Orange You Glad It's Election Time Again?

Don't you miss those Orange Alerts?  They only happen just before elections. You know it's election season when the Republicans start hauling out their proposal for an Anti-Gay Marriage constitutional amendment, or when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (whose name rhymes with "loyal uber alles") starts arresting Islamic terrorists who are plotting a jihad to "kill all the devils," including blowing up Chicago's Sears Tower. There's nothing quite like conspirators pledging an oath to Al Qaeda to get the fear juices flowing.

The leaders in the Bush Administration are masters of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). That's how they got America into an unjust, unwinnable, and hugely costly war in Iraq -- high in human costs; high in political costs; high in diplomatic costs; and high in financial costs.

After watching the FRONTLINE program entitled "The Dark Side," is it any wonder that the Republicans want to cut PBS's budget?  Once upon a time the major broadcasting networks (i.e., NBC, CBS, ABC) would do investigative reporting. Unfortunately, that's no longer true. Perhaps it's because nowadays they are all no longer independently owned.

The PBS FRONTLINE program portrays a vivid exposé explaining how all roads on the War on Terror ran straight through the Office of the Vice President. It had a political arm and a policy side. But, most frighteningly, it had a powerful legal team too.

Cheney believed in expanding the President's executive power. He was convinced that presidential power had been whittled away by Congress and the courts ever since Watergate. Richard Cheney viewed the searing moments of the Nixon Administration, in which he had a front row seat, as a dimunition of what the President ought to be. Within days of 9/11, Cheney's legal insiders saw a chance to rebuild the President's power, almost as if 9/11 was a moment of preparation meeting opportunity.

Vice President Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington, headed a group of lawyers who said the President could authorize whatever means were necessary to fight the War on Terror. They said that, as Commander-in-Chief, George Bush could disregard any other law during time of war. When 9/11 came, it was a state of emergency that gave the people at the top of the Administration a chance to try some things they'd been thinking about for a long time.

Within six months of 9/11, it was clear that the Vice President was going to get the U.S. to go to war against Iraq -- even though CIA Director George Tenet believed he had proved that Al Qaeda and Iraq were not connected. Cheney's strategy was to raise fears about the imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction, saying on NBC's Meet the Press, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." His partisan chum Condoleezza Rice chimed in, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The intelligence community was merely used as a public relations operation to validate the war against Saddam Hussein.

How much longer will the war in Iraq continue?  That depends on what happens in the next couple of elections. Considering, though, that the incumbency rate in Congress is 98%, members pretty much have to be indicted before they lose their seat. I guess in the end America always gets the government it deserves and the government it elects because: a) the masses are asses; b) the partisanship is poisonous; and c) the country is run by extremists because the moderates have turned their back on our political systems.

Frontline's "The Dark Side"

Only historians will be able to judge whether or not George W. Bush (aka Bush 43) is the worst American President ever. Only time will tell if the legacy of his Administration is as awful as it appears -- what with the Iraq War, the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and wipe out Al Qaida, Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, astronomical budget deficits, unjust tax policies, Hurricane Katrina, skyrocketing gasoline prices, global warming, rising interest rates, rising inflation, stem cell research, illegal immigrants, social security reform, Medicare prescription drugs, yadda, yadda, yadda...

No one needs to wait, however, to judge Dick Cheney as the WORST Vice President in the history of the United States. Ditto for Donald Rumsfeld as this nation's WORST Secretary of Defense ever.

I urge people to take the time to watch the PBS FRONTLINE program entitled "The Dark Side." You can watch the full program online.

In "The Dark Side," FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror, and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side."

This country has never had a Vice President as powerful as Dick Cheney and never had a Secretary of Defense who probably is feared as much as Donald Rumsfeld.

Cheney and Rumsfeld have worked side-by-side together for over three decades. Starting back in the Nixon Administration, many years ago, Dick Cheney, then a young intern on the Hill, began his political career working as a staff aide for Rumsfeld. Politically, their views of the world and their view of government are very similar.

Later, as Gerald Ford took office, Don Rumsfeld was chosen as White House Chief of Staff. He selected Dick Cheney as his deputy. Together they took over running the White House. Both were formidable bureaucratic infighters. One day they proved it, literally remaking the Ford Administration in a legendary maneuver performed entirely behind-the-scenes in what was referred to as the "Halloween Massacre." They managed to cut Henry Kissinger's job in half; Vice President Rockefeller was swiftly marginalized; William Colby, then running the CIA, was replaced by George H. W. Bush; Rumsfeld moved to be Secretary of Defense; and Cheney moved up to Rumsfeld's old job as Chief of Staff. It was an extraordinary tactical flourish.

