The Colonel's Forum

I read a great opinion piece today by David Frum, a former adviser to "W." Frum is a really smart guy, and a great example of something that still baffles me about W's Presidency, which is "how can anyone surrounded by brilliant minds like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and others make so many dumb decisions? There was something about the culture he had in the White House that turned smart people into morons. I just hope Obama fumigated before moving in to get rid of it. Frum's article makes a point I've been quietly screaming for years - the loud people in Congress who claim to be "conservative" "Republicans" are neither one. In fact, I think they've ruined both terms. These loud mouths just landed a debt deal that will do absolutely nothing to actually solve our debt problems, and in fact is very likely to make our economy worse before it gets better. Here's a great quote from the article: " Only about one-third of Re...

Decided I'd better updated my blog before Google decided I'm no longer using it. Perhaps the fact that I've gone so long without updating here means that I'm getting my social media fix through other means - I have been using Twitter more and of course Facebook. Part of it is certainly that I've become super busy at work since I transferred jobs at the start of this year. I'm now working in HP's TS consulting group as a cloud strategist. Sounds silly, and cloud computing is one of the most overused buzz-words in existence at the moment. I'm betting that cloud computing really is going to change the way people look at IT, and the conversations I've been having with our customers this year seem to confirm this. The biggest change in my personal life was a move to downtown Lexington. We love this town, and we found that we were spending so much of our time downtown we might as well move there. Plus we had a four bedroom house, which was a bit mor...

Here is my latest complaint about politics in this country. If you voted for Barack Obama because you thought he was going to change Washington D.C., then you deserve every bit of disappointment you're feeling today. The American Presidency is one of the WEAKEST heads of state on the planet The powers-that-be in D.C. are extremely happy with the status quo - the special interests (teachers, lawyers, doctors, big pharma, big oil, farmers...) and the career politicians will continue to do all they can to resist change Between these two reasons and a hundred or so others I could list, it's no surprise at all that Obama hasn't changed Washington. To all you independents and Democrats who are crying foul, get over it. Now let's examine the Republican + Tea Party message. "How's that hope and change working out for you?" implies that nothing has changed. "We need to take back our government" and "Obama has implemented his socialist agenda ...

Mitch McConnell released a statement this week warning my fellow Kentuckians about how the proposed energy bill will ruin our livelihoods. One of Mitch's largest campaign contributors is Peabody coal. Any chance these two facts are related? "We'll pay more at the pump for gas and more for keeping the lights on if it passes," he says. That is true, because any sensibly energy bill will account for the economic cost of carbon emissions (there is one) promote energy efficiency (because the current growth in US energy consumption is unsustainable) make us less dependent on oil. we use 19M barrels a day, and we import 12M (63%) of those. Anyone who thinks we can simply stop importing and triple domestic production, is stupid (and wrong). “It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired o...

Interesting article about how Verizon is joining AT&T in disabling certain features on phones running the Android operating system. If you've never heard of Android, it's a phone operating system from Google that is free, uses open standards, and is available on many different handsets from many different manufactures and many different wireless providers. The new version of Android OS (2.2 Froyo) supports tethering (tying your phone to your PC for use as an Internet connection) and also the ability to use your phone as a WiFi hotspot that serves several devices in the immediate area (I think up to 5). These are useful features, but they increase the amount of data usage on the wireless networks. If you buy your phone from your wireless provider, you're generally buying a handset that has a modified (provider-specific) version of the phone operating system. In short, the wireless companies add programs (often useless, but designed to sell you crap) and disa...

I can't remember the last time I've been this busy at work. I logged in here today to find that my last post was April 9th, over a month ago. It feels like I wrote that yesterday. I've been working in L.A. for a few months now, and I have returned to operating like a professional traveler. I know that the E concourse in the Atlanta airport has the best restaurant, and I know that the A concourse in Memphis has the best Delta lounge. Room 431 at the Renaissance hotel is below the concierge lounge, so you don't want it, and room numbers that end in 25 are smaller due to the location of the laundry chute. Delta is flying the 777 on its ATL - LAX routes for at least the next 4 months, and if I book my flights with 7 days advance notice, I can generally get an "M" fare class which 1) earns me double MQMs and 2) almost guarantees me an upgrade to first class. And don't tell Hertz that you want satellite radio if you booked a "full-size" car at LA...

Here it is - Mitch McConnell confirming what anyone who studies politics has been predicting for some time now. As far as he's concerned (and, for better or worse, his opinion matters a lot in Congress), the Democrats just handed the GOP the foundation for its fall campaign platform. The marketing geniuses at the GOP have dubbed it " Repeal and replace. " Catchy eh? The senior Senator from my adopted state of Kentucky is making two big assumptions here though. 1) He's assuming that a majority of voting Republicans don't like this bill and want to change it. Frankly, I think most people know very little about this bill. I include myself in that group, and I'm a politics geek. 2) He's assuming that "fighting back" against the Democrats is the single most important issue to voting Republicans, and I don't think that is the case either. I still think jobs and national security are the most important issues to the GOP's core voters. ...

If you're mad about the fact that we just expanded health care to an extra 10% of the population, well, I feel sorry for you. The mere fact that the health insurance companies launched a $20 million ad campaign against this legislation means it's got some meat to it. A good, non-partisan review of the House bill is available here , including the fact that the Democrats included just one of the three main sticking points that the Republicans brought up at the much-hyped health care summit. If you want to blame someone, blame Kentucky's own Senator Mitch McConnell. He's letting this thing pass for his own personal gain. This legislation provides the perfect campaign platform for the Republicans this fall. "Repeal Obama-care!" And if the Republicans regain a majority, then Mitch once again becomes king of the Senate. It's really that simple. He could have filibustered the legislation. He could have amended it so that it got some Republican votes. He...

One of the things that's been bugging me lately is the deterioration of civility in America. I know it's been going on for some time now, but I think the polarizing politics of the '08 election (and President Obama's agenda) have made matters worse. What bothers me most I think actually just a symptom of this trend, and that is the increasing unwillingness of people to talk about politics, at all, ever. We Americans define ourselves so much by religion and politics, yet we've reached a point where we can't talk about either one for fear of starting a riot. This is really a shame. I meet people all the time when I travel. It's easy to tell the frequent business travelers from the vacationers for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons though is that a couple business travelers who are stuck on a plane together for 4.5 hours will almost certainly strike up a conversation to pass the time. We're not going to talk for the whole flight, and we're no...

I finally met one - a nice, friendly TSA agent with a good sense of humor. I'm sure he'll be fired by the end of the week for not fitting in with the rest of the gang, but this morning, at "o-dark-thirty," this guy actually made me laugh. He said "good morning, how are you?" I said I'm fine, how are you? "I'm livin' the dream, can't you see?" "I like Monday mornings.," he said. "Monday mornings it's almost all experienced travelers coming through here. You guys know the routine and we can move you through here in no time. Thursdays are the worst - it's amateur hour. Thursdays are the days when I get the people who say 'o, I didn't know that water is a liquid.' It makes me want to start selling a product I've thought of called 'instant water.' I figure it would be something like a pet rock. You sell people an empty bottle and explain to them that, once they're through the ...

I am spending the week in Bloomington, Indiana as I begin a new journey in life. I am now officially a graduate student at Indiana University - a card carrying member of the Hoosier nation. This is something I had been considering for some years now, and I finally reached a point in my career and in my life where the timing fit to "get this done now." I am pursuing a masters in business administration at the Kelley School of Business. It's named for the founder of Steak 'n Shake, one of my favorite restaurants. He did a lot of other relevant things in his life, including giving a truck-load of money to IU, but the one I like to remember him for is creating a burger chain that puts McDonald's to shame in terms of quality and service. My time on campus is already reminding me of my days at Miami University, and the charming town of Oxford, Ohio. Blooming is actually a really cool town too, I just never took the time to notice. Growing up in a Boilermaker hou...

With his term almost 25% complete, I've decided it's time for some reflection on our President. Since terrorism has again bubbled to the top of the news in recent weeks, I'll start there. Many people were concerned that Obama would be soft on terrorism, that he could not take the fight to the enemy as well as John McCain, that he couldn't spew bellicose rhetoric as well as Dick Cheney. In the first 11 months of his presidency, Obama has launched more successful missile attacks against al Quaeda targets (primarily in Pakistan) than Bush/Cheney did in the previous four years. On Christmas day, Obama authorized a combined jet and missile strike in Yemen, that successfully prevented a terrorist attack on our embassy there. These are aggressive, successful attacks in two countries that Bush and Cheney basically ignored. Obama has authorized a total of an additional 50,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan. He's also getting us out of Iraq, as he promised. It has no...

After 32 years on this planet, I am still amazed at the level of ignorance that educated adults can exhibit. There is absolutely zero uncertainty within the scientific community that the average global temperature is on the rise. The polar ice cap is absolutely melting. Seasonal arctic sea ice is disappearing earlier and earlier each year. Animal habitats, breeding, and migratory patterns have been impacted. Swamps that turned to perma-frost a million years ago are thawing out and turning back into swamps. These things are facts. Yet, still, I actually heard a friend say this week "it snowed in Houston this year, how can there be global warming?" Good point. I'll just tell all those climate scientists to find new careers. They've been studying trends over millions of years of course, using that silly "scientific method." How can all that research any analysis possibly stack up against your brilliant observation that it snowed, in one city, on one d...

