iMentor Builds Digital and Personal Bonds Between Students and Role Models

Great story on Thirteen's MetroFocus about the iMentor program and, specifically, how it works with the Academy for Software Engineering, where I also serve as a mentor in the iMentor program.

Here is a video from the show about iMentor at AFSE:



Here is another video with the interview with iMentor CEO, Mike O'Brien:



Incidentally, iMentor was also mentioned in the slideshow accompanying President Obama's State of the Union address earlier this week:

FactChecking ‘Pernicious’ Obamacare Claims | FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org wades through a number of the Obamacare Claims made by Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Rand Paul, and President Barack Obama.

They also fact-checked a number of Obamacare Myths last week that are worth reading.

Viral Spiral 2012 | FactCheck.org

FactCheck.org gives the lowdown on the most common viral e-mails of 2012:

"...despite all good common sense, people do pass along these malicious attempts to deceive, often in the same amount of time it would take to check their tenuous hold on veracity. Our readers — some clearly trying to beat back the onslaught from friends — constantly ask us to put these viral claims to the truth test. In 2012, we found that:

- Dueling graphics on the debt both overstated and understated President Obama’s contribution to the debt.
- No, Obama didn’t give Alaskan islands to Russia, and his early records weren’t “sealed.”
- Over-the-top “death panel” claims about the Affordable Care Act included purely invented stories about elderly Americans being denied dialysis or brain surgery.
- Vote-rigging conspiracies claimed that Tagg Romney owned voting machines in Ohio (he doesn’t) and that uncounted military ballots swung the election for Obama (from a “faux news” site).
- In the tin-foil-hat category, one conspiracy said Obama was creating martial law and a “standing army of government youth.” The adult-aged FEMA Corps members help with natural disasters and can’t carry weapons.
- General Motors is still firmly based in the U.S., despite claims that it’s becoming “China Motors.”
- Old-but-still-kicking emails percolated, claiming that Medicare premiums were about to skyrocket, everyone’s home sales would be taxed, and the Obama administration wanted to ban weapons among U.S. citizens — none of which is true."

Why This Election Doesn’t Matter | FunnyIndian.com

Comedian Rajiv Satyal (he of FunnyIndian.com fame) pens an awesome piece on why this election doesn't matter. Among his many points are that we have been marching towards an oligarchy no matter who’s in-charge and that Obama = Apple. Read the whole piece; it is worth taking the time to read it.

Rajiv also includes with a clip from the HBO Series "The Newsroom". This was the first scene in the pilot episode and it's worth watching just for the things that the main character Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) says (FYI, NSFW). Enjoy!



Be sure to take the time to read Rajiv's post at FunnyIndian.com. It will be worth your while to do so.

The Economist's Presidential Election Endorsement

The Economist published their endorsement for this year's presidential election today.  The Economist, known to be a conservative news outlet, had this to say about President Obama:

"Even to a newspaper with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal."

While one particularly scathing comment about Mitt Romney was:

"...the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy. Under President Romney, new conservative Supreme Court justices would try to overturn Roe v Wade, returning abortion policy to the states. The rights of immigrants (who have hardly had a good deal under Mr Obama) and gays (who have) would also come under threat. This newspaper yearns for the more tolerant conservatism of Ronald Reagan, where “small government” meant keeping the state out of people’s bedrooms as well as out of their businesses. Mr Romney shows no sign of wanting to revive it."

The Economist also lists its history of Presidential Endorsements.  For those keeping score, they are:

1980: Ronald Reagan
1984: No Endorsement
1988: No Endorsement
1992: Bill Clinton
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: John Kerry
2008: Barack Obama
2012: Barack Obama

Its 1984 non-endorsement had this very prescient point that haunts us today:

"Although Mr Reagan's ultra-Keynesian America is barrelling along towards full employment, all its trading and budget accounts are frighteningly out of balance. A sound international economic order cannot be built on the assumption that the rumbustiously richest country will go on borrowing unprecedented amounts at enormous interest rates from everybody else for ever."

