Well, not exactly. His angle here is to dismiss all of the standard-issue advice on how to succeed as being completely wrong.

You'd think this would wind up being dumb. Actually, he makes some interesting points.

Here he demolishes the advice that you should do what you're passionate about to be successful.

I would have imagined this was good advice. But actually... well, check it out.

But the most dangerous case of all is when successful people directly give advice. For example, you often hear them say that you should "follow your passion." That sounds perfectly reasonable the first time you hear it. Passion will presumably give you high energy, high resistance to rejection and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. Those are all good things, right?

Here's the counterargument: When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don't want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He's in business for the wrong reason.

My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over 30 years, said that the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet...

For most people, it's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion.

The ones that didn't work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. For example, when I invested in a restaurant with an operating partner, my passion was sky high. And on day one, when there was a line of customers down the block, I was even more passionate. In later years, as the business got pummeled, my passion evolved into frustration and annoyance.

On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.

Interesting observation. And, Open Thread. Until Dave's Parade of Malformed Elbows.

Posted by: Ace at 03:51 PM | Comments (238)
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Alternate Headline: "Your Move, Mr. Cruz."

There is talk of a deal being worked out this afternoon, but I thought I might mention that even if a deal is worked out today or tomorrow, we are almost certainly going to find out what happens when the debt ceiling isn't raised by Thursday.

Quite simply, there isn't enough time for the Senate to consider a bill before the Thursday deadline . . . unless there's unanimous consent to waive the Senate rules. Here's what has to happen before the Senate can pass a bill raising the debt ceiling.

(1) The bill has to be drafted. Figure this takes a day.
(2) The bill has to be moved to the floor. This takes 3 days if it's a new bill that has to be calendared. It's faster if Sen. Reid amends a bill that's already on the calendar. It's also faster if the Senate takes up a bill from the House.
(3) Without unanimous consent, they'd need to file for cloture on the motion to proceed. Add a day, since a cloture vote has to be filed a day in advance of the vote.
(4) Without unanimous consent, they'd then have 30 hours of post-cloture debate.
(5) Without unanimous consent, they'd need to file cloture on the bill itself.
(6) Without unanimous consent, they'd then have 30 more hours of post-cloture debate.
(7) And then the Senate would get to vote on final passage of the bill.

There just isn't that much time between now and the deadline. This means that if any Senators object to waiving the rules, we're going to run headfirst into the debt ceiling even if Sens. Reid and McConnell came out with a deal this very second.

I checked with a pal who works on the Senate side. Though he cautions that there are a lot of ifs involved, he confirmed my understanding of the rules. He suggested that if there's unanimous consent, the Senate could pass something in a couple days. Without unanimous consent, the Senate's not going to be passing a bill until next week.

Does anyone here believe that a deal struck between Reid and McConnell is going to get unanimous consent from Senate Republicans? I sure don't. And don't forget, even if a deal makes it through the Senate, it then has to make it through the House.

The bottom line: we're about to find out what actually happens when the United States government runs up against the debt ceiling.

Updated [4:35]: Wait, wait, wait. I'm confused about the objection to the alternate headline, which I thought was amusing. Do you think that Sen. Cruz would agree to waive the rules to allow quick passage of the deal we're hearing rumors about? It'd sure surprise me.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:51 AM | Comments (733)
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When you've lost Ezra Klein, you've lost... Well I'll tell you who you haven't lost: Former "Wonkette" Ana Marie Cox.

Is that how she spells Ana? Tell a secret, I don't care.

Almost all the technical analyses I've read...

I don't know how many "technical analyses" she's read but I know how many she cites: Two. One from Slate, one from the Sunlight Foundation.

Well, if you've got Slate on board for a Democratic program, I guess that's gold standard.

Almost all the technical analyses I've read conclude the same way: the project was poorly tested and over-bureaucratized, but it'll probably straighten out. I am not sure conservative critics read to the end of these articles....

