The-Asterisk

Random notes from the big night at Invesco Field: -- Climate Crisis? What happened to Global Warming? I guess with the coolest August in many years, they had to 're-brand' the term. -- End a woman's right to choose? Time for a change! -- Younger voters ALWAYS vote liberal. Grownups vote conservative. Adult liberals just haven't grown up, yet. -- 100 years ago, Al Gore would probably have taken the place of P.T. Barnum. The parallel is astounding. Step right up! -- Hitler and Mussolini thought they were right, didn't they? Talk about moral authority! -- When does John Edwards speak? -- Take our county back? Take it back, or get it back? Back from what? Ever see a child have a visitor come over and the little visitor picks up a toy? Then the child whines and grabs the toy away from the visiting child, then puts it back down because she really didn't want it? She just didn't want the other kid to have it? That is what I think when I see the Dems go on and on a...

Whenever I chance to check out a YouTube video, listen to some music, or read an article on some website, there is usually a comment section. And if the subject is even remotely political, it won't take more than three comments before someone starts talking about the Bush-Cheney cabal, Bushco, oilmen in the White House, TriLaterals, blah, blah, blah. They will rattle off a littany of ills: Iraq, housing crisis, Guantanamo, illegal wiretaps, loss of privacy, Abu Ghraib, failing stock market, high oil prices, Osama Bin Laden still on the loose, blah, blah, blah. My God! Has anybody actually taken personal inventory lately? How many people have had their privacy invaded (except for stolen credit card numbers and putting their life story on Facebook)? How many people have succumbed to torture (unless they have a family member in an Iranian prison)? How many have lost their home to forclosure (unless they over extended themselves when they bought that $450,000 home on a $50,000 annual i...

Well, in a previous posting, I predicted that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, aka Caroline Kennedy (her married surname is nowhere to be seen these days) would be selected to be Obama's VP running mate. I still think that she would have made a perfect running mate, because of name recognition, sex (being female, that is) and the mystique of Camelot I. But, pragmatism being what it is, Obama needed some gravitas, so he picked the loquacious Senator Joe Biden, a true Washington outsider because he takes a train back to Delaware each evening. Hmmmm, I wonder if he has the government pay for his train fare? It is against tax regulations for the employer to pay for transport between one's home and one's work. (Asterisk note: since the House and the Senate have met so very seldom in the past two years, I don't think that this loco-commute is such a heroic thing. About the only time they are actually in town and in session is to conduct hearings on Iraq and the Bush Administrat...

I just read a post on someone's blog quoting a Bob Dylan song about how the 'war machine' and the 'military industrial complex' causes us to go to war and how we feed weapons to everyone in the world which just causes more instability. I had to respond because, like most youth, he is kind of disillusioned. (Hmmmmm, could that be why Obama is going after the college vote?) Basic economics teaches us about supply and demand. If a lot of people need to be fed, we will have a vast 'farm industrial complex'. If we have a lot of sick people, we have a vast 'medical industrial complex'. If a lot of people want sports gear, we have a vast 'Nike industrial complex'. Same for oil and defense. When there is a need from millions and millions of people, there will be an industrial response. And typically, if there is competition, there will be technological gains. If this was not the case, we would still be producing chain mail , catapults and the flail ...

Refundable tax credits. Sounds nice. The words tax and refund in one sentence. Kind of rolls off the tongue doesn't it? And, who wouldn't want a tax refund? What about a tax credit? We have always known, since Congress passed the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, that taking people's money away from them and then giving it back in dribbles and drabs if they do certain things is an extremely powerful method of behavior modification and is the reason that Congress will NEVER pass the Fair Tax . How many of us installed new insulation in our homes back in the 80's when there was an "Energy Tax Credit" to do so? Yeah, we got to keep up to $800 as a credit . Never even sent it to the feds. And if we had already sent it to them (in the form of payroll deductions), we got it all back when we filed our tax return the next year. That is what a credit is... a credit against taxes that you owe. Well, what if you don't owe any taxes? That is not hard to imagine ...

First, I rarely 'read' a book anymore. I read tech journals and newspapers and web postings voraciously, but reading a book? Puleeeeese! I just don't have the time. Call it short attention span living (SAS 2.0). I subscribe to Audible and I have listened to many great books. My latest conquest is " America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It " by Mark Steyn. It describes, with humor, witticism and a touch of alarmism, how most of the developed countries are in a demographic death spiral; on track to lose as much as half of their native population in the next 35 years. The 'good' news is that the Muslim population is breeding at almost 2x the replacement rate and immigrating into most of these countries, so that within the next 50 years, they will be the dominant demographic element in Europe and many other countries around the world. Yes, nature abhors a vacuum and that giant sucking sound is Europe being replaced by Eurabia. Is it too late to change...