Free Republic

As a miami dweller with a kid, I can tell you that it's pretty much assumed that if you make more than minimum wage here, you send your kid to private school.

Amen to that.

I can't say whether I know enough to say "reduce the UN dues to a fraction of waht they are". The UN is highly flawed, but remember that we have other international organizations like the G8 where developed democracies can and do effect international change on a significant level.

But whether it is the UN or some other body, there simply must be an international forum where, as profane as it may seem on first look, all types of nations gather around the water fountain and engage in dialogue - otherwise known as diplomacy.

When diplomacy fails, we know that we have other alternatives, but unless we are willing to send troops out to Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran etc all at the same time, we need to have some forum to "discuss" our problems with them.

I actually think the US will have more to lose from the dissolution of the UN than some rogue nation would.

How do you say 'Somebody set up us the bomb!' in jive (the language formerly known as Eubonics)?

This is why it is hard to be a black conservative, sheesh

Thanks Revolting Cat

Jokerman is a great Dylan track, and "Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings." is a great Dylan line, but it's actually from another song on the album "Sweetheart Like You"

Cheers

I remember this back in the late 90's, the health care dot com I was working for then had a LOI to do major business with HCA-Columbia and then all of a bunch of their people were doing the perp walk on TV.

That said, the SEC has to do what it is mandated to do, investigate. The Dems will make hay of this while they can because after all this is politics, but the SEC is pretty fair for the most part and if there is nothing to the investigation they will typically announce that with as much fanfare as they used to announce the investigation in the first place, i.e. Frist need not fear persecution if he's clean.

Delay on the other hand....

This is not about illegals, this is about a whole world of well to do businessmen and companies out there that are taking their business to Europe and Asia now because it's just too hard to deal with U.S.immigration policy.

The Universities, real-estate industry, banks and IT firms in South Florida are feeling the pinch because the Latin American firms are going elsewhere, so I support my governor on this and understand where he's going.

Guys, let's not conflate the issues of illegal immigration and international commerce. The first we need to curb, the second we need as much of as we can get.

So who knows this Dreier guy? What can we expect from him?

Apart from the fact that he's rumored to be gay and has lived with his Chief of Staff for a number of years...I don't know much else. Not good that this is the only thing I can remember about him.

This is actually my line of business so I can tell you guys what's actually happening. The Federal Government has been pushing for new generation systems to replace the aging mainframe based systems that the same 4 or 5 vendors (EDS, Perot Systems etc) have been rotating through the states to support Medicaid programs for decades.

Into that breach jumped a number of smaller companies like CNSI with promises of state of the art Java bases apps that run on the web have real-time decision support capability and so on. What's happening with these smaller companies is, although the technology is there, the Medicaid knowledge base is not.

Medicaid is a highly arcane business (and that's what it is folks, Business) who gets covered and when, who gets paid how much for what services and so on. Billions of lines of code have been written through the years to support this.

What the States are learning now, is that it is almost impossible to to start from scratch with a new kid on the block vendor in this business unless there is a strong commitment to years of testing and independent validation and verification.

My fear is that this debacle will stifle innovation and entrepreneurship in the public health sector for years, something that is much needed as the Fortune 100 companies that currently support the sector are pretty much resting on their laurels continuing to offer states applications that have no real-time capability, character based screens, little ability to provide interfaces to doctors and patients and so on.

Sorry to go on about this, but I looked at the CNSI "experiment" with hope to see if it could shake things up, but it seems it shook them up in the wrong way.

On my weekly flight Delta flight from Atlanta to Lauderdale a couple of weeks ago, the flight attendant made the announcement honoring some soldiers on board and asked the passengers to remain out of the aisles to let the soldiers exit first.

A couple of younger MBA types in the row behind me stood chatting on their cell phones in the aisles ready for the door to open so they could bolt out.

Derek S, the COO, of the client I was travelling with, a mid 50's take no prisoners Desert Storm vet, turned around and said "if you boys don't sit down, shut up and show some respect I will personally see to it that you leave this place on stretchers.....gentlemen" (I loved the way he sarcastically stretched out the "gentlemen" at the end)

The buggers sat down really quickly and not a peep was heard from them again.

I guess I'm sort of what some freepers would consider a RINO and I've watched for a while silently while freepers constantly deride those who lean more moderate-conservative. It's funny, after years of foolishly voting democrat, I took an honest inventory of my values and outlook and realized that they were more in synch with the Republican party...but were I to base my opinions purely on what I read here it would seem that despite efforts during the election cycle to court voters like me (swing-suburban, upper-middle young professional type - oh and Black by the way, not that it should matter)the hard-core conservative base does not welcome us at all.

I guess my issue is why "invite" moderates into the tent if you are not going to welcome them there.