After the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld made his fortune in private industry. Cheney spent a decade as the Congressman from Wyoming where he was immersed in intelligence matters.

Then, Richard Cheney became Secretary of Defense for the first President Bush. In the shadow of Colin Powell, he had quietly managed the military in the first Gulf War.

After 9/11, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted the military to come up with a plan for attacking Al Qaida in Afghanistan, but the Pentagon was caught flat-footed. The military was totally unprepared in the wake of 9/11 for anything needed to be done in Afghanistan. They had no plans on the shelf. They had no idea what was required.

Rumsfeld was angry. He wanted quick action from a small force. The Generals from Central Command, led by four star Tommy Franks, had operational plans for different parts of the world, but nothing for Afghanistan. Meanwhile, George Tenet and his anti-terror CIA teams were ready to go. It was a bitter pill for the Pentagon.

In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. Tensions between Cheney and Rumsfeld on the one side and Tenet on the other were really high. But when Tenet insisted that there was no connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet.

Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies throughout the government who advocated a robust and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq. After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Questionable intelligence was "stovepiped" to the Vice President and presented to the public.

Dick Cheney deeply distrusted the CIA. He remembered how wrong the CIA had been in failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and more. In the end, many believe the battle between the Vice President and the CIA has destroyed the Agency.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are the main protagonists that got us into a pre-emptive war in Iraq -- a war America is now going to lose because there's no way for America to win. That's how the Iraq War and the Vietnam War are alike. What constitutes "winning" anyway? Slogans such as "Americans will stand down as Iraqis stand up" are just empty rhetoric. Congressman Murtha is correct. American soldiers are an occupying force. The troops should come home sooner rather than later.

In the final analysis, the ultimate evaluation of George W. Bush's presidency will be judged based on the failure of the Iraq War and how he followed the advice of the worst Vice President and the worst Secretary of Defense in the history of the United States. That will be his eternal epitaph.

Unholy Trinities

At the beginning of America's journey, there was an unholy trinity -- Molasses to Rum to Slaves -- immortalized by the Sherman Edwards song written for the 1969 Broadway musical "1776".




Today, in 2006, yet another unholy trinity has emerged -- Chinese Loans to Persian Gulf Oil to Global Warming.





It doesn't matter whether examining slavery or global warming -- in both cases the reality is Business Power always trumps People Power -- until there's a DISASTER.

Global Warming is real. It's the result of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, especially greenhouse gas emissions produced by fossil fuels (i.e., coal and oil).

Al Gore is speaking out everywhere on "Global Warming and the Environment" -- on television, in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," in lectures, in newspager editorials, etc. He presents a pretty compelling argument on how CO2 is killing our planet. The process is starting with the oceans because massive quantities of CO2 are being absorbed which is causing acidity to increase, thereby destroying calcium carbonate (which is what shells and coral reefs are made of). Warming ocean waters are causing storm intensities to increase (e.g., Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last fall). Do we have to wait for global warming to cause sea levels to dramatically rise before we start to take this threat seriously?

The Bush Administration has actually appointed the principal lobbyists and lawyers for the biggest polluters to be in charge of administering the laws that their clients are charged with violating. Vice President Cheney’s infamous "Energy Task Force" sought out lobbyists for polluters, asking them for help in designing a totally meaningless “voluntary” program.

As the late, charismatic astronomer and writer Carl Sagan said, referring to the picture of the Earth presented to the right:

"Look at that dot. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know. everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever WAS lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader', every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds, our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light…

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand…

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."

-- Carl Sagan

Needed: Real Campaign Finance Reform

Stephen Colbert, on The Colbert Report, recently interviewed David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover, the story about "How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government."

We used to live in a country where government was supposed to protect people from the excesses of the free market. Today, however, both our government and our elected officials are For Sale!



More and more decisions are made based on who is contributing campaign money to lawmakers. Money that goes into the political process has expectations. That's how energy bills get written by energy companies and Medicare bills get written by pharmaceutical companies.

