A SIMPLE EXPLANATION WHY HEALTHCARE.GOV WILL FAIL

One of my smarter liberal friends brought up this really good question, and it also came up at my IT dinner tonight: If NASA can do massive, incredible projects with multiple contractors, why is it so hard to get the ACA website working?

Me: I'm glad you asked. You do know that you can go to the Amazon.com website, and look to see everything you ordered 4 years ago, with hardly a delay? Well, try to do that at IRS.gov today- do a simple inquiry about the how much in taxes you paid 4 years ago.

Let me break it to you gently: you can't. Even though you might think that such capability would be obvious by now, it's simply not there. Try digging up if you are a naturalized citizen, or when you became a citizen, at the national immigration service website. Look to see how much is set aside for you at the social security website, and what your expected income will be. How much money has been collected for your Medicare account. To be sure, the data is actually there, at all these agencies; it's just not available at a moment's notice, nor is there an effective interface to retrieve it.

Now, healthcare.gov is supposed to be able to access ALL this information, from at least a dozen Federal agencies, and then combine that information with data provided by the states (eligibility pools, state mandates), and THEN with the insurance data entered by the individual companies - for EACH state(!). All this must be done in near-real-time. The fact is, our core systems are so antiquated, behind the times, with poor, silo-ed interfaces that make collection, reconciliation and presentation of this data virtually impossible.

This is just a massive undertaking, which failed outright because of the hubris of people who thought, "isn't it JUST bringing all this data together?" without thinking through what all was involved. To just START to be able to achieve the goal of Obamacare, these core systems need to be cleaned up and made available to the public in a manner that can THEN provide accurate data for insurance pricing, not to mention the ultimate collection of your medical records. Maybe the systems will be better integrated in 10 years. It definitely won't be ready by Jan 1, 2014.

ROPE-A-DOPE ALERT

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton essentially fell on her sword to take the blame for the poor security and failures leading up to the Benghazi attack. In an interview with CNN, she insisted that insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.

As I commented on a friend's Facebook post earlier today, it is conceivable that this entire episode is being setup as a "Rope-A-Dope" strategy. Hillary comes out, accepts responsibility with the statement that the VP and Prez have not been involved in security issues. Well, back in April, a bomb had already been lobbed at the embassy. If the President had been involved in the Intel briefings, LIKE HE SHOULD HAVE, he should have been kept actively informed of security efforts there, since that event. That is my predicted line that will be presented at the debate tonight, either by Romney or one of the questioners.

Here is where the "Rope-A-Dope" strategy clicks in - after getting what should appear like a tough question, Obama can then step up and say something like, "yes, I know Ms. Clinton has accepted responsibility. And it's clear that as a State Department issue, she has a role in the matter. But the buck stops with me, and I do take responsibility. I am shocked, saddened (blah blah blah) at the entire episode. Mistakes have been made, and I will do all I can do identify and correct them."

It will all sound so powerful and presidential, and the press will fawn all over it. And if it happens, I guarantee that Hillary set this up, because Obama is not politically savvy enough to come up with it himself, let alone have the humility to play it that way. However, Hillary is more than savvy enough to play this simple Jedi mind trick.

If I'm right, you'll see me high-five-ing myself all over the place. We'll see. It's interesting to note that while walking to a debate prep session, reporters shouted out if he thought Hillary was to blame for Benghazi, and Obama didn't answer.

We'll see tonight.

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION 2012: WEDNESDAY

I watched bits and pieces of the events on Wednesday evening.  The most amazing part was the amendment vote to restore “God-given potential” into the Democratic platform, and establish that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.  After some contentious procedures to get a reliable vote, it passed the convention assembly by voice vote, but the boos from amendment opponents were loud and clear. 

Republicans, including Mitt Romney, were quick to jump on the chaos surrounding the controversy.  Reports began to come out that Obama had no problem with the “God-less” language, but then acted swiftly to put everything back when Republicans began to make the issue a major talking point. 

To add to the fracas, the DNC played a “Welcome to Charlotte” greeting from the host committee, which included the line, “Government is the only thing we all belong to.” I suppose that would play really well in China, but in America, it’s the other way around:  Here the Government belongs to US.

The big question of the evening seemed to be the one the Obama Administration has been most afraid to address:  Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?  And Bill Clinton appeared at the podium tonight to answer that question, goading the convention hall to respond with a resounding “YES!!!!”  I suppose the answer is yes if you are a government employee who has managed to get a nice pay raise, but for the worker bees like Yours Truly, I can definitely say NO.  And I’m pretty sure there are at least 23 million people out there who would agree with me. 

