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Year: 2018

Fake News??

Posted on Twitter at 7:49 PM – 11 May 2018:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Why doesn’t the Fake News Media state that the Trump Administration’s Anti-Trust Division has been, and is, opposed to the AT&T purchase of Time Warner in a currently ongoing Trial. Such a disgrace in reporting!

Extract from msn news feed containing Washington Post article from 11 May 2018 edition:


…The documents detail the full scope of Cohen’s $600,000 deal with AT&T and how his contract specified that he would provide advice on the $85 billion merger, which required the approval of federal antitrust regulators.  Trump had voiced opposition to the merger during the presidential campaign, and his administration ultimately opposed the AT&T effort. The Justice Department filed suit in November to block the deal, and that case is pending….

More reporting about this from the Fake News Media:

By Cecilia Kang, April 19, 2018

WASHINGTON — AT&T’s chief executive, Randall Stephenson, on Thursday attacked the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block its merger with Time Warner, saying that a combined company would be no different from the Silicon Valley giants that make and distribute video content….

There’s much more from the “Fake News” gang on this subject.  Do a Google Search for “AT&T Time Warner.”  You may even find some Fox News reporting on this subject that predates the POTUS45 Tweet.

Best Beer in the World

I was in a local cafe this past weekend that advertised one of their beers as “The Best Beer in the World.”  As I recall the price for a glass of this beer was $7.00.  Looking further down the menu of beers on tap that day, there was another beer from a different brewer priced at $16.00 per glass.  Guess maybe that must be the “Best Beer in the Universe!

Everyone has their own opinion regarding which beers are the best.  However, for those of us who hail from Southwestern PA, on 19 May 2006 the once “Best Beer in the World” was turned into one of the “Worst Beers in the World.”

Trading Places

Many years ago, I went to work for a company which at the time was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).  A few months after I joined, we were absorbed into the parent company and became known as the CSC Systems Division.  This division of CSC provided systems, software and services to various and sundry US Federal Government agencies.  CSC’s Systems Sciences Division (SSD) was doing the same for NASA.

In the early 1990s, CSC, along with many others, entered the Outsourcing business.  They formed the Technology Management GROUP (TMG) to provide outsourcing services for commercial, rather than government entities.  the motivation for this was twofold:

  1. Early entry into the potentially lucrative outsourcing market
  2. Diversification of CSC’s revenue stream, which to this point was quite dependent on government contracts.

click,point or whatever to view larger imageCSC’s foray into outsourcing became quite successful over the next 10 years or so.  They also became a player in the banking and insurance software business via acquisitions during this period.  By 2003, commercial revenue had outpaced government-related revenue by a substantial margin.

In 2015, CSC split into two different companies.  This resulted in formation of a new company known as CSRA, reflecting the merger of CSC’s government contracting organizations and SRA, another top tier government contractor.  CSC retained the outsourcing and other commercial business.

In 2017, CSC merged with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to form DXC.Technology.  An interesting aspect of this merger is that HPE was the result of HP’s acquisition in 2008 of Electronic Data Systems (EDS).  Back in the day, CSC and EDS were, to put it nicely, fierce competitors.

And they’re not done yet!  On February 12, 2018, General Dynamics (GD) announced plans to buy CSRA for about $6.8 billion.  Another interesting bit of trivia: GD was CSC’s first big outsourcing deal.  I don’t know if the deal is still in place with DXC.Technology, but wouldn’t surprise me if it was.

Disclaimer: This reflects my view of the events discussed above.  Any errors, omissions or false news contained in this post are unintentional and done with no malice aforethought.

More About Me

State of the Union, 9 February 2018

In the wee hours of this morning, Congress passed its latest Funding Bill, which will keep the US Government in business a bit longer.  POTUS45 signed the bill and once more took to Twitter to give us his thoughts on the proceedings:

Without more Republicans in Congress, we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our Military. Sadly, we needed some Dem votes for passage. Must elect more Republicans in 2018 Election!