Real reform needs to start with publicly-financed elections. The problem, today, is that the people who are directly paying for our elections are getting a government that they own. Think about all of the money that goes into the political process that gets returned to contributors in the form of tens of billions of dollars of no-bid government contracts.

If we had publicly-financed elections, we'd actually save money. Of course, another option might be an outright ban on all TV political advertising. That would eliminate the need for huge campaign contributions. It would also get rid of those awful 30-second attack ads on television.

The bottom line is that the masses are asses electorate prefers a government for sale over publicly-financed elections.

Wilshire Enterprise Architecture Conference Presentation Proposals

Wilshire Conferences has scheduled an Enterprise Architecture event for Chicago, November 7-9, 2006. I submitted three presentation proposals included below.

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How To Build and Communicate an EA Taxonomy
By Jeff Tash, ITscout

Workshop (2 hours)
Audience: Introductory

The best way of communicating EA taxonomy information is to think in terms of a 3-dimensional cube:

1. Along one dimension you have models.  EA models describe Business Architecture (i.e., processes), Data Architecture, Application Architecture, and Technology Architecture.  When describing the last component, you’ll want 4 models that can visually depict a technology portfolio as 3 layers:
   
   
   
   • The bottom layer (Layer 1) specifies Infrastructure (Model 1)
   
   
   • The middle layer (Layer 2), on top of Infrastructure, corresponds to Applications which can either be built (Model 2) or bought (Model 3)
   
   
   • The top layer (Layer 3), above Applications, refers to the application-generated data that yearns to be mined for its Business Intelligence (Model 4)


2. The second dimension for communicating taxonomy information refers to views.  Different views target different audiences.  Some views can be targeted to architects, others to developers, and still others aimed at business-oriented end-users.


3. The third dimension involves time.  Think of it in terms of current state and future state(s).

This workshop will engage participants by challenging them to look at what kinds of information Enterprise Architects ought to capture and communicate using a taxonomy.  Attendees will receive complimentary Roadmap wall posters that describe ITscout’s 3-layer/4-model graphical taxonomy which visually depicts the typical universe of IT products that comprise an enterprise’s technology portfolio.

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Consolidation & Standardization
By Jeff Tash, ITscout

Conference Session (1 hour)
Audience: Intermediate

The biggest lesson for effective consolidation is to "standardize wherever possible."  Consolidation should yield decreases in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).  Analyzing the global spend and identifying consolidation opportunities not only leads to economies of scale and reduced headcount, but also improves security and increases systems management capability.

When building a business case for consolidation you want to show how facility costs, headcount, annual maintenance fees, etc., will be reduced.  You should also explain intangible benefits such as simplifying the organization's overall Enterprise Architecture, or providing the opportunity to establish strategic relationships with key vendors.  Before embarking on a consolidation project, it's vital to understand the financial implications related to matters such as scale-based license pricing or asset depreciation policies.

The bottom line is that consolidation is one of the most critical aspects of any IT organization's Enterprise Architecture blueprint.  For each IT asset, the question periodically should be asked, "If we didn't already own this, would we now go ahead and purchase it or develop it?"  And, if the answer is "no," the next question should be: "How do we get rid of it and how fast?"

This session will explore the rules for consolidation:

• Why Consolidate?
• Business Justification
• Technology Architecture Issues and Drivers
• Architecting, Planning, Documenting, and Implementing

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What’s the Value of IT Architecture?
By Jeff Tash, ITscout

Roundtable Session (45-minutes)
Audience: Advanced

Architects are responsible for bridging the chasm between the cultures of business and technology.  Their job is to communicate complexity by simplifying and synthesizing.

The best way to conceptualize the architectural bridge is to envision a twisted rope made up of three intertwined strands.  One strand corresponds to models.  The second relates to populating those models.  The third involves communicating the documented information organized around the models.  What’s the value of EA if its contents are not communicated effectively?  How much can EA be worth if the only ones who ever read what the architects have written are the authors themselves?

The overriding goal of architecture is to allow an organization to think about and manage technology in precisely the same way that it currently knows how to think about and manage money, people and property.  IT Architecture generates ROI by aiding managers in making better, more informed technology decisions.

