Jon Stewart on the Daily Show has Exclusive – Robert Gates Extended Interview Pt. 1 through Pt. 4.

In this exclusive, unedited interview, “Duty” author Robert Gates assesses the political morass in Washington and champions the judicious use of force abroad.

From what I have been reading in the other media, I certainly did not expect to like Robert Gates. The interview that Jon Stewart conducted is absolutely not what I expected. It shows what happens when you have an interviewer who wants to talk about serious issues instead of being focused on creating controversy.

What is wrong with the rest of the media? (What a silly question.)

Part 1

Part 2

In part 2 there is a discussion of the problem of getting the DOD and the VA computer systems to talk to each other about individual veterans.

Gates explained that he failed to get this job accomplished even after spending $1 billion on it. The technical people who would be responsible to get this done told him how impossible it was to do.

When I was at Digital Equipment Corporation, I wanted a very smart technical guy to work on connecting our circuit simulator to our logic simulator. We also had been a single prototype piece of software that had tried to demonstrate similar capability, but had not completely succeeded.

When I got a similar reaction to what Gates probably experienced – a whole raft of reasons why it couldn’t be done – a novel idea occurred to me. I said to the person I wanted to do the job, let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that you really thought you could do this. Now let’s have a conversation about all the roadblocks you expect to face in doing this project, and let’s figure out what you might be able to do to overcome them.

Luckily, by the end of the conversation, it didn’t look so impossible. In fact the project did get completed successfully. We wrote a few technical papers about the project. I went on to work for two other companies in the ensuing years where we did similar projects successfully.

The point was to get the people responsible for the project invested in making it a success. This is as opposed to having the people invested in proving to you that they were right, and it couldn’t be done.

As we say in the industry, “After all, it is just a small matter of programming.” Of course, we usually say that as a facetious remark.

Part 3

Part 4

January 18,2014

I have started to read the Gates book. I am specifically avoiding reading the left wing attacks on the book until I have finished reading the book itself. As I got into the later stages of the first chapter, I was beginning to think that Jon Stewart was had by Gates.

The book starts out with what seemed to be a reasonable premise. As Gates became Secretary of Defense, he took the attitude that it didn’t really make any difference about what you thought of the premises for getting us into the Iraq war, the fact was that we were in the war and he was charged with figuring out a way to successfully conclude it.

That makes sense up to a point. However, when you are dealing with members of Congress who have lost what little faith they may have had in George Bush because of the way he duped them into allowing him to attack Iraq, you might need to take into consideration this past history if you want to understand their motivations and possible lack of trust for any Bush administration appointee. Gates clearly gives no consideration to these issues in some interactions while clearly understanding this in other circumstances.

The Daily Kos has the transcript and the video below in its article Jon Stewart goes after Senators trying to kill the nuclear deal with Iran.

Still, for the first time in decades, we would have diplomatic relations with Iran and a means of ensuring that they would not obtain a nuclear weapon.  Just so long as nobody comes in and figuratively throws eggs at the entire thing.

If Jon Stewart said it, maybe my relatives won’t think I am as crazy as they have been thinking.

Time magazine website has an interactive test Can TIME Predict Your Politics?

Social scientists find many questions about values and lifestyle that have no obvious connection to politics can be used to predict a person’s ideology. Even a decision as trivial as which browser you’re using to read this article is imbued with clues about your personality. Are you on a Mac or PC? Did you use the default program that came with the computer or install a new one?

I would expect people who read this blog without it raising their blood pressure would probably tend to be on the liberal side.

I am  9% conservative, 91% liberal by their measure.  Are you surprised that I am as high as 9% conservative?

Thanks to Jacquelyn Wells for suggesting this test on her Facebook page.

Rawstory has the article Faux Noise guest predicts Holocaust ‘one day’ if Jewish producer makes anti-NRA film.

Faux Noise host Martha MacCallum lashed out at Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein on Thursday because he supported gun control in the United States while wishing that Jews could have fought back with firearms during the Holocaust.

The best counter argument I have heard of this meme about gun-control and the Nazis is the one in the comment that starts with the question Did Hitler and the Nazis really take away Germans’ guns, making the Holocaust unavoidable?

This was missing from the comment, but I think he refers to the paper ON THE NRA, ADOLPH HITLER, GUN REGISTRATION, AND THE NAZI GUN LAWS: EXPLODING THE CULTURE WARS [A Call to Historians] Bernard E. Harcourt.

My software blog filter seems to be doing its job.  I cannot print the name that Faux Noise uses to describe itself.  The sources quoted did not have such a filter.

Alternet has the article Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Fast Track to Poverty.

This is not what Americans want from trade. And yet, the United States is negotiating a NAFTA-style deal called the TPP with 11 Pacific Rim nations, including Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The negotiations are occurring in secret. Average citizens have no access to what’s going on. Without significant changes, TPP will just be another American factory shuttering, dream shattering trade deal.
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In that address to Congress, Johnson also appealed for more balanced trade, for foreign countries granted access to the American market to open their markets to American goods. That’s what Americans want from trade – fairness. They know they can compete when given a level playing field.

Americans want trade deals to ensure equity. They want trade policies that increase American innovation, American manufacturing and American jobs.

They want trade policies that help America win President Obama’s war on income inequality, not schemes that grant special favors to corporations at the expense of people.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I have to ask Hillary supporters if they know where she stands on TPP? Maybe Bill Clinton had good intentions when he pushed NAFTA. Now we know that bad parts of that deal far outweigh the good parts. Opening up trade between nations can be good for everybody, but the devil (and I do mean devil) is in the details.