Clinton was clearly the best speaker of the evening, and he started on an upbeat, bi-partisan vein.  He stressed the need for Democrats and Republicans to work together for solutions.  Totally agree, and consider it the hallmark of this speech. But it went downhill from there.  For someone seeking bipartisanship, you don’t start trashing the other guys, especially when you television audience (not the party faithful in the convention hall) are not completely decided about who to vote for in November.  He threw out barbs left and right at the Republicans, particularly at Ryan and Romney, and left little ground to draw some form of line in the sand to establish consensus.  It was clearly a lot of red meat for the party faithful, and they ate it up eagerly. 

Clinton’s speech was full of statistics and numbers, and frankly, I couldn't take notes and keep up with it all.  All I can think about is the old saw, “80% of statistics are completely made up, including this one.”  I’ll leave to the fact checkers to figure out what was true and what wasn’t in the morning, but to see Clinton act so wonkish was a bit strange.

He took special care to single out the ‘fiction’ of the $716 billion cut from Medicare, trying to explain that money cut from Medicare actually meant that Obama strengthened it.  Not buying it, and even liberal pundits have verified that one.  He then cited the efforts of the Simpson-Bowles commission to cut government spending, though Obama has yet to take any of the suggestions from the commission forward.  Clinton also played the race-baiting game, knocking voter ID as a Republican tool to prevent minorities from voting.  But as I noted on Facebook, every idiot in that hall needed an ID to get in; yet Clinton insists that asking for an ID to vote is oppressive.

Guess I should wrap this up.   I think I’m going to need a lot of energy to tune in Thursday night.

GO ROMNEY!

Now the Republican National Convention is over, and WOW.  Great run and finish by all of the major players, and it was very impressive.  The surprise speech by Clint Eastwood nailed all that is wrong with our current administration today, and Mitt Romney did a good job of bringing it home. 

I admit it, I was underwhelemed with Romney.  I knew he was a governor of Massachusetts, and has pushed "Romneycare" there, but didn't think he had true conservative credentials.  I have been looking for a candidate who knows that our country, and our economy are in seriously awful shape.  Now that facts are coming out about Romney, facts that make me wonder, "why haven't I heard about this before?"

The most striking story was the one about the missing girl in New York City.  Back in 1996, the poor father, a partner at Bain Capital allowed his daughter to attend a party in NYC.  And she just disappeared. 

Romney didn't have to do anything.  A good boss would have said, "go find your daughter, don't worry about your place here."  Romney did more than that.  A LOT more.  He shut down the office.  He flew dozens of employees from Bain Capital into New York, and set up a command post there.  He hired private detectives.  They set up a hot line for tips. He called Bain partner companies, like the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers, who went to action putting up posters and getting involved in the search. Bain employees were literally stopping people on the street and asking if they recognized the girl. 

The story reached regional attention, and someone called into the tip line, asked if there was a reward, then abruptly hung up.  Police traced the call to a house in New Jersey, where they found the girl shivering in the basement and suffering from an Ecstasy overdose.

Now this is impressive, but this was not an isolated incident.  Romney has participated in a many, many acts of charity and goodwill, and most of these stories have been kept quiet, understating his humility and compassion.

Meanwhile, the Mainstream Media sneer and go on about how "greedy" Romney was at Bain Capital.  This story just blows that narrative away.

I know about Bain Capital, because I worked at one of their client companies where Bain was involved. Of course, I didn't know Mitt Romney and was never directly involved with the Bain  management team but I was helping to implement their solution (quite successfully, I might add). 

The fact is, if Bain Capital happened to walk into the door of your business, your business was already in trouble, perhaps about to fail.  The worst case, either way, was that you were going to lose your job and pension.  For businesses like Sealy, Staples, Domino's Pizza and Steel Dynamics, under Bain's leadership those businesses thrived and grew. 

Now, I can go on all day about Bain Capital, talking how the business works and what it means to the rank-and-file of an impacted company.  But right now, I want to contrast Mitt Romney with our incumbent president, Barack Obama.

Obama has no human interest stories to share, nothing that indicates where he stepped to help anyone.  Not even with his own family.  Just a week ago, author Dinesh D'Souza was approached by Obama's brother George, who needed $1000 for medical bills.  Apparently the President of the USA was too busy to be bothered.  In fact, George can't even get a visa to visit the US. Obama has family members living in literally 3rd World Poverty levels, yet he won't lift a finger to help them.

