Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Real, Not Plastic...

Thanks to George P. for passing this along...

One of Rush Limbaugh's callers told a poignant story about McCain and Palin taking time out, privately, to say hello to the caller's family – which includes a chlid with Down's syndrome. In the caller's own words:
So we accompanied them up the hill, we went right to the bus, where it was, and Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Cindy, Todd Palin, they're all standing there. We're in this inner circle with just us and them, and the Secret Service agent, and they came right up to us and thanked us for coming out, said they loved our sign, and Governor Palin immediately said, "May I hold your daughter?" and our daughter Chloe, who's five, went right to her, and I have some pictures I'd love to send you maybe when I'm done here, but Governor Palin was hugging Chloe, and then her little daughter brought their baby Trig who has Down syndrome from the bus, he was napping, and Chloe went right over and kissed him on the cheek, and my son Nolan who's nine, he thanked her.
This sort of out-of-the-press, private, no-publicity-intended action speaks volumes about the true nature of an individual. It's like the old maxim that character is behaving well when nobody is watching. McCain and Palin didn't do this because it was advantageous to them – they wanted to do this. Though most people don't know it, George Bush does this same sort of thing all the time. For all three of them, knowing this has the same effect on me: it makes these politicians seem more real, more genuine, more human, more ordinary – and not at all like the disdainful elitist that Obama so typifies amongst the liberal's top tier.

More photos and dialog here.

Probably Not the Best Turn of Phrase...

Barack Obama, at a campaign event today:
"That's not change. You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

He may or may not have meant that as an allusion to Sarah Palin's now-famous comment in her acceptance speech (“What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick!”), but his admirer's certainly thought he did. And that's not likely to go over well with the wavering Obama supporters.

It's more pleasurable than I thought it would be to see the Democrats on defensive for once...

Sarah Palin Surge...

At right is a graph of this blog's traffic over the past couple of weeks. The entire “bump” is accounted for by Google image searches that include the words “Sarah Palin”.

Many included other words, as well – words that I'm not going to repeat. But I'll tell you this much: I spent six years in the Navy, before there were women on ships at sea, and (a) I'm embarrassed by some of these searches, and (b) some of them I had to look up the meaning of. There are some truly sick puppies out there...

Topsy Turvey, and Other Bedtime Stories...

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, followed by the liberal sliming of her, has had some results I don't think either side anticipated. Who could have imagined this video just a month ago?


We live in interesting times, and old stereotypes are being turned on their heads...

Service-now in the News Again...

Network World has a little article about us. Here's the lead:

What does it take to rank among the top 50 companies on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America? Among other things, these days it takes great information technology. Brian Morgan, director of IT at Interbank FX (IBFX) in Salt Lake City concurs.

IBFX is a leading provider of online foreign exchange trading services, serving clients from more than 140 countries. The company handles about $4 billion in transactions a day for its customers. Inc. magazine recently named IBFX as the 46th fastest growing private company in America, and the 5th fastest growing financial services company. Utah Business magazine gives IBFX the title of number one growth company in the state of Utah.

To reach and sustain that level of growth, the IT systems need to be able to grow and adapt rapidly to the company’s needs. This is one of the reasons Morgan and his IT team selected a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering from Service-now.com as the company’s IT service management (ITSM) platform. “Service-now.com helps us provide better uptime for our systems than we could do if we hosted an application ourselves,” says Morgan.

Alaska!


A tip of the hat to my mom...