All-in-all, it hasn't been a good few days for Mitt Romney.  First, his keynote speaker from the Republican National Convention, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, effusively praised President Obama for his handling of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.  Then, he attempted to do the right thing by having a can drive at what was originally scheduled to be a campaign rally.  Just one problem though:

"The campaign asked for nonperishable donations despite the fact that the Red Cross does not typically accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items because of the extra labor involved with sorting, cleaning, repackaging and transporting such items."

After that, New York City's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a surprise endorsement of President Obama based on his views on climate change, in spite of the fact that it hasn't come up much in this year's election cycle.

What does all this mean?  Nothing, except that this will all be over in four more days, when Barack Obama has an 81% chance of winning 303 electoral votes.  Then, like the Hurricane Sandy recovery, we can all get on with the rest of our lives.

FactChecking the Hofstra Debate

The usual suspects have worked overtime to sift through the BS and tell you the truth. Check out FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and The Washington Post's Fact Checker for more.

Romney Ad on China Mangles Facts | FactCheck.org

More lies from the Romney campaign, this time on the Obama Administration's record on China:

"A Romney ad strains the facts when it suggests the Obama administration’s refusal to “stand up to China” and label it a currency manipulator has cost the U.S. 2 million jobs. The jobs figure is unrelated to currency manipulation. It is an International Trade Commission estimate of jobs that could be created if China enforced U.S. intellectual property rights."

The White House is good at this sport called 'Politics'...

Matt Miller's latest Washington Post column talks about the White House's recent tactics that truly exemplify 'The Sport of Politics':

"What a coincidence that President Obama’s first news conference in nearly six months just happened to fall on Super Tuesday! And what a twist of fate that the president found himself addressing the United Auto Workers conference last week on the very day of the Michigan primary, where he had the chance to blast an unnamed GOP candidate for saying we should have “let Detroit go bankrupt.”

Barack Obama is the new master of the “split screen.” The White House is managing the president’s schedule and activities so that major events on the GOP campaign calendar become chances to contrast the president in the news cycle with the frivolous, shrill and increasingly surreal Republican race. The targets of this campaign are the independent voters who will decide the November election.

The “split-screen” strategy is looking very effective so far."

Tonight’s addresses at a glance | Maddowblog

Great word cloud of tonight's State of the Union and the Republican response.

The curious cases of Sandy Obama and Barack H. Alderson

Two Harvard Law grads are in an unusually similar predicament today. As news broke of Jose Reyes agreeing to a six-year deal to be another athlete that will "take his talents to South Beach", Sandy Alderson tried to send some semblance of calm and, as President Obama often says, be the grown-up in the room. Just like the president, he succeeded privately and failed miserably publicly.

Alderson is being vilified from this friends and enemies today, not dissimilar to the treatment the President gets from the Left and Right. If there is one statement that describes Obama's relationship with these two groups, it would be he's disappointed the Left and distrusted by the Right.

Likewise, the reaction to the Reyes signing has been negative from all but the most diehard supporters (known in politics as "The Base"). Folks that hate the Mets or New York Sports or East Coast Sports are elated at this "failure" because it shows at least one big market team that cannot do whatever it wants. But what about Met fans?  They think Alderson didn't do all he could to keep Jose Reyes in spite of an exclusive negotiating window that didnt give the kind of security people thought it did. Kind of like the lack of a public option in spite of a House majority and filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2009 and 2010.

Like the President, Alderson is stuck trying to placate supporters who know deep down inside that problems cannot be fixed overnight but generally don't have the patience to wait that long in the face of competition that may seem insurmountable today but is likely making decisions at could be foolish down the road. In that vain, which is the lessor of two evils: 2008 Republican Presidential nominee Newt Gingrich or 2017 Miami Marlins leadoff hitter 34-year old/$18 million per year Jose Reyes?  Or a better question would be, is either of these options favorable to the alternatives that Obama and Alderson present to you today?