I'm not sure you read the beginnings.

...

All in all, proper coverage of the rollout would treat it not as "man bites dog", or even "dog bites man", but rather, "dog displays indifference to man, but man will be back later with beef jerky and some toys, hopes to create bond with dog that will last a lifetime."

Yes this is Wonkette instructing the media that they're insufficiently positive about Obama and ObamaCare.

Of course, it's that lifetime bond that makes critics so nervous. Their real fear isn't that ACA and its attendant infrastructure won't work; it's that it will.

If its structure was really so deeply flawed, why would conservatives be so suicidally intent on preventing it from taking full effect? For that matter, why are they so sure that the rollout's problems aren't exactly what the administration wants, bwahahahaha?

Is it 2002 again? Are we now back on to the "bwahahaha!" and "Mwhahahaha!" blog jokes? Does that elderly juvenalia still fly somewhere?

They weren't really good jokes back when they were, um, whatever they were. Au currant. If you can call them that, which I choose not to.

I guess it's still SOP for everyone to pretend they're younger and dumber than they are on the internet.

Even though I'm 29 (well, I will be 29, too soon!), I sometimes pretend to be a lad of 23.

...

It's not really that crazy a theory – at least, in so far as the next version of the exchanges problem will work exponentially better. And more distressingly to conservatives, it won't be too long until the ACA isn't a new and scary socialist plot, but just part of American life...

Conservatives, tech geeks, and comics had fun with the administration's attempt to smooth over commentary about the exchanges with a comparison to the introduction of Apples iOS7. The analogy does miss the mark...: To the extent that one can make an analogy between Healthcare.gov and consumer software or hardware, the ACA is the Apple Newton: a first attempt to get people to interact with their environment in a different way.

BTW, the Newton was a huge failure. I really don't know why she would bring that up. Yes, it was ambitious. And also, it completely failed. Newton promised it would recognize the user's handwriting (transferred to the screen via a stylus); it never did. I used to goof on a tech-loving friend for having bought it as an impulse buy; the thing wouldn't recognize basic words.

The thing was rolled out, in non-working condition, with the promise it would "learn" your handwriting; yeah, it didn't.

So I'm sure there were some promises of "exponentially better" later iterations too.

Which didn't happen.

You know what's sad here? I read a piece a long time ago where Wonkette felt the need to get away from the Wonkette blog, a superficial, juvenile snark-fest of hacktacular lefty politics. "Is that all there is to Wonkette?" the article said was her thinking, and her worry.

So she's now doing Wonkette crap ("bwahahahaha!") for the Guardian. So I guess that is all there is to Wonkette. I feel bad for writers who can't write their actual take, but always have to write precisely what their sub-sub-sub-market demands.

Meanwhile Ezra Klein is a huge hack, but he's not quite as big a hack as Bwahahahaha! Wonkette. I guess he's a more important and more confident writer, as he can occasionally confess obvious truths.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (320)
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That's #SmartGovernment at work.

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of ObamacareÂ’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.

The next part notes that Bush's DHS cleared the firm for this sort of non-competitive bid in 2007. But it was a smaller company then, and I imagine they thought they were clearing it for light-and-quick website design work without going through the longer federal bidding process.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (352)
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Naturally the media narrative is that only the GOP has any demands in the shutdown/debt ceiling fight but that's far from the truth.

The supposed deal that Republican Senators were tossing around this weekend was killed mainly because it kept the current sequester levels of spending in place.

There are a lot of things you can say about Ezra Klein (like his stunning lack of self-awareness) but at least he's honest: Democrats don't want a six month CR because that means they won't have the chance to bump up spending.

Agreeing to it for six weeks, however, means there's an opportunity to revisit it in a month-and-a-half. Democrats hope the Republican leadership will, by that time, be so terrified of another shutdown that they'll be eager to cut some kind of deal.

