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Thursday, October 17, 2013

What The Country Needs Now - More Women




Don't you love it when you think of something and then the very next day you see your same idea on the news, or in the paper?  It happened to me today.  Yesterday I wrote that our government needs more women because they are the only courageous ones.  And this morning, here is Robert Redford on CNN, making a similar statement:

(CNN) -- Robert Redford says bigotry, fear of change and a determination to personally destroy President Barack Obama have paralyzed the U.S. government.
Women and young people are the answer to fixing the gridlock that has partially shut down Washington, the actor told CNN on Tuesday.

"Give them the reins," Redford said. "I think they can do better than we have."

"Susan Collins, who is a Republican, is saying: 'Enough of this. This is not the job I signed up for. I've got to do something,' " said Redford, referring to the U.S. senator from Maine. "So she's bringing a bipartisan group together of women. I think the future should belong more to women and young people."

Women must save the country "because a lot of men that were in control were behaving stupidly," Redford said. "I mean, sometimes you say: 'Can we actually be this dumbed down, or am I actually hearing what I'm hearing from some of these people? Are they really, is that really happening?' It's sad."

So, support women candidates!  There is a possibility that women are accustomed to making decisions for the family, sometimes at personal costs.  Maybe they can do the same for the country.


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Gutless Wonders




Listening to Sen. Lindsey Graham a few minutes ago, I was reminded of my post of a few days ago.  He said that for two weeks Obamacare has been a disaster, but it hasn't been reported because the media was concentrating on the shutdown and the debt ceiling.  He went further to say that in a few months, Democrats will be coming to Republicans begging to fix Obamacare.

So, we will see what happens.  The truth will make itself known.

Now the biggest concern is whether or not there will be any elected officials who have the guts to possibly lose their job to do the right thing for the country.  Graham is afraid that we are going to be another Greece.  And, frankly, I think he is right.  The only ones with any spine, any real courage, are the women, and there are not enough of them.  For myself, I think I cannot vote for any incumbent in the next election.  Even dear old John McCain.  I think he needs to come home and tend his roses.

No, It Wasn't Like Apple Maps




White House officials declined to identify the private contractors who had built the acclount creation function, citing a decision to keep that information private. They said the contractors had moved that part of the new system to beefed-up hardware and were busy rewriting the software code to make it more robust and efficient.

Computer systems are not new. They have been around a while: banks manage to have systems that serve millions of people without a glitch; even government has programs that work.  Social Security checks arrive on time, Medicare pays thousands of doctors, hospitals, and labs.  The VA runs arguably the best health care system in the U.S.  So why was the roll out of Obamacare just a disaster?

The success of this program depends on millions of people signing up, so shouldn't that have been a basic priority - that the system could handle that amount of traffic. Hell, ask Zuckerberg how to do it!  I think it's important for us to know how this happened.  Was there simply not enough time for any company to complete this task successfully?  Do we not have enough computer programmers?  Did the government hire a company who outsourced the coding, so that no one ends up taking responsibility?

If anyone out there (inside the beltway, perhaps) knows WHY this happened, I would appreciate a response.  I don't really care about the WHO, but I don't see how we can trust the government to do anything much if we think this can happen again and again.