The-Asterisk

This morning I was ranting on Twitter and I tried to make my point through several consecutive tweets. 140 characters is not a lot of room to relay a big thought and one follower, @dogwalkblog took me to task on this point. He is a great blogger, but he has a history of media experience behind him. I have passion, this blog and 8000 tweets behind me, and I think I have become a better blogger for having gotten "out there" and expressed myself. So, with that said, I will make my point about how I disagree with the President in what is fair. President Obama opined in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he wants to make things fair so that all people have a fair shake at whatever it is they want a fair shake at. Jobs? Income? Health? Free throws? 4 minute mile? Marriage? I don't know... Let me start out by saying LIFE IS NOT FAIR and thank God for that fact. If it was fair, virtually no one would push to exceed and succeed, because there would be no...

Newt Gingrich won Saturday's South Carolina Republican Presidential primary with 40% of the vote. Mitt Romney came in a distant second with 28% of the vote. This was a big win and it underscores the roller coaster season that this primary has given us. Many of the pundits on the right are coming out against Newt. Conspicuously present in this attack is Ann Coulter and S.E. Cupp, but they are just the most verbal. Most in the punditocracy are decidedly anti-Newt. This puzzles me. Do they know something that I don't know, do they fear that Newt cannot win against Obama, or does he threaten their turf? I have liked Newt for a long time. I remember distinctly the night that the Republicans took over the House in 1994. The Rs had been out of power for so long, they had gotten comfortable living in the shack behind the big house. Newt riled them up, got a whole new crew elected and they stormed the mansion. This move affected politics in DC for the next 10-15 years. When I heard ...

Barnes and Noble has something that Amazon.com doesn't have... presence in most metro areas. If I ran B&N, I would look at allowing online purchasers to have an option of picking the book up at their local store, even if the person ordering it was standing in the store while he ordered it. I would offer a " Pick it up in 30 minutes " deal. You would have to wait the 30 minutes to pick it up so that if someone tried to game the system, it might be a little more inconvenient, but really, does it matter? If I have Amazon Prime, I can have the book in two days with free shipping or I can have it tomorrow for $3.99 shipping. When you factor in the deep Amazon discount on books, the $3.99 shipping charge is trivial. Sure, a B&N "picker-upper" would have to pay sales tax, but they do already (which may be why bn.com is much less successful than Amazon.com.) This distribution scheme could potentially decimate the shelf inventory at your local B&N, bu...