The-Asterisk

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 ...

I was recently perusing the DailyKos and I came across this video. Take a look... It all sounds so convincing, doesn't it? Great artist, patriotic pictures, hard working Americans just trying to do what is right and, of course, evil businessmen trying to scarf up everything good about this country for themselves. What could be wrong with that story? I grew up in the 1960's. I can remember, through the lens of a naive kid, how things were. We were pretty happy in our lives and things were pretty simple.We seemed to have enough money, but we really didn't... or did we? My dad had a 'good' job at the railroad, but he worked his butt off. Outside. In the heat. In the rain. In the cold. Nasty work, but he had a job. We barely had enough money to make ends meet. I remember milk was 4 cents at school. If we took a nickle with us to buy a carton, we had to bring the penny back. Seriously. Did we know we were poor? Not really, and there were others a lot worse off tha...

I saw a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the 2010 graduates. Today, the Letters to the Editor had several lamentations about this perennial subject and it got me thinking... Back when we were rolling out of the caves and becoming the Homo Sapiens that we are today, each and every person had to be an independent player. Sure, there was the tribe, but if you wandered far out of camp you were on your own. Even as recently as 100 years ago, society was a thin neglegee compared to the oppressive woolen Snuggee it is today. Without rapid communications and transportation, unless you were smack in the middle of a town or city, you had to take care of yourself. There was no one to call to come and bail you out of your situation. Was it tough? You bet. Would I want to live back then? Not so much. Then we got comfortable after World War II. Plenty of jobs, GI Bill, education galore, big companies, big pensions, big unions, credit cards, cell phones, safety net, Medicare, Social S...

This week was the week that Apple finally released their iPad, the long awaited and breathlessly anticipated tablet computer. At the 'unveiling', Steve Jobs announced that the iPad (a name scorned by many, but one I think fits well within Apple's iNomenclature) would be based on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform and that all 140,000 applications previously developed for the platform would work on it as well. I think this was a wise decision, giving the iPad immediate access to a plethora of working applications, instead of having to dumb-down Macintosh applications, or worse yet, have to develop a whole new ecosystem around the iPad. Something that was actually shown twice at the announcement (once when Steve sat down and demonstrated the functionality of the iPad and then again when several new iPad-focused applications were showcased) was the New York Times app. I think this is very revealing because for this device to be more than a novelty, it needs the ubiquitous 'kil...