including job information, job training, and small business assistance; 

6. the environment, including air and water quality and access to recreation; 

7. civic information, including the availability of civic institutions and opportunities to associate with others; 

8. political information, including information about candidates at all relevant levels of local governance, and about relevant public policy initiatives affecting communities and neighborhoods.

Some questions:

a. Who are these arrogant assholes who believe they have the right to define for me what my information needs, critical or not, are? (The answer to that question, at least, is here -- see slides 2 and 3.)  

b. Are they aware that anybody with enough cognitive ability to walk and chew gum at the same time can find every whit of those 'critical information needs' with a newspaper, radio, telephone book, or internet connection and 2 minutes time? 

c. Why is my hard-earned tax money being wasted on these airheads?

I have to agree with PowerLine's John Hinderaker and NRO's David French: this is nothing more than the IRS scandal writ large -- an attempt to marginalize conservatives in politics and the media.

AUSTRALIAN ANCHORWOMAN: Stop blaming men for your problems. Look for the Left to have an apoplectic fit.

ANOTHER GLITCH: Newly discovered HealthCare.gov error giving bad information on premium aid. I think you can safely bet it's not in the customer's favor....

NEWT GINGRICH: An [ugly] Window into the [Federal] Bureaucracy.

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

IEEE SPECTRUM: How do you see gravity waves?

QUOTES OF THE DAY: Yes, I am grateful for my ObamaCare....

EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN: Unless you're a Democrat woman. And still employed....

WARREN BUFFETT: You pay more taxes so I can pay less.

ARE THE GLOBAL WARMISTS losing?

More from Judith Curry here.

FIVE REASONS not to bother retiring. The nut graf:

[T]he Social Security bulletin from 2011 notes that many fail to accurately predict how happy they will be in retirement. When you combine the high unemployment rate for older workers with the chance you might not be as happy as expected in retirement, it may be better to slowly back off your hours rather than quit cold-turkey.

Unless, of course, you're involuntarily 'retired' by the Obama economy....

SUNSHINE WEEK looking dark for Obama's 'most transparent administration in history'.

THE MOCKERY CONTINUES about the Obama administration's Ukraine 'policy'.

NEW TEXAS A&M STUDY: Obama 5th best president in American history.

JEFF JACOBY: This is no time to go wobbly on Ukraine.

If you discount finger-wagging, wobbly is all the Obama administration knows how to do. We can only hope the U.S. can survive the next two years.