The Colonel's Forum

Excellent reflection on the rise of Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin: The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26769481

Obamacare has been in the news so much this week because of the looming deadline, it got me to thinking more about the real people who are impacted by it directly. Living in the mid-west (sorry kids, Kentucky ain't the South), and having grown up in a very nice whitey-McWhitey-pants suburb, it's not surprising that I have a lot of conservative friends. To clarify, when I use conservative I mean it in the true sense, not the Fox News idiot sense (although I have some friends in that category too). I mean people who don't like big government, and people who generally support free and open markets. If you think the government should be involved in banning gay marriage or protecting religious bigotry, you're not a conservative (but there's a good chance you're a jerk). Anyway this means I have a lot of friends who hate Obama, and also hate Obamacare. I have a generally favorable opinion of both, though I fully recognize they're not without their flaws (see my

It's been a while since my last rant about the stupid model by which Americans get mobile phones and wireless plans. Part of this model is driven by the fact that our wireless carriers here have really strong lobbies in Congress, so they do everything they can to protect their vested interests in NOT having an efficient market. CDMA, LTE, UMTS, HSPA+, EDGE,GSM... I don't even try to keep with all the variations in technologies used in this country, but that's one of the things that locks people into a particular carrier. Technically there are 4 major carriers in the US, but since there are really only two main technologies deployed, what we really have is 2 pairs of carriers, and even within those pairs they've done what they can to make it useless to switch. In Europe and Asia, any phone works on any network. It's wacky. The other big difference of course is this subsidy/contract model. Americans tend to sign two year contracts for their phones, and part of the

This weekend marks 4 years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The GOP re-branded it as "Obamacare," in hopes that those who hate Obama would similarly hate "his" healthcare plan. There are at least 3 flaws with that: 1) he didn't write the bill 2) some Obama haters directly benefit from this plan and 3) the GOP has given the Dems a great marketing tool here: there are now over 10,000,000 people who are fans of Obamacare because it has given them the health insurance they wanted and couldn't get previously. Ask P&G about the marketing power of 10,000,000 consumers who are out there saying "I just bought this product and it's really helping me and my family." There's not much point reviewing the law and how it's been rolled out, as that is a well-documented and over-analyzed debacle. I find the IT issues particularly embarrassing as I work in that industry and it reads like a classic case of how NOT to run a large IT pro