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Showing posts from 2016

It Is A Time For...

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Donald Trump won the US presidential race last night. Now it is a time for healing, or so they say. Yes, we need us some healing right about now, but healing is superficial. With the wounds as deep as they are in our nation, we need some serious wound therapy. Healing, at this point, is unicorns and rainbows. Now is a time for leadership. Plain and simple leadership. Not schoolyard bully leadership. Not I-just-got-appointed-as-EPA-secretary leadership. Not the sort of leadership we have at the IRS. No, we need empathetic, goals-oriented leadership which will start getting things done from jump. I predict that Trump will pardon Hillary in order to start the healing and move on. He won't pardon Bill, her accomplices or the Foundation, but I actually think it would be a disarming move for him to do so. You heard it here first, folks . There is too much that is needed to get done for Congress to be wrapped up in investigations and hearings for years. If she accepts the pardon, it

Final Thoughts Before the Election

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 Today on Meet The Press , surrogates from the Clinton and the Trump campaigns were on the show. The host, Chuck Todd first spoke to John Podesta, he of WikiLeaks email fame. Chuck asked him several questions about polling, the campaign, Hillary's apparent weakness in states like Michigan and their tactics. During his answers (or non-answers, depending upon how one saw the responses), he stated as fact that Trump was a bigot, a misogynist and that his campaign was being directed by the Russian Foreign Ministry. As his segment was ending, I was thinking "Are we going to hear anything about the leaked emails?" Todd's last question was essentially "How are you feeling about having your emails leaked so that everyone can see your dirty laundry." Podesta replies, "Me, personally? Oh... I have thick skin..." Wow, now that was a tough question. Next up was Newt Gingrich. Newt was asked similar questions and during one answer said that the nation has

To Tell The Truth

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A thread on a friend's Facebook timeline yesterday discussed some of the ugly things said by Hillary which have recently come to light via the Wikileaks email dumps and supposed first person accounts from recent events. It is virtually impossible for a human to totally bottle up their true feelings and emotions. Some manage to do so and I think they suffer greatly for it. Others let it all hang out (I think we know where Trump comes down on this one.) Clinton, according to many recorded accounts, is very emotional and emotive, but she has an uncanny ability to put on a semi-likable facade for public consumption. Having said that, when she (or anyone for that matter) does "let it all hang out", it gets recorded. For many of us "folks" it gets recorded primarily in the memories of those around us, but for others, especially those at a high level of prominence, it also gets recorded in emails, text messages, audio, video, hidden video, journals and memoirs.

Legacy Matters

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This past week has been the nadir of the relationship between law enforcement and black males. We have seen - literally - Alton Sterling get shot in Baton Rouge, LA and we watched Philando Castile die outside of Minneapolis, MN. Then, just two days later, a black man with an assault rifle opened fire from a sniper's position in Dallas, TX, killing five police and wounding twelve others. Before the police cornered him and later killed him, he told the police that he wanted to kill as many white people, especially police, as he could and that he was upset over #BlackLivesMatter. The modern era of victim politics regarding black males getting shot by police began after Michael Brown was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, MO after Brown had reached into the police cruiser and tried to wrestle the officer's firearm from him. To a dispassionate observer (and a DoJ monitored review board), Brown's death was an obvious case of self-defense but the people of Ferguson and the hoard

Simple idea to paint your office walls without painting your ceiling tiles.

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I have done a bit of painting at my office lately. No, I don't love painting, I just think I can get it done quicker, as good or better than many painters and a heck of a lot cheaper. It seems that the really good craftspeople are so busy that they have trouble finding the time to do another job and I needed it done quickly. In my opinion, the worst thing about painting is masking. Unless you are a real pro, you need to mask. It is a tedious task, putting tape all around the doors, around the windows and up around the ceiling. If you are using a roller, you cannot get close enough to the ceiling grid without touching it or the ceiling tiles, so what do you do? Well, the first couple of rooms I painted, I pushed the tiles up and toward the center of the room, but with the hanger wires, the insulation and the ductwork above the tiles, that is a huge problem and can also mess up the tiles themselves. Then it hit me! No, not literally, but I had a pile of wooden paint stirrers lyin

Trump and Obama. Same Playbook?

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I am sitting at the breakfast table, contemplating Presidential politics, wondering who would end up being the nominees and knowing that NO ONE has a clue how this will all turn out. Then it hit me like a two ton heavy thing ... Donald J. Trump  is actually using Barack Obama's playbook with some heavy editing. Hear me out on this one. People complain that Trump has no experience in government. Obama had very little experience as well. Right after being sworn in as a US Senator and as soon as he could get the furniture set up in his new office, Obama began his purposed journey to the White House. People say that they don't know how Trump would vote or what he stands for. Obama, when he actually voted, pretty much toed the party line. I don't believe he authored any significant legislation during his short time in federal or state office. No paper trail there. Obama was a rock star. He had star power after that eloquent 2004 Democrat National Convention speech whe

How To Change a Commercial Door Lock in 9 Easy Steps

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The reason that I created The-Asterisk blog is that so much in life is not quite as it is purported to be. Everything seems to have those little asterisks which let you know that YMMV (your mileage may vary.) Most of my blogging centers around politics, which is a target-rich environment for asterisks, but from time to time I discover things in my personal life which I think would be of value to others. Today, I was preparing a commercial suite for a tenant to move in on the first. Because we are splitting the suite, I needed to replace two passage door levers (they aren't door knobs anymore) with latches which have locks and  keys. I also needed to replace a worn out lever on the back door of the suite. I recently had purchased three locksets from a local locksmith company. You don't normally find commercial door hardware at Lowes or Home Depot. The sizing or backset is different between commercial and residential levers. For the rest of this blog, I am going to call these

Sometimes the blind squirrel loses the nut

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I am reading a book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein. In it, the author goes over some of the doomy and gloomy predictions the Cassandras of the 1970s and 1980s made and how they were not only completely off on the timeline, but they were totally 180 degrees out of sync with what has happened to the supply of oil, coal and natural gas in the years hence. It occurred to me while reading, that if Jimmy Carter had been Barack Obama and somehow could have waved a magic wand and cut fossil fuel use by 80% after the early and dire predictions had been heeded, then these doomsayers, such as Paul Ehrlich and James Hansen , would have been regarded as prophets and savers of the planet. As it was, their voices were largely ignored by the vast majority of the world, the oceans didn't rise, England didn't burn up and waste away by 2000 and not only have we avoided mass starvation, but the population of the earth has continued to increase and the quality of lif

New Leaf v.2016

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In the age of Twitter and Snapchat, traditional blogs seem so Gutenberg-ish, don't they? I mean, who has the two or three minutes it takes to link out of their Facebook feed, their Twitter timeline or their Snapchat blur to read someone's musings? I have fallen victim to this phenomenon. I tend to pontificate on Facebook where 30 or 40 of my best friends can avail themselves of my hyper-important opinions. Ha! Talk about broadcasting ! But, it is so easy to comment or post when you are right there, in the moment. If the best of my brain at that instant goes to Facebook or even Twitter, then pulling up the ol' Blogspot  New Post screen seems almost quaint, like making an apple pie from scratch. So, what to do? Is there a happy medium or an unhappy compromise? I think that I can put my comments up on my blog and keep them short enough so that they can be connected back to Facebook without losing my 'local' audience, but allow the rest of the world to swerve into