Category: Obama Administration

“Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”: a brief review (w/spoilers)

“Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”: a brief review (w/spoilers)

| April 22, 2017 | Reply

In architecting a new system, all the important mistakes are made in the first day. — Spinrad (1998) This book is destined to be a classic in American political literature. As has been reported already, the authors — Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes — made an early arrangement with dozens of sources inside and outside […]

Read More

Trump throws the brushback pitch

Trump throws the brushback pitch

| January 11, 2017 | Reply

After Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States, he began to interview many different individuals for possible Cabinet and Administration positions. Immediately, there were nearly daily leaks as to whom was being considered for what position, and whether a given individual’s stock was rising or falling. After this had gone on for […]

Read More

Important article on ISIS

Important article on ISIS

| January 1, 2016 | Reply

I remain distressed at the general ignorance of history, political science, philosophy, religion, and social anthropology among those seeking to analyze — and, usually, dismiss — the very serious threat posed by ISIS and related movements. That’s why it’s so refreshing to read an article like this one by Scott Atran over at Aeon. His […]

Read More

“Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer — a brief review

“Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer — a brief review

| May 5, 2015 | Reply

[5/6: made a few minor edits for clarification] I received “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer on Tuesday (5/5) and read it completely before I went to bed. About two-thirds of the way through, it struck me: this was like reading an over-the-top political satire by Christopher Buckley. All the usual elements were there: charming (and not-so-charming) American politicians […]

Read More

What rough beast indeed?

What rough beast indeed?

| October 9, 2014 | Reply

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely […]

Read More

Obamacare and the Small Switcheroo

Obamacare and the Small Switcheroo

| January 11, 2014 | Reply

[minor edits and one added section] Ignore the nets for an afternoon and see what happens. The news I woke up to this morning (thanks to an early morning e-mail from John Fund at National Review) is that the Obama Administration will not renew its Healthcare.gov contract with CGI Federal when it expires next month, […]

Read More

Obamacare and the Subversive Masses

Obamacare and the Subversive Masses

| January 1, 2014 | Reply

It is clear that with the start of 2014, the Obama Administration — as many (including myself) predicted — wants to declare victory with Obamacare and go home. It is also clear to many of us — but apparently not to the mainstream media — that the Obamacare trainwrecks just keep on coming and are […]

Read More

Obamacare and the Widening Gyre

Obamacare and the Widening Gyre

| December 14, 2013 | 1 Reply

  [rewritten, with some additional links] As many writers have been noting, particularly over the past week. the Obama Administration is getting more and more desperate in trying to make Obamacare work, or at least to avoid complete disaster. They are tossing aside enacted laws, published regulations, and their own computer systems to find some way […]

Read More

Obamacare and the Cold Equations

Obamacare and the Cold Equations

| December 12, 2013 | 3 Replies

There is a famous 1954 short story by Tom Godwin called “The Cold Equations”.[1] In it, a young girl stows away on a rocket ship bringing plague vaccine to a colony world deep in space; her goal is to pay a surprise visit to her brother, who is on that world. Unbeknownst to her, the […]

Read More

Obamacare and the Bifurcated Cusp

Obamacare and the Bifurcated Cusp

| December 8, 2013 | 1 Reply

Decades ago, as a computer science undergrad at BYU, I took a graduate math class in catastrophe theory, taught by Prof. Helaman Rolfe Pratt Ferguson. This wasn’t because of particular skill on my part, but because I was working with one of my professors (Robert P. Burton) to develop 3-D graphics imaging technology to aid […]

Read More