John Boehner Typo is not a Typo – Obama Arrogance

Front page Wall Street Journal and media outlets all over the web reported “Barack Obama Makes Fun of John Boehner’s Typo During Twitter Town Hall”. Instead, Obama’s arrogance shows through.

I immediately recognized the “typo” as a character mapping problem endemic to cut-n-paste operations through web page scripts that have a back-end database (like twitter, or any blog, or wiki). This problem probably had nothing to do with John Boehner. It probably occurred when some Twitter employee behind the scenes cut and past the tweet from a web page onto the video screen display behind Obama on the stage.

Read through some of the older postings in THIS blog, and you’ll see where I transported the database from my own server to a remove server several years ago. All my quotes were turned into the identical same unicode characters Boehner was accused of mistyping. Here’s a quote from one of my old posts: “What’s going on in our profession of Test & Evaluation engineering”.  Does this look similar to Boehner’s alleged “typo” ?

Why did I jump on this issue? I think it again reveals two of Obama’s biggest archilles heel issues: pride and arrogance. He saw the typographical mistake and could not conceive of any generous or merciful interpretation. Everybody else is always wrong. He is always right. Can’t you see this in his public policies? I think he really wants to help everybody, but he can’t do this while blinded with pride.

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Localization is Better than Globalization – Part 2

I previously wrote Part 1, which questions assumptions that everything is better when globalized.

California is now taxing internet companies that have no physical presence in-state, and use no state services.  Their stated intent (a.k.a. spin) is that in order to provide fairness and equality to everybody in-state and out-of-state.   I think the concept of taxing outside of state borders in order to create “fairness” is a subversibly bad idea.

Companies targeted for new taxes say, “If our office catches fire, we’re not going to call the Sacramento fire department.” California states, “California employers are no longer at a disadvantage with out-of-state, on-line companies,” and that web retailers had been using a loophole that allows them to charge nearly 10% less.  Do you see the philosophical difference?

Let’s spin this correctly… Dear California, you have chosen to charge the 10% more to local companies with aggressive tax policies because of some perceived benefit for doing so. It’s not that other companies get to charge 10% less. Also, if California tax policies are to sculpt the “fairness” landscape, let’s properly call it facism or socialism. If instead, taxes are for a servant government to operate, then let’s show how these taxes are to provided services to the taxed.

California’s goal to tax everybody is just trying to spread the pain equally in and out of state borders, so they don’t look so bad. If California local companies are at a tax disadvantages, how about you change what you SHOULD control — the local tax rate they suffer. Because California is too aggressive with taxes and spending, they are attempting to globalize the problem, but rather locally fix it.

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Free Choice – Wrong Choice

Maria Hvistendahl’s recent book “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls..” has created a storm of controversy. People have begun to recognize that her unequivocal feminist commitment to choice includes moral indignation when people don’t choose the way that she fancies.

Domestically, in the United States, the fires are flamed when someone points out that way more black people die from abortion than white people.  One New York organization purchased a billboard proclaiming, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”  The African-American community is now doing to itself what the KKK could not.

Ms. Hvistendahl appears to exhibit a certain amount of hypocrisy advocating free choice, and then simultaneously disagreeing with it.  Her observation of what choices are being made seems to add weight to the argument that we should not have that choice.

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Localization is Better Than Globalization

What’s all this Globalization, Anyhow?  As I ponder a range of issues, localization begins to look more and more attractive as the baggage of globalization outweighs it’s assumed benefits. Continue reading

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Cloud Computing – Round 2

It took only 2 weeks for USA Today to catch up with my prior cloud computing post.  They published a front-section article titled “Demystifying the Cloud”. The article identifies that many people hear the words “Cloud Computing”, and it seems nbody knows (or cares) what it means.

Why can’t anybody figure out what the companies are trying to say?  Because they’re selling nothing new, and trying to make it sound new, confusing everybody.  USA Today reports “There’s a general consensus that marketers have done a poor job of explaining the cloud. Hazy perceptions of cloud services may require these companies to hone their pitch to be understood.”

“Cloud marketers may need to … stop referring to the cloud altogether.”  That’s not a bad idea. All it’s ever been is marketing repackaging, anyhow.

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