It’s about damn time.  If you want to go to a site where Obama is considered Jesus because Ron Paul has already secured the role of God then Digg is your site.  If you praise homosexuality and won’t dare mention what it really is (two men, in bed, having sex) then Digg has an account for you.  If you think the Toyota Prius is the future of transportation and all trucks and SUV’s should be impounded and crushed then Digg will make you smile.  And if you think that Microsoft completely sucks at everything and should be shut down by the government to make room for Apple and Ubuntu then you will receive great honors from the “Digg Community”.  Ya, they even went so far as to recognize themselves as a commune.

But be warned: should you digress from the completely liberal opinions on the site you may be “reported as offensive”.  You see, there is no room for your own thought outside of the liberal confines of the Digg moderators.  Don’t tell the truth.  Just throw out some witty frat-boy banter to make the college kids giggle to see them reply “OMGROFLOL!!!”.  But don’t be too witty.  It will come off as disingenuous and you will be marked for a frat boy rebuttal.  Speak too much truth and you’ll definitely be labeled a “troll”.

So remember, there’s no such thing as an “illegal immigrant”, green is always good, conservatives are always wrong and enjoy yourself on Digg.  And don’t forget to bring your latest Playstation 3, Xbox or Wii game review.  I’m not sure if they’ll let you in without something that important.

Hey retailers, want to alienate and really piss off your suppliers?  Chose an “EDI Outsourcing Specialist”, like SPS Commerce, to handle your electronic document transactions.  SPS Commerce will work diligently with you to strong arm your vendors into paying their “set up” fees, charges for “testing” and additional charges for “testing penalties”.  Then there are the document fees, monthly fees and other expenses almost guaranteed to make it cost more to sell products to you at a reasonable margin.  In fact the list of fees and charges incurred by your suppliers, payable to SPS Commerce, could make it a hard decision for them to continue doing business with you.

But wait, you are the retailer.  The suppliers and manufacturers need you, right?  They’ll pay whatever necessary to continue having you buy their wholesale products for placement on your shelf, correct?  WRONG.

I can’t name specific accounts but I can tell you that the company I work for has intentionally decided to stop selling to certain customers who have contracted SPS Commerce to handle their EDI implementation.  You see, first you select SPS to handle your EDI interconnects and then SPS goes to work enforcing your EDI requirements for their fees.  It’s very much akin to legal contract extortion and it’s an aggravating business model.   There’s a cure for VAN’s though.  It’s called AS2 direct.

Most major retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot etc., have decided to move to AS2 direct because it reduces and practically eliminates the cost of EDI transactions on both sides.  For the one time price of software, such as Gentran or Biztalk and Lexicom, IT departments can trade security certificates and transmit EDI documents to and from each other with little or no cost beyond simple administration.  This reduces the cost of doing business for the suppliers.  Instead of paying extortion fees to a company like SPS Commerce, for the wonderful privilege of testing through them, suppliers can return the savings to the customer (reseller).

AS2 is a win-win.  SPS Commerce is a failure in both supplier and customer relations.  I’m sure they sell themselves as a cost saving, economical solution for the retailer but just remember the moment you selected SPS as your “EDI Outsourcing Specialist” the next time your suppliers and manufacturers raise their product prices.

Oh and as far as SPS testing AS2, they do.  For an additional $500 fee.

Reuters reported this morning “Obama has invited several large trade groups, including the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the American Hospital Association, to discuss wringing savings from the health system”.

And do you know what every one of these groups is discussing on their way to this meeting?   They’re each deriving ways they can come away from Washington and maintain or increase their profit levels.  All they care about is making sure that revenue stays the same or increases.  The AMA wants the health insurers to pay more, they will no doubt fall to the malpractice insurance argument.  The health insurers will argue that the hospital associations need to reduce operating expenses and the hospitals will want to pay less to Doctors and increase the payouts by insurers to cover their “operating expenses” (that’s code for shareholder return).

Capitalist, Socialist… whatever you want to call yourself, know this: As long as taking care of shareholders is the primary focus of these organizations the one thing that will not come up in the conversation as a point of concern is care for the sick, injured and dying.  Patient care and patient monetary expense is an afterthought in the Wall Street bureaucracy that is the American health care system.

So despite Obama’s nice little gesture only the most naive of the hopeful among us could possibly believe any meeting involving these organizations will evolve into less expensive or better care.  Wishful thinking without the guts to stand up to corporatism is nothing more than pandering to the whims of big business.  That’s what Obama is doing.  When it comes to health care in America you either stand on the side of corporate revenue or patient care.  There is no in between.  Patient care lost a long time ago.  You are a number in a process.  Stay healthy.   But even that concept once promoted by a few health insurers (wellness programs) were cut when they realized it costs money to promote wellness.  Some highly paid think tank ran the math and figured out it was cheaper to let people get sick and deny the claims.

All of the golf carts at the Wendell Country Club (my weekend stomping ground) burned to ashes early this morning.  I am grief strucken beyond my ability to put into words and may need to seek professional help.  These carts were young, only a couple of years old.  Lightening is to blame so perhaps God is trying to tell me something about how I should spend the weekend (I will be working).  Why oh why was there no mercy for these poor, innocent golf carts?