The-Asterisk

Watching the Twitter stream during last night's Republican National Convention coverage was telling. On a night that featured Ann Romney, whose goal was to introduce her husband to the viewers, and Gov. Chris Christie whose goal was to fire up the base, the contrast between left and right could not have been greater. The left whined about rich folks, back breaking work, no health care, union busting, hate, racism and despair. The right focused on God, country and the ability to pull one's self up by one's bootstraps. The right also talked about the oncoming pain that will occur when/if we break the addiction of trillions of dollars of handouts. What I feel on the morning after the night before is a sense of "will it ever be right again?" Our nation is divided pretty much 50-50 along the lines of "give us what we need" vs "earn what you get". The right wants limited government and the left sees that as wanting NO government. Something as s

I've been thinking about this whole "they stole wealth from the third world" idea lately. Then I ran across this piece from George Gilder on National Review . George talks about how ideas and mental disciplines are as big of a part of production as are the raw materials... bigger actually. It made me think about Saudi Arabia. The nationalists and the anti-colonialists decry the fact that the US, et al, are stealing the oil from the Saudis. The Saudi royal family and many other hangers-on in the kingdom are rich beyond imagination because we are paying them $85-$110 per barrel for something that costs them $5 to produce. Theft? Yes... but in the other direction. I say that in jest, because in a non-coerced economy, we, the consumers, pay the producers what we think the value is and not a penny more. This is where we are with oil prices, right? Back to the point of this post. How many cars, trucks, airplanes, plastics, fertilizer, cosmetics and on and on did the Ara

I just saw Chris Matthews on MSNBC, frothing, as he usually does, about Ryan's budget proposals. About how his proposal will cause a tax increase for the middle class... for everyone watching his program right now, just so that the richest Americans (including MANY lefties who steadfastly refuse to pay more taxes than they are currently required to pay) can get a 20% tax cut. I am not rich, but I sure pay "my fair share" of taxes. As little as I clear each year in my business (we are supposed to make a profit aren't we?), I always cringe to find out how much I will have to come up with to make sure I have paid enough. Tax refunds? Hah! As I have stated in a previous blog post , if the government confiscated every last penny of taxable income from the richest 1%, it would make a dent in the annual deficit but wouldn't allow for a surplus. Armed with this knowledge, even a fourth grader could figure out that by making our currently progressive tax rates more &qu

I just read a blog post that I was made aware of on Twitter. Shaun Dakin posted an article called "In 1966 I Would Have Been A Criminal: My Thoughts on Chick Fil A and How Religion Is Used For Hate" . In it he makes the point that his marriage to an Indian-American woman would have been illegal in the State of Virginia, and that he doesn't understand how so many people could use a religion to promote hate. In a way that is a very naive point, since the second largest (maybe even the largest) organized religion in the world bases much of its raison d'être to hating and killing large swaths of the human population, but I digress. First and foremost, Christians who firmly believe the Bible's teachings (that is really who these self-righteous people are attacking) are not promoting HATE. In fact, if these Christians are true believers, the Bible teaches to hate the sin but love the sinner. At some point in any person's life, they must decide what they feel is