We found an Austrian restaurant in Marco Island and it serves this. This is the best food in the world. Eric Norbert has been kicking me for the last half hour. He probably wonders why I’m failing to send down some beer to accompany the feast.

If you know me at all, then you can guess which of these two lunches is mine. 🙂

After a protracted search, N has come up with a name for our future son:

Eric Norbert.

“Eric” is a name he likes phonetically and “Norbert” is the name of some famous mathematician. And they both go with the last name.

A name database says that Eric is a name of somebody who loves travel and adventure and rejects traditions and conventions. I think that’s a great identity to have.

The news reporting is so shoddy and careless that it’s impossible to figure out what really happened. TV newscasts, newspaper and online headlines are all talking about the IRS “targeting” the Tea Party groups. The word “targeting” is supposed to be self-explanatory in this context but it really isn’t.

Were the tax returns of these groups analyzed more closely because of their ideology? Were they audited? If so, then what’s the big deal? Can’t anybody be audited at any time? Do we refer to all cash-business owners and all small-business owners who contract overseas and who get audited a lot more often than anybody else as being “targeted”?

As for these groups’ tax returns being scrutinized, well, if their raison d’etre is to oppose taxes, wouldn’t it be incredibly stupid on the part of the IRS not to see if they put their ideology into practice? If a student rants and raves about plagiarism being a fully respectable practice, who wouldn’t be extra-careful while grading his papers? If a neighbor declares that she doesn’t believe in private property, who wouldn’t hide the wallet whenever she comes by?

As for the government discriminating against people on ideological grounds, that has been happening forever, and nobody seems to care. Just look at a green card or work visa application and its questions about one’s political affiliations. This is a blatant violation of the right of some political parties in the US to have new members come from other countries. And being denied a visa just because you held a party membership card 50 years ago is a little more serious than undergoing a tax audit, which is something we should all be prepared to do anyway.

I also find it curious that people calling themselves “Patriots” have such an issue with proving their patriotism in the most definitive way ever. Waving flags and making speeches is easy. Declaring every cash payment you received and that nobody could have found about had you not declared it – like I did this year – is much harder.

The Tea Party groups could have used this situation to show the kind of maturity they’ve been lacking and that has cost them most of their support. Instead, they have chosen to antagonize every individual who has been audited by the IRS and who has faced the ordeal bravely.

Oh well. They had no future as a political project anyway.

There is just one thing that the Russians have that is better, Ukrainians say. And that thing is. . .

. . . their neighbors!

You can easily adapt this riddle to any other two neighboring nations.