Monday Miscellany!

[maxomai]

• Media darling Malala Yousafzai met with President Obama, and explained to him the simple truth about drone strikes: that they're causing terrorism. Good for her.


• Fixes to Healthcare.gov could take up to two months. Keep in mind that two months from now is December 14. The deadline to sign up for insurance that starts January 1 is December 15. In other words, critical fixes for the site may go right up to the last possible minute, or beyond. It's just one more data point to my contention that the Healthcare.gov rollout the biggest clusterfuck of the Obama administration. In fact, if it weren't for the Republicans repeatedly stabbing themselves in the dick with this shutdown and possible default, the failure of Healthcare.gov's rollout would be a huge boon for the Republicans. But because of the shutdown, almost everyone is ignoring it. Bravo, Tea Party, bravo.


• Speaking of which, Tim O'Reilly points us to his favorite write-up of the Healthcare.gov clusterfuck here. Slashdot also has a discussion here.


• Did gun control activist Mark Kelly commit a felony at a New York gun show? And if he did, will he ever see prosecution for it? (That's a rhetorical question - of course he won't. He's in the privileged class that gets a pass from such nuisances as federal law.)


• Macy's is open on Thanksgiving day. In other news, I'm officially calling Thanksgiving "be kind to your broke-ass retail employee friends day."


• As Research In Motion, the company behind the Blackberry, scrambles for relevance after resting on its laurels for too long, businesses are preparing for the post-Blackberry era. I can't help but feel a twinge of sentiment at the demise of the Blackberry. I bought my first Blackberry in 2006; I blogged on it quite a bit on this very LJ. Since then, my job adopted the Blackberry, then I retired my personal Blackberry for an Android. Tomorrow, my work Blackberry will be replaced with a work iPhone. Thus, my long, fruitful relationship with Blackberry will come to an end.


• Yes, the Cubs are cursed. No, goats, Barton Balls, and other such miscellany have nothing to do with it. The Cubs, you see, have been cursed with a shit management culture for a century, and the fans have suffered for it. More here.

Comments

Can't we allow at least ONE Friedman Unit to go by?

[arkham4269.livejournal.com]

Not to make excuses, but I wonder, historically, how was the Medicare rollout? Social Security?

I think we in our age expect a certain level of perfection for things which really can't be done. As I've said on FB, there are many levels involved which would actively work to either sandbag the process or even try to screw it up just to make the President and the Democracts look bad.

Is is The End of The World as We Know It because we can't a perfect rollout to a large, complicated task in the fact of heavy opposition from parts of the 'company' tasked to do it?

Really, I think people's expectations are just a tad too high. I mean how is it that people allowed YEARS of Friedman Units (i.e. 16ish units) to go buy in regards to OIF yet we won't even wait ONE Friedman Unit before throwing up our hands and calling, "Game over!" in regards to the Affordable Care Act?

We can't and we shouldn't

[maxomai.livejournal.com]

First, let's be clear: this is apples and oranges. The disaster of the Healthcare.gov rollout is bad, and it represents a badly mangled promise of this administration, but it hasn't killed anyone (yet). It's also peanuts compared to the Bush administration's single biggest clusterfuck (Iraq). But the problem with Iraq is that nobody in the White House was willing to lay out milestones or clear goals; the stated goals required a perpetual occupation of a foreign land, and subjugation of its people, at a huge cost in blood and treasure.

Here we have clear goals and milestones. In fact, we have Congressional mandates. And the government failed to meet them in an acceptable fashion. This is more acceptable in the sense that the failure is less profound.

If the Obama administration fixes it before November 15, I'll be relieved. The language I'm seeing leaves me pessimistic.

Slashdot has a discussion...

[maxomai.livejournal.com]

...here. I'm adding it to this entry.