I am increasingly upset with the news coming from Washington. The news media is reporting that Speaker Pelosi says there are not enough Democratic votes in the House to pass the health care reform bill approved by the Senate in December. My preference is that the House pass that bill and make required changes using the reconciliation process.

If Democrats don’t figure out how to do that and let this bill die or drag on for months, I will vote against Democrats in 2010 and beyond, and will urge all my friends and associates to do the same.

We didn’t elect you so you could get reelected. We elected you to stand for Democratic principles and to actually make them happen. Period.

You guys need to prove Will Rogers wrong!!

Maybe if our politicians get the message, they’ll get the courage of our convictions??

I love golf and have spent countless hours watching, reading, practicing and playing it. As much as I’ve learned over the years, I’m always amazed when I listen to someone like Johnny Miller or Nick Faldo describe a golfer’s swing on television.

Miller and Faldo see things at full speed that I can barely recognize after they’ve explained it to me with the aid of super-slow-motion HD video. Supination? Angles? Inside path? Outside? Too steep? Too shallow? How about that “thump” sound in a bunker? Or how they can tell whether there was grass between the club and ball, whether the shot is fat or thin, by listening to the sound?

The thing is, when it comes to golf, I don’t know even one-tenth of what I don’t know. There are people who know a lot more, and I learn so much just by being in their presence.

That’s exactly how diversity works. It’s not that a group (racial, gender, ethnic, etc.) can only be represented by a member of that group. It’s more likely that non-members may not even know what they don’t know. It’s what they wouldn’t even think about unless someone “more diverse” (in background, experience, point of view) was there.

Justices describe the presence of Thurgood Marshall’s stories as more influential than his single vote on cases. His mere presence in the room altered the trajectory of their deliberations. They had to think about how Thurgood would hear and react to what they might say¹:

“‘Marshall could be a persuasive force just by sitting there,’ Justice Antonin Scalia told Juan Williams in an interview for a biography of Justice Marshall, recalling the justices’ private conferences about cases. ‘He wouldn’t have to open his mouth to affect the nature of the conference and how seriously the conference would take matters of race.’”

The same thing applies to the women who have served on the Court. They know stuff that the men simply would never consider. Their mere presence enriched the discussions, at least in certain areas.

BTW, my point is not a new one. For example, see Every Justice Creates a New Court by Linda Greenhouse.

Diversity affects companies the same way. It’s just always better to have a panoply of opinions and experiences. Courts and companies make better decisions that way. Especially when the leader knows how to assemble and manage a good team!

¹ The Waves Minority Judges Always Make by the New York Times’ Adam Liptak.

Of course, the conversation was even better. It’s funny how we argue about things, then I go home, think, think some more, and benefit from it all. If only there were no calories involved!!

Today we considered the merits of Twitter and the like. One way to think of Twitter is drinking through a firehose. All that information, all that noise, right there, right now. And now. And now. It’s always there. Like, right NOW! Is that good for the drinker? Now. Is that good for society? And, you know, now.

Another view: don’t drink from the firehose. Surf on top of it. Scan as if reading the newspaper. Take what you need. Twitter’s running 24/7, but you can turn it on and off when you want.

There are other views, of course. The bottom line is things are changing and we all get to choose what to use and how to use it.

Did I mention I love brussels sprouts?? Teeny, tiny cabbages. Excellent!

There is one thing I wish Reader could do: let me create a search-based “smart tag” to filter my incoming feeds and collect stuff meeting my search criteria in a folder or tag I could read first (or mark it read so I never see it in the first place).

Gmail already does this as do Apple Mail, Outlook and other email apps. Reader features search, so why not save the searches and use them to filter incoming items? not apply that idea to RSS?

During the campaign this might have been used to filter out all articles containing references to a certain VP candidate. If search allowed us to access feed metadata, you might filter the DailyKos feed to show you articles by Markos himself right away (Reader doesn’t currently access all of the metadata like “author”)[1].

NNW does have smart searches to filter feeds, but I used it rarely. With the number of RSS subscriptions going up and using Reader via iphone while on the go, this one bit of functionality would be a great addition!

¹ Update (1/2/09): This morning I realized it is possible to create a “Kos-only” feed by filtering the dailykos.com feed using Yahoo Pipes: