Don't listen to the crowd, they say "jump."
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things -- and more.
Agile ainât agile no more when adopted as the official enterprise software development process. The problem with agile is âagile != flexibleâ.
Agile was born in the world of contractors who have to show something for the money at every status meeting. For a while clients let themselves fooled with use cases written on many hundreds of pages but this doesnât work no more. They smartened up and demanded to see something working, for a change. Agile came in handy because it allows to show a prototype early on. As long as you keep adding features to it and you are able to demo them there is a good chance your contract will be extended.
While in theory the Agile methodologies tell you to be flexible, the cruel reality is that most people that apply them donât think a lot before taking the manual and enforcing every bullet point with a thick stick.
via Software development dogmata - good practices gone bad | Little Tutorials.
We thus stand at a crossroads for American capitalism. One path would channel popular rage into political support for some genuinely pro- market reforms, even if they do not serve the interests of large financial firms. By appealing to the best of the populist tradition, we can intro- duce limits to the power of the financial industry--or any business, for that matter -- and restore those fundamental principles that give an ethical dimension to capitalism: freedom, meritocracy, a direct link between reward and effort, and a sense of responsibility that ensures that those who reap the gains also bear the losses. This would mean abandoning the notion that any firm is too big to fail, and putting rules in place that keep large financial firms from manipulating government connections to the detriment of markets. It would mean adopting a pro-market, rather than pro-business, approach to the economy.
The alternative path is to soothe the popular rage with measures like limits on executive bonuses while shoring up the position of the largest financial players, making them dependent on government and making the larger economy dependent on them. Such measures play to the crowd in the moment, but threaten the financial system and the public standing of American capitalism in the long run. They also reinforce the very practices that caused the crisis. This is the path to big-business capitalism: a path that blurs the distinction between pro-market and pro-business policies, and so imperils the unique faith the American people have long displayed in the legitimacy of democratic capitalism. Unfortunately, it looks for now like the Obama administration has chosen this latter path.
via Dynamist Blog: Don't Let U.S. Capitalism Go the Italian Route. (All emphasis mine.)
GENEROUS PAY for new Freddie Mac CFO. âThe government-controlled mortgage finance company is giving CFO Ross Kari compensation worth as much as $5.5 million. That includes an almost $2 million cash signing bonus and a generous salary that could top $2.3 million.â Itâs okay to pay him a lot. He works for the government.
So if the biggest impact has already happened and the effect is going to level off, can we have the other $593 billion back, please?
via GIVE THE MONEY BACK!.
Solar 1.0.0alpha5 has been released, with a few bugfixes and one change. The change notes are below. Also of note, I have created separate "alpha" and "beta" branches, so we can continue bugfix releases on the alpha side while not having to release new beta features.
cond => val the same way where() and having() do in fetch params. Thanks, Anthony Gentile, for the report that led to this change.File this under "nothing hotter than a woman putting fire and steel on target".
Men do not want to be princes. Princes are born into success, men make their own. We want women who share that same ethic, however it is success is defined. Itâs just not sexy to date a helpless princess with an aversion to peas and a bluebird fetish. Give us Sarah Connor in a black cocktail dress pumping a shotgun any day.
"This system is insane. It is fragmented to the point of incoherence. Record-keeping is stuck in the 1960s. Communication is stuck in the 1980s. None of the systems talks to the others. Everyone reinvents the wheel at every stage of the process. There is no pricing transparency.
"In a sane, modern system, I wouldn't have to arrange each leg of my flight myself. I wouldn't have to fax documents around, find and juggle multiple providers, fill out again and again what are essentially the same forms every time I use a provider.
"In a sane system, I would call an airline and it would give me a price for the whole trip, not just for one part of it. It would sell me a safe round-trip journey, instead a series of separate procedures. It would have back-office personnel using modern IT systems to coordinate my journey behind the scenes. The systems and personnel would talk to each other automatically. At the press of a button, once I entered a password, they would be able to look up my travel history. We'd do most of this stuff online.
via National Journal Magazine - If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care.
I am no fan of Franken, but credit where credit is due:
Noting that he received a copy of the Constitution when he was sworn in as a senator, he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part: âno Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.â
âThatâs pretty explicit language,â noted Franken, asking Kris how the âroving wiretapâ provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesnât require the government to name its target.
Kris looked flustered and mumbled that âthis is surreal,â apparently referring to having to respond to Frankenâs question. âI would defer to the other branch of government,â he said, referring to the courts, prompting Franken to interject: âI know what that is.â
Kris explained that the courts have held that the lawâs requirements that the person be described, though not named, is sufficient to meet the demands of the Constitution. That did not appear to completely satisfy Frankenâs concerns.
via The Washington Independent » Al Franken Reads the 4th Amendment to Justice Department Official.
Nothing says "a free Republic" like State-sponsored media:
Obama open to newspaper bailout bill
The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.
"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
And nothing says "liberty and freedom" like State-directed art:
EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda
On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obamaâs arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.
Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some âspecific asksâ that will be delivered later in the meeting.