The Boston Globe has the story Mass. state Sen. Brewer to retire at end of term.

One of the state’s most influential legislators has decided not to seek re-election.

Sen. Stephen Brewer, a Democrat from Barre (BA’-ree), says he will leave office when his current term ends next January.

Brewer chairs the powerful Senate Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for developing the Senate version of the annual state budget.

The area that Brewer represented, which includes Sturbridge, is hardly a bastion of strong, progressive, Democratic politics.  In fact, I have heard it said that about 22 of the towns in his district have a habit of supporting Republicans for state and national offices.

Now is the time, or is it way past time, to start looking for a strong Democrat from this area to run in the election to replace the outgoing Sen. Stephen Brewer.

I have already received a call from an activist in Wales who is pushing hard on this search.  Hopefully the Democrats in Sturbridge and other surrounding towns will join together to find and promote such a candidate.

I am no politician, but I have a few contacts that I can help put together with each other to make this happen.  Let me know if you are interested in participating.

The Boston Globe article Disco-Era Redux features the movie American Hustle.

AMERICAN HUSTLE This is the movie that reminded the world that Halston was no joke, and all the free love and cocaine circulating in the late 1970s seeped rather blatantly into the minds of fashion designers. Amy Adams is a one-woman fashion show in this film, while Jennifer Lawrence showed the world that a 1970s stay-at-home mom with a botched home tan could also be sexy.

This picture brings to mind a recent Facebook conversation that I had about going to see the movie.

Jane S – I’ll see it. Amy Adams is only o.k….depends on the part…

Steve G – Well. I thought the good parts were on display. Maybe that’s not what you meant 🙂

At the time of this conversation, I  didn’t have the above still from the movie to show what I meant.

Recently I heard a similar line of reasoning from women about two actual or potential woman candidates.  I heard one woman say that she really did not want Martha Coakley to run for Governor because Coakley is such a marvelous Attorney General and should keep dong that job.  I have also heard arguments that Elizabeth Warren should not run for President in 2016 because she can do more good as a Senator.

I am not disputing what actual glass ceilings there are that are imposed by outside forces.  However, I am just wondering out loud if some women are holding back other women from the full measure of their potential.  I won’t speculate on why that may be.  I don’t want to follow in Larry Summers’ footsteps by proposing reasons that I do not even agree with myself.

Of course it is not only women who do this.  In my career as an  engineer, I had often heard it said that if you make yourself too indispensable in your current job, that will stand in your way of being promoted.  Though notice the different tone of this “advice”.  The advice is on how to get promoted, not how to keep yourself trapped in a role that is beneath your potential.  (There is nothing wrong with keeping the role that you are in if that is what you want.)

Time magazine has a second article on the same topic Hillary Clinton’s Unapologetically Hawkish Record Faces 2016 Test.

Whatever the truth of that surge anecdote—Clinton’s camp won’t comment on it—the larger truth is impossible to deny. Clinton has demonstrated a well-documented willingness to use American military power overseas. Gates’ book is just the latest evidence, along with previous reporting and original interviews with current and former Obama officials, of the strikingly hawkish voice Clinton offered during Obama Situation Room debates.

When I wrote the previous blog post Hillary Clinton Discussed U.S. Approval of an Israeli Strike On Iran, I had not followed their link to the current article.

This article is more devastating than that previous post.  I have looked askance at Time Magazine reporting for many years, but how can I ignore these pieces which seem to confirm what I have long suspected about Hillary Clinton.

Given her close ties to the Wall Street advisers and participants that brought on the recent economic collapse and continuing hardships, when you add on this ugly face of her foreign policy, it is hard to believe that this country would benefit from her election as President in 2016.

Time Magazine has the article Hillary Clinton Discussed U.S. Approval of an Israeli Strike On Iran.

Around the same time, senior officials met to discuss ways the U.S. might dissuade Israeli Prime Minister from taking unilateral action. In one such meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised a bracing question, according to two former Obama administration officials: Was it possible that, instead of trying to restrain Israel, the U.S. should instead provide what one of those official described as “a tacit green light to the Israelis to take care of the problem for us”? In other words, instead of begging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give diplomacy more time, perhaps it was worth telling him to go proceed with airstrikes.

Clinton did not actually endorse the idea. She only raised the notion “as one option to consider,” according to one former official, who adds that it gained no traction inside the administration. Clinton’s current press secretary, Nick Merrill, did not respond to requests for comment this week on this matter.

While the very idea of a U.S.-approved Israeli strike on Iran is dramatic, Clinton’s thought experiment was actually responsible act of bureaucratic deliberation, says Kenneth Pollack, a former White House national security aide under Bill Clinton and author of a recent book on Iran

Some people commenting on the article seem to be thinking that this piece boosts Hillary’s image.  To me, it just seems to confirm what I have suspected of Hillary all along.  Obama’s foreign policy is much more warlike than I would have expected from his campaign.  I always wondered if he was driving it in this direction or Hillary was.

When are we going to see articles about how much more successful our diplomacy seems to have gotten since John Kerry took over?

I wouldn’t so much say that the Iranians reacted poorly to the initial Obama administration offerings.  i would think they were really reacting to the sucker punches we delivered at the same time we were delivering messages of friendship.

Our Republicans and some Democrats are trying to deliver the usual sucker punch now while we seem to be succeeding with Iran.  Iran is reacting with great forbearance to continue diplomacy despite such moves by us.