I'm aware that you can't compare politics to sports (most of the time) so lets focus on Reyes. You can say all you want about Rickey Henderson and Ichiro Suzuki performing as speed players at an older age but does Reyes have their durability, not to mention Ichiro's pure hitting prowess?

Both President Obama and GM Sandy Alderson know that the media will dissect everything superficially but that they are really chess players while everyone around them is telling them they're playing checkers. I don't have a window into what is happening behind-the-scenes but I'm not naive enough to think that nothing constructive is going on out of sight and out of view.

So if President Obama gets to welcome the World Champion Miami Marlins to the White House in his first year after winning re-election, so be it. I'd be willing to trade that if there's a chance the last year of his presidency and the first few years of his successor's presidency that the White House is welcoming the multiple-time World Champion New York Mets. Perhaps Jose Reyes can watch the White House visit on his iPad5 while he's getting his hamstring rehabbed for the n-teenth time in his career.

Why Obama Should Pay Attention To Occupy Wall Street’s Critique Of Higher Education | The New Republic

Interesting op-ed in The New Republic:

"...for most college students, debt is a legitimate and growing problem. As recently as the early 1990s, most undergraduates didn’t borrow. Now, two-thirds emerge from college with a loan. Over the last three decades, college tuition has grown far faster than inflation, in good economic times and bad. Even health care costs have grown slower by comparison. Colleges like to blame feckless state legislators who won’t financially support higher learning, and in states like California they certainly have a point. But much of the guilt lies with higher education institutions themselves. They have spent billions on vanity building projects, administrative overhead, and money-losing sports programs in order to compete for status and fame. Students and parents have been left with the bill.

At the same time, the economy has increasingly organized itself so that people require a college degree in order to pursue a decent career. Unemployment rates during the great recession have been catastrophic for the uneducated even as graduates have mostly kept their jobs. So students and parents have little choice: pay what colleges choose to charge you, and if you don’t have the money in the bank, take out a loan."

For what it's worth, the White House is trying to get the message out that it's making an effort to Help Americans Manage Student Loan Debt.

Reagan Called For An End To ‘Crazy’ Tax Loopholes That Let Millionaires Pay Less Than Bus Drivers

Great video showing Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan essentially saying the same thing:



Sshh! Don't tell any conservatives Reagan was a pragmatist. For them it's like a kid finding out there's no Santa Claus.

"...if it weren't for the politicians, the economy would have a fighting chance."

The Economist explains how politicians are getting in the way of, rather than spurring on, a recovery:

"In America, the biggest policy-related threat is the fiscal tightening that will happen automatically in the next four months as prior stimulus expires and legislated cuts to discretionary spending bite. Barack Obama has proposed $447 billion in new or renewed stimulus to neutralise that threat, but it requires an ambitious deal in Congress’ super committee, and odds of such a deal by its November 23rd deadline are shrinking. Democrats are reportedly trying to get it to consider tax hikes immediately, and Republicans are apparently saying that puts a big deficit reduction deal out of reach."

Blue-collar Republican voters vote against their self-interest. It was only a matter of time before Republican politicians started doing the same. Old habits die hard, I guess.

David Frum: Why our government is broken - CNN.com

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum pens an excellent column on how politics has changed from the 1950's to the 1980's to today:

"Under the old rules, there were certain things that political parties did not do -- even though theoretically they could. If one party controlled the Senate and another party controlled the presidency, the Senate party did not reject all the president's nominees. The party that controlled the House did not refuse to schedule votes on the president's budgets. Individual senators did not use secret holds to sway national policy. The filibuster was reserved for rare circumstances -- not as a routine 60-vote requirement on every Senate vote.

It's incredible to look back now on how the Reagan tax cut passed the Democratic House in 1981. The Democratic House leaderships could have refused to schedule votes on Reagan's tax plans. Instead, they not only allowed the tax plan to proceed -- but they allowed 48 of 243 Democrats to break ranks on the key procedural vote without negative consequences to their careers in the Democratic party. (Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas, for example, who voted for the tax cuts would rise to become Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton.)

Hard to imagine Speaker John Boehner allowing his Republicans to get away with similar behavior on a measure proposed by President Obama."