In this roundtable session, participants will discuss how IT Architecture creates value through:

• Consolidation and standardization
  
  
  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Technology Architecture


• Governance and compliance
  
  
  • ITIL
  • IT Service Management


• Innovation and effectiveness
  
  
  • Software Architecture
  • Architectural Styles

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Biography

Jeff Tash is CEO of Flashmap Systems, Inc. (www.FlashmapSystems.com).  He also maintains two free web sites: ITscout (www.ITscout.org) which organizes information about IT products and vendors; plus the "Architecture ‘Resources’ Repository" (www.ITscout.org/Architecture).  Previously, for over twelve years, he was President of Hewitt Technologies, a Division of Hewitt Associates. Prior to that, he was employed by Digital Equipment Corp, IBM Corp., Control Data Corp., and Arthur Young & Company.  Mr. Tash has lectured internationally to tens of thousands of IT professionals. Also, more than a million copies of his ITscout Roadmap wall posters have been distributed worldwide. He is currently a Microsoft MVP Architect and an IASA Fellow.

More on Consolidation

Sun Microsystems is promoting Expansion by Consolidation as a way of "simplifying IT environments to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)."

The biggest lesson for effective consolidation is to "standardize wherever possible."

If a company is supporting 5 different Web servers with 10 different plug-ins and 15 different configurations, it limits flexibility, increases costs, and heightens security risks.

Sun has developed a series of 10 Rules for Consolidation. Below is an edited excerpt:

1. Get executive-level support

A consolidation project may involve multiple applications with many owners who come from various divisions in an organization. Early executive-level support can help head off turf wars among business units.

2. Agree on the business goals

Consolidation may involve asking people to give up control of a server or application for which they bear responsibility. Unless they understand that there is a clear business goal, such as reducing overhead for their department, they are unlikely to willingly go along with the consolidation plan.

3. Proactively address company politics

Individual business units have different priorities. For example, an investment bank might have a few applications that calculate derivatives, and each application might have a single user. It might seem like a slam dunk to recommend consolidating those applications, until the investment bank balks that each application is handling billions of dollars in business and that it would rather not fix something that isn't broken.

4. Establish service level agreements

A company needs to have a clear understanding of the service levels that can be expected in a consolidated environment before any consolidation takes place. As with the previous three rules, people will be wary -- or worse, blame the consolidated environment for their problems -- unless they know up front the resources and service levels that will be at their disposal post-consolidation.

5. Standardize wherever possible

The most important aspect for consolidation is to develop a standardized set of applications. Standardized configuration not only leads to economies of scale, but also goes a long way toward improving security.

6. Perform extensive planning and documentation

Consolidation comes with risk. Planning and documenting can help make sure everything is put together correctly to mitigate risks, and it can help an organization put everything back together if something does go seriously wrong.

7. Allocate appropriate time, skills and resources to the effort

Many consolidation efforts can get compromised or sub-optimized if customers do not allocate enough time or the correct people to the effort for proper planning, analysis, architecting, testing, implementation, or socialization with business units, stakeholders, and constituents. Failure to do so can lead to implementation problems, operational challenges, production issues, and/or architectures that still demonstrate some level of under-utilization of assets.

8. Train the IT staff on managing the consolidated environment

Consolidation may introduce new technologies, such as virtualization.

9. Develop new applications for the consolidated environment

If standardization is the number one lesson for consolidation, then forward consolidation is number two. Forward consolidation dictates that it is far easier and less expensive to design new applications for the consolidated environment than it is to roll out standalone applications into the environment after they have been built.

10. Get help from an experienced vendor

Look for an experienced vendor who has tools to assist with consolidation efforts and who has been involved with other successful consolidation projects.

Sun uses four basic steps for all of the consolidations that it performs:

Whereas Sun wants to sell its customers new hardware servers and professional consulting services, my company, Flashmap Systems, offers architecture products that assist IT organizations who want to standardize through consolidation. It's been our experience that the key to a successful consolidation implementation depends, first and foremost, on effective communication -- getting everyone on the same page -- demystifying the complexity of technology architecture.

Why Consolidate?

Existing IT investments ought to be rationalized. As quoted in the previous posting, Peter Drucker on Managerial Courage, "Every product, every operation, and every activity of a business should be put on trial for its life every two or three years."

Consolidation of existing systems and technologies should be expected to yield some decrease in headcount or operating costs. Reduction in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is often cited as the primary driver for consolidation. By analyzing the global spend and identifying vendor consolidation opportunities, substantial savings should be possible. Of course, other benefits, too, should accrue, such as increasing systems management capability or improving service level management.