Meanwhile, there is the time when Romney delivered Christmas gifts to two sons severely injured in an auto accident which left them crippled.  In addition, he paid for their college educations and participated in fundraisers on their behalf.

There are other stories.  The difference is clear, and it makes me more certain than ever on which level to pull in November.

HERE I GO AGAIN!
As you can tell, it's been almost 3 years since my last post. I've been busy! In the last three years, I have expanded my consulting business, worked on projects in Japan and Europe(!) and got a little more involved in Facebook than I probably have time for.

Meanwhile, a lot has happened in the political front. In spite of my reluctantly hopeful assessment of President Obama, things have definitely gone downhill. GW Bush's $100 billion stimulus didn't do anything measurable for the economy, so Obama shoved out another $800 billion. And things still got worse. Well, Keynesian methods of "priming the pump" are now officially disproved, although there are a few folks out there that believe that it's only because we still didn't spend enough money.

Anyway, more to say but it's late and I still (thankfully) have a project. Later, all.

VERY PROPHETIC QUOTE FROM GLENN REYNOLDS:
From June 2008:

"I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism."

Yep.

VERY SCARY STUFF....
"US Loses Most Jobs At Fastest Rate in History Under Obama"

Link here. The graphs are actually...terrifying.

I generally kept quiet because I didn't know how much to blame Bush for our current economic mess, but it's now obvious that the "stimulus" package is an economy-killer.

NOW THIS IS FUNNY....BUT SHOULD I SUE SINCE GRAPE-NUTS HAS NO GRAPES - OR NUTS?
Woman sues Cap'N Crunch cereal because "Crunchberries" aren't real berries.

Fortunately, logic prevailed, and she lost.

Link contains funny comments about the story.

UDPATE: More on Grape-Nuts here.

IS CYBERSPACE JUST A LITTLE TOO PUBLIC?
I have a Twitter account, which apparently a LOT of people swear by as the "next big thing." I approached it with a more jaundiced eye. Anybody can check it out at http://twitter.com/halscrawford, but don't expect any more insights than I would put out here - at least not yet.

One wag I read about said "it's a great chat utility." Oh, really? I guess so, but it's a chat session that unless you mark your account private, and KEEP IT private, anybody can it check out. Forever. Those suckers just don't have an erase button.

So, Twitter is a brick wall that you can spray-paint your musings for anyone to see - except unlike that brick wall, there's a permanent pointer going right back to you. One poster, apparently a grad student, posted this message for all to see:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Now, as an email sent to your friends, this message is quite innocuous. However, as a Twitter post, well, it was more than a little careless. Cisco employees, who like to do Twitter searches on the word "Cisco" to see what's going down, weren't so amused. The Twitterer got a reply:

Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Ouch. Apparently the offer was rescinded. The Twitterer tried to do some damage control by backpedaling on her website, but the damage was done.

I don't do a lot of posting to my own blog - it comes in fits and starts, but I'm not blessed with a lot of spare time. But I love to write and like to put my thoughts on the Internet. I'm a consultant, and I do a lot of traveling. It's not hard for people to go through my website, my blog, and my Flickr account to see where I've been. But I generally don't talk about my clients, out of respect for them. You saw my post about Des Moines yesterday; it was a generally upbeat piece. I don't want to trash the places where I work, unless I have a really good reason. (Dayton, Ohio might be the lone exception.) But it is amazing how people can get offended by the smallest slight.

The only real fear right now is that I also like to talk about politics. I make no secret that I lean conservative, and in the age of Obama that may be a dangerous thing. It's been hard to find work in this economy. And while the clients I work for tend to share my political leanings, that doesn't mean they can sit back and let me go on a right-wing rant. Banks can be a potential client, and if I happen to land a project with a bank that has received "stimulus" money from the Obama Administration, there might be some understandable reluctance from my client to let me go on a tear about stimulus packages. Do I bite the hand that feeds the hand that feeds me? It's a tough call all around.

Well, I'm not working for a stimulus package recipient, but it is sad that one has to think of these things in a free society.

A NEW PROJECT! YEA!
Tonight I’m at Java Joe’s, a coffee bar located in downtown Des Moines, where my current assignment is. This is Irish Music Tuesday, and several musicians are playing Irish reels and other selections.

Today at lunchtime I got my shoes shined. As I sat down, I asked him how he was doing, and he said, “Well, I have to tell you. I’m doing great for a man of 95.” I was amazed – first because I wouldn’t think he was older than 75 or so, and second that he was still working at his age. But he did a great job on my shoes. He started shining shoes at the age of 18, and charged 10 cents back then (he charged me $7.00 today). I remarked that you couldn’t buy anything for 10 cents anymore, and together we listed things that used to: candy bars, phone calls. He had lived in Des Moines since 1938, and done nothing but shine shoes all these years.