Yes, I know, I've been neglecting my blog here. Here's a brief update on what's been happening in my life since September. October, of course, is racing season at Keeneland. As usual, we had a steady stream of friends and family come visit to wager on the ponies. Keeneland started publishing its race meet statistics online, and I created a database to analyze them. Sounds geeky, and it is. I also won my first Superfecta with the trends I identified, so I'm geeky all the way to the teller window. The trends, by the way, were quite surprising. You want to bet on horses that have run a race within the past 4-6 weeks at a distance that is within 1 furlong of today's race. You want the last race to be on an all-weather surface or on the turf, and horses that start in the #3 starting position do well at Keeneland. Certain jockeys also do better with certain lengths of race and some are better at helping a horse transition between different surfaces. October also ...

I have decided to move my political ramblings back to my blog. I think my friends are getting tired of seeing all that stuff on facebook. This disappoints me, because I like to think of my friends as more politically savvy than most, but in reality I understand that 1) not many people share the interest in politics that I do, 2) people have good reason to believe that their views on the issues are irrelevant because the morons in Washington have to please more than just the electorate these days and 3) everyone is busy these days, and following current events is just not a high priority for some people. Today's note is quite simple. This is a great article from Evan Handler. Yes, it's on the wacky liberal Huffington post. Get over it. I found it via Google news, which means bazillions of internet users (that's a technical term) found it interesting enough that some computer program flagged it as "popular." In it, he points out exactly why Joe Wilson is a ...

I'd like to take a quick review of South Carolina politics this year. 1) Republican Governor Mark Sanford hikes the Appalachian trail to Argentina , where he happened to run into his mistress. 2) Republican Senator Jim DeMint says “If we’re able to stop Obama on this [health care] it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Nice. 3) Republican Congressman Joe Wilson calls the President a liar . 4) Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pulls an [Mythbuster] Adam Savage in describing the President's speech to Congress this week, going for the "I reject your reality and substitute my own" approach. Graham hit the press with repeated claims that Obama was "combative" and showed "little sign of compromise." Really? If anyone reading this is a resident of South Carolina, could you please see that the Palmetto state puts some brighter people in office? Otherwise, we may need to take away your electoral votes. Thanks.

There was a news story that came out today which did not receive much press, but yet it's the kind of new story that should be front page news. This story is related to a court case brought against our government by a US citizen. This citizen, let's call him Dave, a married man with two children, was arrested at a Dulles International Airport ticket counter. He was handcuffed, taken to the airport’s police substation, and interrogated. Over the next sixteen days, he was confined in high security cells lit twenty-four hours a day in Virginia, Oklahoma, and then Idaho, during which he was strip searched on multiple occasions. Each time Dave was transferred to a different facility, he was handcuffed and shackled about his wrists, legs, and waist. He was eventually released from custody by court order, on the conditions that he live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada, limit his travel to Nevada and three other states, surrender his travel documents, regularly report to a probatio...

OK, "This American Life" is actually the title of a (great) radio show from WBEZ up in Chicago, but the topics they cover are the topics we all deal with every day - what it's like to live in America in 2009. I've been on the bench this week (in-between projects), and I've been reflecting a lot about the state of affairs in this patch of land we call the United States of America. Here's what I've noticed: 1) There are still a lot of people in this country who think that Barack Obama is crazier and more powerful than any President in American history. When I say "a lot" of people, I not just talking about your typical right wing nuts here. There are people who think that his Hawaiian birth certificate is not real so he's not a citizen. The NRA has successfully convinced its members that he's going to take their guns. He's a socialist, a Marxist, a racist and/or a communist, depending on which Fox News anchor you prefer. He's...

Here I sit in my lovely home office, killing time on a conference call. I think conference calls are almost worse than an in-person status meeting, especially in terms of the frequency with which they are abused/over-used. My own theory is that such meetings/calls are generally held for the benefit of just one person. In my own experience it's often true that the one person in question is holding the meeting or call simply because they are too lazy to do the leg work necessary to gather the information they need. Come on people! We're all busy these days. We're all working for companies that have laid off half the work force and expect the rest of us to absorb the additional work load. Don't ask me to join a call unless you need me to - how hard is that? I could be playing Mafia Wars or Rock Band or something. Hopefully, this time on the bench will be short-lived. There has been talk of projects in New Jersey, Alaska, Montreal, and Cincinnati. Hopefully one of...