And if they're not? Senate Democrats admit they're not going to shut down the government over sequestration. But maybe the Tea Party will force another government shutdown, further wounding Republicans in 2014. Or maybe there'll be another short-term CR, which will mean another chance to revisit sequestration a few weeks later.

As Democrats see it, with sequestration in place, spending isn't going any lower. So they may as well set up as many opportunities as possible to push it higher.
This strategy puts the Democrats in the awkward position of explaining why they'll accept a six-week CR but not a six-month CR. Refusing to reopen the government because the Republicans want to keep it open for too long is a hard argument to make.

If fairness, shutdown opponents like Gabe said this would happen. I give him and them partial credit. Yes, they correctly predicted that Reid and Senate Democrats would do this but they overstated the difference it makes.

The GOP can always pass a clean CR at sequestration levels. Yes, it would be a defeat from the battle but when you engage in a fight, you risk losing it. That can't be an excuse to never engage in a fight or only fight when you everything is perfect and you know you'll win (because that never happens in the real world).

What do I think the GOP should do?

First, pass a clean debt ceiling hike. The reason I opposed the debt/delay tactic is because I always thought defaulting was an empty threat. Since the GOP isn't going to push the country into "default", get it off the table and move back to the shutdown fight.

Yes, I know it's not technically default if the country makes its bond payments but that's not how it will play. More to the point, one reason the shutdown hasn't been that big of a deal (contra one lousy and meaningless NBC poll) is that A-The government isn't really "shutdown" and B-It turns out that life goes on if parts of the government are closed for awhile.

If you push to "default" people won't get their Social Security checks or other "entitlement" payments. Yes, Obama could prioritize those payments but given what we've seen in "Make it Hurt" Shutdown Theater , you know he won't. That means the GOP will cave in 2 minutes, 8 seconds. Just get it over with and move back to the shutdown and ObamaCare.

And when the fight goes back to the shutdown, fight it the right way this time...make it about ObamaCare and not who is willing to pass more bills to patch some holes.

If the Democrats want to push default or keep the shutdown going to get more spending, well, the GOP should welcome that fight.

Sometimes you get into a battle and your first plan doesn't work. That doesn't mean give up, it means change the dynamic, change your tactics.

As I said in the podcast, it's unrealistic to expect Boehner to prosecute the shutdown fight very well because he was against it. Maybe if he gets a second chance, he can do it right this time. Or...not.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:10 AM | Comments (343)
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More, please.

On Wednesday, Judge John Guthmann ruled in favor of plaintiffs who were challenging an onerous state law requiring funeral homes to install equipment for embalming dead bodies, even when those funeral homes do not use the equipment. The requirement stifles competition and increases prices for consumers by requiring funeral homes to spend $30,000 on unnecessary equipment, the plaintiffs in the case argued.

In striking down the embalming room requirement, Guthmann said it “constitutes an irrational exercise of the state’s police power” and violates the state constitution.

The state's own experts admitted at trial (how could they not?) that embalming equipment that never gets used has no role in public safety.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:00 AM | Comments (164)
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• Newspaper: Lowering 2014 Income Can Net Huge Healthcare Subsidy
  
• Cooke: 'Nullification' Nonsense
  
• Letting Obama Force A Constitutional Crisis Is The Best Republican Choice
  
• Top 6 Debt Ceiling Gimmicks
  
• No Evidence Dems Can Take Back The House
  
• Obamacare To Start A Generational War?
  
• One Of The Reasons Why I Don't Watch Sunday Night Football
  
• Bail Ins And Taking Of Private Wealth
  
• An Alternative History Of The Past Two Months
  
• The Return Of Eminent Domain Abuse
  
• Remember, They're Hard Working People Who Just Need A Little Help
  
• Steyn: Park Service Paramilitaries


• A Sick Job Market
  
• On This Day In 1947 Chuck Yeager Broke The Sound Barrier
  
• Protestor Shows Up At Vet Rally With Confederate Flag, Dem Fundraisers Spring Into Action
  
• Discriminating Women
  
• Can't A Man Just Finish His Big Mac?
  
