The-Asterisk

My Thanksgiving thoughts (with apologies to Tom Peters .) Buy One, Get One Free. Frequent Flyer Miles. College education. New job. Trade in a four year old car. Lottery tickets. Different job. Movie and sports package rather than Basic cable. First Class instead of Coach. Whatever it is, we humans are always looking for an upgrade. What does this have to do with Thanksgiving? As a native born, plain-vanilla American, I was born in the right place at the right time. At least that is my opinion and I am sticking with it. As anyone that reads this blog can attest, I might seem a bit cranky at times, but it is because I am always seeking... looking for... pursuing... something, but what? Perfection? Nirvana? Excellence? WOW? While I was pondering this salient point this morning, it occurred to me that most of us are pursuing an upgrade . Aren't we all just looking for something better? When a university trained engineer from Iraq, or a medical doctor from Mali, or a school teacher from...

Wow, the spewing forth that is going on in the blogosphere and in the media about Bristol Palin winning not getting the boot on Dancing With The Stars last Tuesday night is actually quite amazing. If we could all show this much concern about the North Koreans building a new nuclear material enrichment facility, we might have a better situation right now. (Ooops, sorry, The Situation got booted a few weeks ago.) Anyway, my point for this abbreviated version of The-Asterisk is that many of the left wing "spewers" have mentioned that Sarah Palin is a know-nothing, obnoxious, attention-grabbing, right wing nutbag that wants to be President of these United States. So? Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton thought they had a shot at it. So did Dennis Kusinich, Pat Robertson and Al Gore. And speaking of glow-in-the-dark intelligence driving great job performance, how is Barack Obama doing on the foreign policy stage lately? Yeah, lighting up the G20, eh? Sometimes I think that having a hu...

As I sit in the terminal at JFK Airport in New York awaiting the final flight of my trip from Los Angeles' LAX, airport security is at the top of my mind. To the best of my knowledge, today poses no bigger threat to national security than yesterday did. Yet as I proceeded on a shuttle bus from the off-site car rental facility to the Delta terminal, traffic was piled up near the big, white L A X letters announcing the entrance to the airport. As we crept to the turn-in, there were several tent-like structures composing a security checkpoint with uniformed police somehow choosing which vehicles would pass and which would be stopped for inspection. We were waved through Checkpoint Charlie. As the bus pulled up in front of the terminal, there were several TSA personnel milling about outside. I went in and retrieved my boarding pass from the convenient self-service kiosk. Proceeding on, there were only three people ahead of me in the security line. As the initial TSA person tried using ...

Every time I pass through an American airport, I think to myself "The terrorists have won." This has been my opinion for the past eight years or so. I don't think these prehistoric goons with a modern education ever imagined that they would or could collapse not one but BOTH of the World Trade Center towers. Given the heinous-ness of that action, there is NO WAY that they could have predicted how easily the US Government, both Republican and Democrat, would allow them to irreversibly change the way every traveller is affected every day. But once they saw how easily we were manipulated, I DO think that they took thier most hapless stooges, sent them off on a 'mission' to blow up a plane, knowing that they would get caught, but realizing that with each of their Keystone Kops mis-adventures, they were throwing yet another bag of sand in the gears of commerce. And THAT is really their goal. To scare us back to the Stone Age. Not bomb us back to the Stone Age (yeah...

I will keep this concise. I am a 30 year veteran of the US Navy and Naval Reserve. I joined when I was 17 in order to get an education and get going in life. Well, I certainly accomplished that goal! During my 11 years of active duty I lived in two foreign countries for over 5 years and had several stateside duty stations in addition to about two years of electronics and specialized training. While I was building my business (started it with another Navy vet) I spent 20 years in the reserves. During this time I met a HUGE number of people in the military, some of whom are lifelong friends, a few I never want to see again, plus a lot of people that I enjoyed growing up and working around. The military gave me an opportunity to mix and mingle with a spectrum of people both in and out of the service that I would probably never have had otherwise. I found out about how people actually live in other countries (as opposed to dropping in for a one day visit on a tour bus.) What really sticks ...

As I have stated elsewhere, with the Republican victories yesterday we got the CHANGE, now we move into the HOPE phase. Hope that the Class of 2010 can put the cart back on the road, regardless of which ditch it is in and who put it there. Charles Krauthammer made a poignant observation last night on Fox News. He said that the Democratic sweep of Congress in 2006 and the Obama election of 2008 were anomalies on the political landscape. That they were upheavals based on huge external forces on the body politic... the Iraq War in 2006 and the Grand Depression of 2008 and that now, 2010 brings us back in line close to the status quo in the US... older people voting, youngsters and the poor staying home. Staying home and not voting is fine with me. Those that scream "Vote or Die" are nuts. The last thing I want is an enfranchised Zombie voting for whomever is on the blue slip they are handed as they trudge into the polling place. If you cannot press, click or punch for whomever...