Your tax dollars, misdirected (as usual)

The Internal Revenue Service, despite having the same six-year heads-up the rest of us had regarding the demise of Windows XP support, was caught unprepared when the deadline arrived.  Engadget, April 13:

[S]upport for XP officially stopped on April 8th, meaning that Microsoft will no longer provide support or security updates for the venerable OS. However, governmental computers can't be left vulnerable, so the IRS will be paying Microsoft millions of dollars for custom support to keep their machines secure and functional. Right now, over half the agency's PCs still run XP, despite Microsoft telling the whole world that it would stop support for the OS in 2014 six years ago.

Too busy targeting Tea Party organizations and implementing Obamacare enforcement, I suppose.  As far as priorities go, it's business as usual.

Booker T. Washington: In the end, merit will be rewarded, regardless of race

Booker T. Washington, born on this day in 1856, wrote the following in his book, Up From Slavery:

I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of distinction, on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race, regardless of their own individual worth or attainments.

I have been made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth, and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not finally hold an individual back if he possess intrinsic, individual merit.

Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit, no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded. This I have said here, not to call attention to myself as an individual, but to the race to which I am proud to belong.