Officials Say Eight Years of IT Infrastructure Neglect Deemed Culprit
WASHINGTON D.C. (Rhodes Media Services) -- The problem-plagued federal healthcare exchange Web site had to be taken down over the weekend, a direct result of failed IT infrastructure investment during the George W. Bush administration, according to Obama White House officials.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a press conference Saturday that the previous administration spent too much time and money on unnecessary wars when it should have been improving HTML, XML, Java, OS/2 and DOS.
"When you have eight consecutive years of IT infrastructure neglect, this is what you should expect," said Carney. "In fact, it's to our credit that the healthcare exchange roll out has been as successful as it has, considering the terrible performance of the Bush administration. I mean, you just can't expect us to click a mouse and fix that much neglect in three years. That's ludicrous."
Carney then went on to list a number of IT acronyms that he insisted were extremely important.
"I mean, just think about CRM," he said. "Really, THINK about CRM! There, you've just thought about CRM more than anyone in the previous administration ever did. For that matter, SOA. Yeah, SOA, I said SOA. Did Bush ever say SOA? Also, VM, PowerVM, RISC, CICS, CPU, BDSM!"
When asked why he didn't include UNIX, AIX or Linux, Carney testily responded "Linux? You mean Lucy's brother? The thumb sucking kid with the blanket? Yeah, I guess he's a lot like Bush, sure."
ST. PAUL, Minn., (Rhodes Media Services) -- White Americans need to start collecting minority friends, according to an organization dedicated to improving race relations in this country.
A Reuters poll conducted back in August found as much as 40 percent of white Americans are surrounded by acquaintances comprised almost exclusively of their own race.
Minnesota Public Radio this morning dedicated a portion of their broadcast to exploring why such a disparity exists, including opening the lines up for listener feedback.
One organization, however, believes such discussions simply aren't enough, and that a concerted effort and ongoing action is necessary to ensure white Americans keep an adequate number of non-white friends on hand at all times to prove their commitment to racial diversity in their personal lives.
Sharon Ogilvy, executive director of the Society to Lift Acquisition of Vital Emerging Racial Yields, explains that promoting diversity requires establishing minority quotas in our daily lives.
"White Americans need to look at their social circles and determine where they can include a minority," she says. "Then, go out and specifically select a minority person or people to keep in their lives. Once you have minorities in your life, you should take special care to keep tabs on those racial acquisitions. Maintain detailed spreadsheets on all your minority friends, including any identifying characteristics. You should do your very best to make it extremely difficult for your minority acquaintances to leave your social circle."
To accomplish this, Ogilvy suggests regularly inviting minority acquaintances over for barbecues, and then segueing the visit into assisting in minor household tasks, such as gardening or general yard work.
"I've found that my minority friends appreciate being thought of as useful to me," explains Ogilvy. "My black friends, particularly, seem to thoroughly enjoy doing modest housekeeping work, like cooking and cleaning. It makes me feel good to know they feel good, and I'm promoting diversity in my daily life while being able to get off my feet for awhile, which is nice."
Ogilvy maintains an impressive collection of several dozen minority acquaintances, comprised of Latinos, African Americans, Asians and even some Indians and Middle Easterners.
"My Indian friends--dot, not feathers--are just excellent about answering my phone, and you can't beat the yard work and landscaping my Latino friends are capable of," she says. "My Asian friends are great for tutoring my children in math, but I would NEVER allow them to drive my kids anywhere. I keep my Middle Eastern friends at a bit of a distance, but they make the most AMAZING rugs."
Well, my boy is finally potty trained. Actually, he attained the Nirvana level of “Trained of the Potty” several weeks ago, but I didn’t write about the accomplishment back then, because I feared he’d regress to un-potty trained after I posted this, thereby making me a liar—and I take my ThunderJournal reporting integrity and credibility quite seriously.
When we started on the journey of potty training our boy many, many, MANY months ago, my wife and I took it all as an extremely important undertaking, reading as much as we could and listening to the advice of friends and family members. After about three months of our boy steadfastly refusing to consider the wonders of the commode, I started to envision sending him off to college with a box full of custom-made diapers, because it honestly seemed to be an easier and more plausible outcome.
When you have more than one child wearing diapers, the added expense can be considerable. Every time I change a diaper, I swear I can hear the soft “Ka-Jing” of a cash register as I deposit the soiled mass in the diaper receptacle. So, potty training at least one of our two little poop factories was very important to me just from a financial standpoint. My boy, however, seemed to relish his role as a financial diaper burden.
After exhausting all the advice of the “experts” online and in parenting magazines—which are, in my opinion, just page after page of guesses and lies—we finally opted for the advice my mother gave me about how she potty trained my brother and me. Specifically, she just let us run around naked from the waist down until nature and shame took its inevitable course.
It may sound severe, but we were out of options, patience and diapers, so we allowed our boy to treat our home as his own personal nudist colony. While he genuinely seemed to enjoy the freedom nudity provided him, whenever nature started knocking, he’d begin screaming and demanding a diaper. The urge to give in to his full volume demands was intense, but we held firm. Unfortunately, so did he. While he never deposited a loaf anywhere in the house, his digestive system apparently decided to put everything into an indefinite holding pattern. Such was his determination against serving the bowl.
So, now we had a constipated nudist on our hands. We therefore had to resort to Miralax and a variety of poo-inducing foods. Still, days crept by, and each time we directed him to the porcelain throne, he reacted as if it was a sacrificial cistern of no return.
Finally, the day arrived when the packing of his digestive musket simply had to be discharged. He was playing Nintendo Wii at the time, standing on the Balance Board, when I noticed an escapee trying to break free. I quickly snatched him up and planted him on the toilet seat. He looked up at me with a defiant glare, but the glare quickly softened to a sort of Zen acceptance. That was followed by deep, throaty grunts, at which point I left him alone in the bathroom to complete his triumph.
And a triumph it was!! After about ten minutes, he came hopping, HOPPING, out of the bathroom, yelling “I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT!” Of course, all household participants were required to hover over the bowl and inspect his handiwork—which, following three days of constipation, was humongous—and exclaim such accolades as “THAT’S AWESOME!” and “YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW!” and “WOW, THAT’S AMAZING!”
And that was pretty much the end of the stalemate, although there was some resistance to performing a second act. But, when the time came, he knew what he had to do. He looked up from his coloring book, and did a slow, determined “Green Mile” sort of march down the hall to the bathroom. To his credit, he even closed the door behind him, which is something even I fail to do on occasion. Once again, we were treated to a round of “I DID IT!” And, he’s been fairly. . . er. . . regular, ever since.
Now, his younger sister, on the other hand. . .