IT asset inventories in most large enterprises are, most likely, highly incomplete. An inventory, ideally, will show both asset age as well as information about interdependencies, such as what hardware a particular piece of software runs on, or what other software components it requires in order to execute properly. Hardware assets need to include current and historical utilization statistics. For example, you can't consolidate additional services onto hardware that is already running close to its maximum capacity.

Before embarking on a consolidation project, it's vital to understand the financial implications related to matters such as scale-based license pricing or asset depreciation policies. For instance, consolidating assets that have not yet been fully depreciated could incur a cost instead of a savings.

When building a business case for consolidation you will typically want to show how facility costs, headcount, annual maintenance fees, etc., will be reduced. You should also explain such intangible benefits as simplifying the organization's overall enterprise architecture, or providing the opportunity to establish strategic relationships with key vendors.

The bottom line is that consolidation is one of the most critical aspects of any IT organization's enterprise architecture blueprint. For each IT asset, the question periodically should be asked, "If we didn't already own this, would we now go ahead and purchase it or develop it?" And, if the answer is "no," the next question should be: "How do we get rid of it and how fast?"

Peter Drucker on Managerial Courage

Back in 1963, renowned management guru Peter F. Drucker wrote a Harvard Business Review classic on How To Manage for Effectiveness. His comments are as pertinent today as they were then.

Druker asks, "What is the manager's job?"

His answer: "To direct the resources and efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant results."

But, as Druker points out, "The bulk of time, work, attention, and money first goes to 'problems' rather than to 'opportunities,' and, secondly, to areas where even extraordinarily successful performance will have minimum impact on results."

The fundamental problem is how frequently managers confuse the difference between "effectiveness" and "efficiency." They struggle to distinguish between "doing the right things and doing things right." Quoting Peter Drucker, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." Yet, how often do real world managers pursue "efficiency" with little, if any, regard for "effectiveness?"

In business enterprises "a very small number of events -- 10 percent to 20 percent at most -- account for 90 percent of all results, whereas the great majority of events account for 10 percent or less of the results." A handful of customers produce the bulk of all orders. A handful of products produce the bulk of all sales. A few top sales people generate most new business. A handful of production runs account for most of a plant's output. A few researchers in the laboratory produce nearly all the important innovations. And so on and so forth.

The most crucial requirement for effectiveness is "managerial courage." The manager's toughest job is to accept one basic truth: Every product and every activity of business begins to obsolesce as soon as it is started. Every product, every operation, and every activity of a business should, therefore, be put on trial for its life every two or three years. Each should be considered the way we consider a proposal to go into a new product, a new operation or a new activity. One question should be asked of each: "If we were not in this already, would we now go into it?" And if the answer is "no," the next question should be: "How do we get out and how fast?"

Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005) was perhaps the most influential management thinker ever. It's beneficial to reflect back on his profound wisdom.

Innovation & Architecture

BusinessWeek suggests that "making innovation work is the single most important business challenge in our era." What does that mean in terms of IT? In my opinion, business executives had better figure out how they're going to tap into innovative architectural creative thinking. That means using resources to pull together IT architectures which will have an impact that is broad and deep.

Businesses and industries will be affected by the fact that already today more transistors are being produced annually than grains of rice -- and at a lower cost. There already exists in the world over 2 billion mobile phones and almost 1 billion PCs. Designing robust, adaptive IT architectures is the core competence needed by organizations that intend on using information and communication technology to connect to the global grid. If your organization doesn't yet grasp the importance of architecture as a way to open people's mind to the wide world that lies ahead, then you're toast.

Designing innovative IT architecture requires visionary talent. Architects are the people responsible for bridging the chasm between the cultures of business and technology. Companies must transform themselves from IT cultures driven by cost and quality control to enterprises that profit from creative IT thinking.

Innovation was the original cornerstone underlying information technology. But ever since Y2K and then the dot com boom and bust, followed by 9/11, enterprise IT innovation has pretty much stagnated. Nevertheless, technology has continued its inexorable march forward with ever more transistors on a single chip and ever more bandwidth -- both wired and wireless -- and ever more storewidth.

It's time for businesses to once again begin using information and communication technology to innovate. Success will depend on turning architecture into a core methodology of innovation. Forward-thinking leaders must educate, inspire, cajole, hire, bribe, punish, build -- all to transform their companies' cultures. Their job is to tear down silos, mix people up, bring in outside change agents, stimulate people's minds, and generate a diversified portfolio of promising ideas.