Although I personally think he conveniently avoids the issue of how usage of the filibuster has became so prominent (Republican senators after the 2006 Democratic takeover of both Houses of Congress), the column is an excellent read on how our politics got to where it is today.

Gosh, Could Obamacare Be Working? | The New Republic

Now this is interesting. It's hard to argue with this graph.

Report: Government spends billions more hiring contractors over public workers

I have a hard time understanding how people can say Obama is a far-left liberal when he kept this egregious Bush-Cheney practice in place:

"As Washington's use of private contractors grows, the government is paying those contractors billions more than it would pay their government workers to do the same job, according to a new study released Tuesday..

In an attempt to verify frequently made claims that the government can save money by outsourcing its work, the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO) compared the total annual compensation for federal (and private sector) employees with federal contractor billing rates.

The group found that in 33 of the 35 occupational categories it reviewed, federal government employees were less expensive than contractors. On average, the federal government pays contractors 1.83 times more than it pays federal employees and two times more than what comparable workers in the private sector are paid."

Right again Mr. Friedman!

Tom Friedman, as always, nails it right on the head:

"President Obama has chosen not to push for a price signal for political reasons. He has opted for using regulations and government funding. In the area of regulation, he deserves great credit for just pushing through new fuel economy standards that will ensure that by 2025 the average U.S. car will get the mileage (and have the emissions) of today’s Prius hybrid. But elsewhere, Obama has relied on green subsidies rather than a price signal. Some of this has really helped start-ups leverage private capital, but you also get Solyndras. The G.O.P. has blocked any price signal and fought every regulation. The result too often is taxpayer money subsidizing wonderful green innovation, but with no sustainable market within which these companies can scale.

Let’s fix that. We need revenue to balance the budget. We need sustainable clean-tech jobs. We need less dependence on Mideast oil. And we need to take steps to mitigate climate change — just in case Governor Perry is wrong. The easiest way to do all of this at once is with a gasoline tax or price on carbon. Would you rather cut Social Security and Medicare or pay a little more per gallon of gas and make the country stronger, safer and healthier? It still amazes me that our politicians have the courage to send our citizens to war but not to ask the public that question."

His new book is out too. It's been an interesting read thus far, although I'm only about 10% of the way in right now.

Put up or shut up time.

McClatchy has kind of a sensationalistic headline but as the President keeps saying, if you have a better idea, let's hear it. Washington Post has a great graphic with the breakdown of the tax proposal.

The White House Blog - American Jobs Act: Get the Facts

If you only watched it on TV, check out the "PowerPoint" version of President Obama's address last night:

The Fighting Bipartisan: Has Obama Finally Found A Solution For Republican Obstructionism? | The New Republic

Checkmate? Perhaps:

"Last night Obama found a way out, sort of. It’s not a fiery partisan confrontation; it’s a kind of fighting bipartisanship. He’s now putting forth a substantive agenda that is very likely to boost the economy, create jobs, and improve the basic fairness of the tax system in order to spread the benefits of economic growth more broadly. But he aggressively linked almost all of those things to ideas that Republicans had already supported, or that wealthy people such as Warren Buffet had embraced. He took ownership of some ideas that had traditionally been conservative, and embraced ideas that had had some Republican support."

"Obama’s new approach, though, sets up, in theory, a different hypothetical win-win than the one we’ve been operating under for almost three years. One possibility is that Republicans have some qualms about a wholly obstructionist agenda, Congress passes some or most of the American Jobs Act, the economy improves (likely with some help from the Federal Reserve, international circumstances, and good fortune), and actual conditions get Obama out of the box he’s in. Failing that, if the White House and Democrats can keep their focus on the American Jobs Act (and if the left can avoid getting distracted by Obama’s wise concessions to reality, such as long-term reductions in Medicare spending), then Republican obstruction takes a new form. It’s not just blocking Obama, or his agenda—it’s blocking economic recovery, systematically, including ideas that Republicans have embraced in the past and will embrace again."