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 ...

Sheesh. These guys are supposed to be the smartest people in the room, right? It is now an accepted part of the new normal that we are a 50.1% / 49.9% nation when it comes to left and right, right? Well, we didn't start out that way. As few as 30 years ago, presidential elections were competitive, but not super close. Now, armed with vast computing power and the methods by which they can slice and dice data, the cognoscenti know which 6 or 7 states are in play. They then hone their message to speak only to the demographic of the specific 'undecided' voter. (How ANYONE could be undecided in this election still boggles my mind...) It occurred to me today that we are in this razor-thin margin situation precisely because of the ads and the polling and the scientific manipulation, not the other way around. Like any scientific observation, sometimes the reason things are the way they are can actually be caused by the scientific observation, and not so much on the static env...

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 ...