One critical core concept to understand is that good ideas about IT architecture can come from everywhere and anywhere. What's essential is that every important idea -- every project, every deadline -- all be accessible on the intranet to everyone who has a need to know -- all easily accessible in a way that requires minimal, if any, formal training.

Innovative architecture does not mean instant perfection. Architecture naturally evolves over time. What's most important, however, is understanding that people naturally need a vision along with a plan on how to get to that vision, as well as real and reasonable deadlines. As Google's vice president for search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, says: "Worry about usage and users, not money. Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow." Mayer has been a Champion of Innovation longer than most. She's a big reason why Google functions as a single, open network where Googlers can look for those working on similar technologies, find relevant expertise, or join projects.

Republicants

Below are just some of what transpired during a typical 24-hour news cycle in the life of a federal government totally controlled by the Republican Party.

The Senate voted 57-41, three votes short of advancing the bill, to reject a Republican effort to slash taxes on inherited estates. This vote preserves the estate tax, for now. The estate tax is currently paid only by those who inherit more than $2 million. According to the most recent statistics available from the Internal Revenue Service, 1.17 percent of people who died in 2002 left a taxable estate. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, says the "death tax is unfair."


House Republicans slashed $115 million from the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which distributes money to PBS and NPR. That's a 23 percent reduction next year for TV shows like "Sesame Street" and radio shows like "All Things Considered."

Republican pundit Ann Coutler, author of the book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," described a group of 9/11 widows who backed the Democratic Party as "millionaire 'witches' reveling in their status as celebrities enjoying their husbands' deaths" referring to four women who headed a campaign that resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission which investigated the hijacked plane attacks.

GOP leaders vow to keep pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage after being soundly defeated in the Senate after proponents failed to persuade even a majority of senators to support the measure.

Click Here To View Jon Stewart vs. Bill Bennett

Are You Ready for Enterprise Architecture?

Enterprise Architecture is often sold as a remedy for better aligning IT goals with business goals.  Promises are made that EA can serve as a strategic vehicle for:

• reducing IT costs
• enabling business change
• simplifying technology portfolios
• supporting greater flexibility
• improving process effectiveness
• delivering IT projects quicker and cheaper
• implementing IT governance, especially regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley
• rationalizing application portfolios
• plus a thousand more pie-in-the-sky IT objectives

Can your IT organization really do Enterprise Architecture?  It depends.  Is your IT group, itself, ready to embrace EA?  Can it establish the discipline that's needed for a successful EA implementation?  And, perhaps most importantly, does your IT organization start off with sufficient credibility with your own enterprise's business executives?

When it comes to enterprise IT, there's a continuum that ranges between strategic and support. The telltale indicator is to look at where the CIO reports. Does he or she report directly to the CEO, or does the CIO report to the CFO?

If it's the latter, then IT's role is perceived as one of providing support. In this case, when business leaders think IT, they invariably think cost center. With a support IT organization, the most important objective is reducing IT operational and maintenance costs. Beware that EA groups are themselves frequently considered cost-overhead and as such are subject to cost-cutting purges. Generally, the best strategy for cutting costs is to focus initial EA initiatives on consolidation.

Even if your CIO reports to the CEO, or COO, and is therefore considered strategic, there's still the question of how important your executives deem the value of information technology in terms of your business. Much may depend on what others in your industry are doing. Also, does your overall IT organization command credibility across the other parts of the business?  What about the rest of IT?  Have they bought into EA?  Finally, what happens if your architecture efforts are successful?  Are you ready for an explosion of demand?

EA can help an organization improve its ability to deliver IT services. EA can help provide more effective IT governance. EA can even help better align IT capabilities with the needs of the business.  Start slowly. Establish success one step at a time. Be prepared to respond. Build credibility. And, most importantly -- communicate -- continually, effectively, and to all levels of people both inside and outside of IT and across all business areas.

In the final analysis, EA is a critical ingredient for operating a successful 21st-century IT organization, especially when combined with its related disciplines: IT portfolio management, IT governance, IT service management, and IT project management.

Titling at Windmills: A 50-50-50 Energy Proposal

America is addicted to oil and that addiction is killing us -- fiscally, environmentally, and spiritually.

We are not fighting the war in Iraq because of WMDs or to spread democracy. That's all poppycock. We're there because Iraq has lots of oil.