• Taxes Are For The Little People
  
• Media Doing Hard Hitting Investigations Into Ted Cruz's Past
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:45 AM | Comments (267)
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Apologies for the late post. These semi-holidays always fall through the cracks around here.

ICYMI (and I hope you did because it was on NBC) ...

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: andy at 03:53 AM | Comments (132)
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Sorry tonight's ONT is gonna be on the minimalist side. I had a gum graft on Friday and while the procedure was painless, the after-effects really knocked me for a loop. The last two days have mostly involved sleeping, vicodin, ramen, and the occasional operation of heavy machinery.  So you'll have to mostly entertain yourselves.

Heh

(Thanks to Andy)

The Beginnings of OCP

Abandoned by the city Oakland residents are organizing their own private police forces.

Oakland has an understaffed police department and is the city with the highest robbery rate* in America. In the last few weeks three separate campaigns have been started on Crowdtilt in order to fund four months of private security patrols in three different section of Rockridge. Near $35,000 have been raised so far, and two of the three projects have raised enough funds to ensure they will move forward.

"We shouldn't have to do this," says Steven Kirsh, who is running the last of the three Rockridge campaigns, "but we need to do this." He doesn't see the Oakland Police Department suddenly getting more resources, so in order to protect his belongings, family and property value, the $82 per household doesn't seem like much to ask, for 12 hours of patrolling five days a week. For a four month trial it will work out to less than a dollar a day.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (540)
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(I'm staying away from Federal government shutdown news and rumors on purpose. Events are moving too fast right now to know how they're going to turn out. I'm sure the other co-bloggers will post any breaking news, and I'll write up a piece once the drama has resolved itself.)

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

The SNAP computer system went down for a few hours on Saturday...and many beneficiaries just about lost their damned minds.

These are the wages of the welfare state, my groovy babies: we've been mainlining the drug so long that we can't go for an hour without it. DOOM isn't foreign terrorists or enemy soldiers or dirty bombs. It's legions of stupid people almost tearing down a Wal-Mart because their SNAP cards didn't work for an hour or two. Now tell me what's going to happen when the balloon really goes up and we can't afford to keep ladling out government cheese any more. What happens if the SNAP cards stop working permanently? Do you think these hordes of angry stupid people are just going to grumble and go back home?

This to me is probably the most important DOOM-related story that I've seen so far this year. Why? Because it illustrates how deep our pathologies run, and how maddeningly difficult -- maybe impossible -- it will be to find a political solution.

I am on record as believing that politics is not going to save us. The paroxysms now immobilizing Washington D.C. are emblematic of a system that is simply incapable of dealing with the fundamental problems facing this country, the most pressing of them being fiscal. Our debt and vast welfare state is strangling us, and yet our government is either unwilling or unable to do anything useful about it. To attempt substantive reform is to court exactly the kind of popular revolt we see in this SNAP debacle, only on a much larger and more destructive scale. Having addicted Americans to welfare, the government dare not take the drug away lest the addicts grow violent.

But here's the thing: things cannot continue like this. They cannot. It's not a matter of politics, or willpower, or kindness towards our fellow man, or abstract economic principles. The way we live now is a simple violation of physics. We are consuming far more than we produce, as a nation. Our value-add shrinks, year by year, even as the demands on the public treasury keep growing. Our productive population keeps shrinking while the ranks of the wards of the state grow.

Meanwhile the citizenry, who are supposedly the masters of their own destiny in this two-century old Republic, almost riot when they can't buy their government-subsidized crackers and Cheez Whiz.

Generosity often breeds contempt and not gratitude in the recipient. That's been true for the entirety of human history. Yet somehow it always takes us by surprise when we see it.

People used to laugh and roll their eyes when I told them that a second Civil War was becoming all but inevitable in this country. They don't laugh any more.

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Posted by: Monty at 04:20 AM | Comments (256)
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