This is my second visit to Des Moines – but my first visit was in the early nineties, when I was visiting Meredith Corporation. I really didn’t recognize the town. You can walk all over downtown without ever getting hot, cold or wet, because there are a series of skywalks that move through most of the buildings downtown. It’s three blocks to my client, and all covered by skywalks.

It's not Florida, but it's certainly pleasant enough.

ARLEN SPECTOR BOLTS GOP...
Surprising no one.

Don't let the Republican door hit you on the way out, senator.

Will the Democrats sing "Consider Yourself," like they did to Jim Jeffords? (gee, where is HE now?)

AND THE MEDIA CONTINUES TO SELF-DESTRUCT....
Bill Whittle has an excellent analysis of the media bias rampant today.

TYPICAL...FOR OAKLAND....
Man goes berserk, and kills 4 police officers before he goes down.

A candlelight vigil has been held.....

...for the cop killer.

The world is a little bit crazier.

NEWSPAPERS…RIP?
Speaking of the news, newspapers have been on the skids for years now. Part of the problem has been the decline of quality, accuracy and fairness that newspapers are supposed to uphold.

But with the rise of the Internet, and the means of getting your news for virtually free, the old standby sources of information have had to struggle as readers depart for other pastures.

It’s nice to have a newspaper to read on a bus or plane, but more people than ever have iPods, laptops, and Blackberrys that can access the news no matter where you are.

Now, there’s talk of a -- wait for it – bailout for newspapers! Please please please, no. Where were the government bailouts for buggy whips and trolleys? Who misses those things, today? Politics aside, I can halfway understand throwing a few bucks at the auto industry – the automobile is not going away anytime soon, and transportation is an important component of our economy. But newspapers?

Let’s look at the Gray Lady: The New York Times. They’re over a billion dollars in debt. They’re going to mortgage their own building just to keep afloat (fat lot that’s gonna get them, in today’s real estate market). But the editorial staff is a shambles. They’ve been the source of flawed coverage of critical stories for years. They’re practically the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. They’re the Air America of print news. And surprise! Not everybody wants to read about the glories of the Democratic Party every day, or how Republicans are always screwing up the country, or how nobody can find WMDs in Iraq (even though some articles in their own paper say there are).

Why would I want to ever support throwing government money at newspapers? Isn’t the media supposed to be the “fourth branch” of government? Aren’t they supposed to be government watchdogs? If we give them money, will they be fair and balanced – like NPR?

If the silly notion of giving bailout money to newspapers takes root, I’m writing my congressman and senators. Sigh. Again.

I HAD NO IDEA THE LA TIMES WAS THIS BAD....
Patterico has a summary of all of the reviews he has done of the LA Times. What an ugly mess.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!!!
And goodbye to 2008. Not a terrible year, but certainly plenty of ups and downs. 2008 was my first full year as an independent LLC consultant. And business hasn't been bad. The economy looks very daunting for 2009, and I hope things go well this year as well. I've got one daughter in college, you know; and having to save for the second one as well.

And I have a lot of friends who are looking for work (if you know of any openings for mainframe operations gurus, or BI-ETL consultants, email me). And I see no real evidence that the economy is going to pop back up anytime soon. We have a new President coming into office in a few weeks, and while he's not from my preferred party, he seems to be making sensible Cabinet selections, so there may be hope for us, yet.

FESTIVUS IS JUST THREE WEEKS AWAY!!! ARE YOU READY???
You can get your Festivus Pole here.

Instapundit: "Ah, there’s nothing like seeing the little kids’ eyes light up when you bring one of these beauties into the living room. . . ."

Yeah, I didn't know what Festivus was, either, until I clicked here. And here. Oh, and here.

A COOL WEBSITE....
This site lists ships that are anywhere in the world, where they're going, plus lots of other cool information. They are ships equipped with AIS (Automatic Identification System), and they are used for collision avoidance and emergency locating.

There is a downside - pirates out of Somalia are also using the system to pinpoint their targets, using the same technology. Hanging is too good for some people.

HEH...NEW TORTURE TECHNIQUES IN QUANTANAMO ARE GETTING RESULTS.

MUST...CONTROL...GAG REFLEX...
Time Magazine is just gone gone. Here are the first words of reporter Nancy Gibbs defining the Obama Victory:

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.

Other Democratic spokesmen have talked about how Obama will 'rule' the United States.

Banana Republic, here we come.