Every drive to work, every drive home, every news clip, every pundit seems to have something to say about the so-called “Fiscal Cliff”. Each side claims the other is holding “the middle-class tax cuts hostage”, or that the other side’s plan is laughable or unworthy. Sadly, while there isn’t really a cliff, both sides are right about each other. Here is why. They are both wrong.

On election night we started hearing how Obama and the Democrats had a mandate. Why? Because of a substantial margin in the electoral college. For this article we’ll kindly forget their claims that Bush didn’t have one in 2000 despite a substantial margin in the Electoral College - this article is about why there isn’t one today.

Of late I’ve seen a lot of talk about “Time To First Byte” (TTFB). In a nutshell, TTFB is supposed to represent the time it takes for a web server to send the first byte of data to the client - usually a web browser. There are a variety of viewpoints regarding its usefulness.

My self-imposed election period hiatus is over. Since the mainstream media and blogosphere have lost interest in it, it is time to return to it. There are some interesting parallels with prior elections, but not the ones I’ve seen posted elsewhere.

Prior to the election there was discussion on whether Romney would be the Republican John Kerry. I think with the results in, there is a clear historical parallel, and it is with a Democrat presidential contender. Indeed I think this entire election is a repeat of that contender’s race; the 2000 Presidential Race.

Let us examine some key factors.

Once again we find ourselves in a war of idiocy regarding what the current POTUS running for office did do or didn’t do. As expected, anytime he failed to do something he promised he and his supporters blame it on Republican obstructionism. Just as Republicans do when it is their POTUS being called to account for his or her term.

Just thought I’d share that with those of you buying into the oft-repeated lie. When someone talks of it, ask them how it is fundamentally different from the “old economy”. New technology doesn’t make a new economy. Advances in how a business operates or interacts with purchasers do not change the economy - they improve or detract from that specific aspect.

I ran across this article on CFO.com: “The True Meaning of Service”. Something really stood out to me. In the article, Timothy Chou asserts Amazon is not in the business of sales, but in service. As someone who has had poor service interactions with Amazon, and read of the many people who have had bad to horrible experiences with Amazon’s “service department”, I was taken aback.

Yesterday I ran across this article at CFO.com. As someone who started in this industry nearly two decades ago and planted firmly in the cloud, I’ve a few observations and admonitions.

On his Blog recently, Jimmy Zuma had this to say:

Unemployment has the desired intent of acting as a safety net for people who lose their jobs suddenly and unexpectedly. So how can this be bad? It can be bad for several reasons. First it is biased against those who make decent money. How? Consider this scenario: