Venture Capital

DEMOCRATS.ORG

Check out the revamped democrats.org, launched yesterday. There’s a lot there, including links to articles like this encouraging report from Time on the stimulus:

. . . Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other aid to struggling families and funded more than 100,000 projects to upgrade roads, subways, schools, airports, military bases and much more. But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama’s effusive Recovery Act point man, “Now the fun stuff starts!” The “fun stuff,” about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. “This is a chance to do something big, man!” Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.

For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet. . . .

☞ And speaking of the government-seeded Internet, democrats.org has a link to the iPhone app I’ve been mentioning that lets you join our army of door-to-door canvassers, tells you which doors to knock on, and receives your report on the results of your door-knocks to enhance our database (and keep people from having their doors knocked on too much). Pretty amazing grassroots tools, neighbor to neighbor. All in an effort to keep the country moving forward toward a brighter future.

RANDOM COOKING TIPS

Just because ketchup turns brown and is a couple of years past its expiration date doesn’t mean it’s not basically fine. It just means you have been unaccountably restraining your ketchup consumption. (Why? Ketchup makes almost anything better! Try it on salmon! Try it with peanut butter and bacon! Try it on tomato slices!) Or else it means you bought several cases at once, on sale, as an investment. Nicely done.

You could shuck an ear of corn, spend a whole lot of time waiting for a pot of water to boil, drop in the corn and wait a few minutes more. Or you could just zap it for two minutes, shuck and eat. (If God did not intend corn to be cooked this way, why would He have invented microwaves?)

Tomorrow: Shucking Like a Guy