At $70+ per barrel, gasoline is averaging 3 bucks a gallon. Even worse, more and more wealth is amassing in oil producing countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. We're literally funding both sides of the Iraqi war.

America desperately needs an energy policy. Hell, we've needed one ever since the original Arab oil embargo happened way back during Nixon's second administration. We needed one during Carter's and Reagan's administrations. Bill Clinton was just lucky that when he was president, the price of oil was ridiculously low -- sometimes selling for under $1.00 per gallon. How did America react? We bought Hummers and Explorers and various other gas-guzzling SUVs.

But now, with a Texas oil man in the White House, we need an energy policy worse than ever. It could be Bush's equivalent of Nixon's trip to China. Unfortunately, I doubt George Bush is half the statesman Nixon was. Nixon may have been a crook. Nixon may have been a scoundrel. But, historically, he at least tried to do great things (besides opening up relations with Red China, Nixon created EPA -- the Environmental Protection Agency).

Blogging is a lot like self-publishing your own letters to the editor. It takes a lot of chutzpah to believe that putting forth an energy proposal in a blog can have any impact on anyone. Then again, that's okay. I write my blog mainly for myself -- as a personal journal -- a web log. I don't assume anyone else reads what I write.

So, what's my 50-50-50 energy proposal for America?

The first 50 refers to a 50% tariff on all non-North American oil. At $70 per barrel, that would be an added tax of $35 for each and every barrel of oil imported from anywhere except Canada or Mexico. To minimize the impact on the economy, the tax should be staged over a five year period -- 10% the first year; 20% the second year; 30% the third year; 40% the fourth year; and finally 50% in years five and beyond.

What should we do with the windfall from this tax revenue? That's where the second and third "50s" in 50-50-50 apply. I recommend that 50% of the monies collected be used to fund academic research into new, alternative energy resources. The other 50% should be used to help families who earn under $100K per year to heat their homes, and to assist small farmers earning under $100K per year who need fuel for their tractors and assistance paying for higher costing petroleum-based fertilizers.

With oil imported from outside North America costing over $100 per barrel, other forms of energy will hopefully become competitive in the marketplace. Perhaps it will be oil shale from Montana or tar pits in Alberta or corn grown in Nebraska for ethanol. Maybe it will be new roofing materials that include built-in solar panels or almost invisible wind farms off our coastline. What's important is that we need to break our addiction to oil -- especially Middle East oil -- and we need to do it now.

Goggles for Google

Are you, like me, getting a little long in the tooth?  Now that I'm fat and bald, my wife says she misses me; she still loves me; but she misses me!

Do you remember back in 1967 when the Beatles' hit song "When I'm sixty-four" seemed so far off in the future?  No longer.

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

I'm a baby-boomer who's balding, bulging, and bespectacled. I need help nowadays viewing what's displayed on my browser's screen.

Well, here comes Microsoft to the rescue with a PowerToy called the ClearType Tuner.

ClearType delivers improved font display quality, resolution, and readability over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing, especially on color LCD displays.

ClearType is a form of sub-pixel font rendering that draws text using a pixel's red-green-blue (RGB) components separately instead of using the entire pixel. When the pixel is used in this way, horizontal resolution theoretically increases 300 percent.

Picture elements on an LCD screen are actually comprised of individual horizontally-oriented red, green and blue sub-pixels. For instance, an LCD screen that has a display resolution of 800x600 pixels actually has 2400x600 individual sub-pixels. The human eye is not capable of differentiating colors on such a small scale, so a combination of these three primary colors can emulate any intermediate color. Sub-pixel font rendering takes advantage of this by antialiasing at the sub-pixel level instead of at the pixel level.

ClearType magnified [click here for more info]

You can turn on ClearType using either:

• ClearType Web interface, or
• downloadable PowerToy ClearType Tuner

As a once-upon-a-time cognitive psychologist, I loved reading an article that Microsoft published entitled "The Science of Word Recognition". It delves into an explanation about how people use the letters within a word to recognize a word. This article, written by a cognitive psychologist working for Microsoft, explores neural network modeling which has has been particularly successful in advancing our understanding of reading processes. As one who in graduate school studied psycholingustics, specifically speech perception, I was fascinated to learn how the benefits of ClearType were based on a psychological, scientific understanding of on-screen reading experiences.