Flyover Country

From David Plouffe in The Audacity to Win:

There have been plenty of organizations that thrive, for a time at least, under leaders who yell and scream and fly off the handle and are propelled forward by a culture of intimidation and even fear. But I believe that, ultimately, organizations are collectives of human beings. They will perform best and make their greatest achievements when there is clarity, calmness, conviction, and collegiality throughout the ranks.

The 2008 Obama campaign may be one of the best-run Presidential campaigns in history, and a lot of it comes down to attitudes like Plouffe’s. There’s a lot here that new managers in the software industry can and should learn from. Corporations, just like political campaigns and soylent green, are made of people.

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VT100 with gradients and a whole lot of attitude. TOTALLY EXTREME!

Looks neat, but good luck using that on an airplane.

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Glenn Greenwald on our favorite chickenhawk tough guys’ reactions to the KSM trial:

[T]he Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

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Taegan Goddard:

Maybe Levi Johnson really does have a dark secret about Sarah Palin that she doesn’t want revealed.

Though Palin’s new memoir takes shots at many people — and “describes heart-wrenching anguish about her teen daughter’s pregnancy playing out before a national audience” — WCBS-TV notes “the 413-page tome doesn’t contain a single reference to the father of her granddaughter, soon-to-be Playgirl model Levi Johnston.”

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At least this finally explains my love/hate relationship with Wisconsinites.

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AT&T regarding Verizon’s latest batch of TV ads:

The image of the sad and wilting iPhone on an island of misfit toys falsely communicates that the iPhone is a broken device.

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From Paul Krugman:

[T]here’s this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama.

And this isn’t just a phenomenon of the last few months. Look back at stock returns under recent presidents, which is easy using a clever gadget at Political Calculations. Taking real, dividend-inclusive annual returns on the S&P 500, I get:

Reagan: 10.08%
Bush I: 10.16%
Clinton: 14.35%
Bush II: minus 5.81%

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I just kind of assumed he was a garden variety jerkoff before, but this clinches the deal for me. Bart Stupak is seriously a dickhead:

A day before the bill passed out of committee, Stupak co-sponsored, and voted for an amendment written by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA)–distinct from the now notorious “Stupak amendment”–that would have limited the government’s ability to include abortions in benefits plans to cases of incest, life of the mother, and forcible rape.

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