The-Asterisk

Today, Drudge shows that VA Governor Tim Kaine is on the short, short list of VP candidates for Barack Obama. That would not greatly surprise me, that a two year US Senator with virtually no experience short of exuding hope, voting 'present' in a short stint as a state representative, and being a community organizer, then a professional board member of foundations would pick a sitting Governor of a swing state that has been Gov for only two years and before that was Mayor of Richmond. Talk about balance! If you ask my take on it (and I am glad you did...) I think Obama will pick Caroline Kennedy (notice how she is not referred to by her married name lately?) Ms. Kennedy is currently one of two people handling the vetting (no, no, not the Chevrolet kind) of potential VP picks. Remember eight years ago, a guy named Cheney was doing the same job for W and look where it got him. In today's case however, it would not bring gravitas, but it would evoke a whole industry of gauzy ...

I never thought that I would come to Hillary Clinton's defense, but what is the MSM thinking when they say that her recent statement about RFK being assassinated in June had something to do with a deathwish for Barack Obama? I saw the video of her sentence before that now famous utterance and she was comparing how Bill Clinton was campaigning in June of 1992 and Bobby Kennedy was still campaigning when he was assassinated in June, as well. Context matters... Where The-Asterisk comes in is this: you people HAVE to wake up and realize that whatever you read in a standard newspaper is usually biased and often bunk. How many of you have ever contributed to a story in the paper or on TV, or had first-hand knowledge of a story that was in the media? Remember your first reaction? Was it "Wow, they sure got that story right!" or was it "Wow, it is amazing how screwed up they managed to make this story!" I bet it was the latter... You MUST keep this in mind whenever you...

I am back... There is so much to talk about: oil prices, Obama, global warming (not), Iraq, Iran, political hypocracy, etc. It is actually hard for me to decide what to comment on and it takes me some time to flesh these comments out. Some people can make 10 blog posts per day and still (somehow) carry on a normal life... not me. But I started this thing and I am going to make something of it! Let's talk about American Airlines who says that that they are going to start charging $15 for the first checked bag. My first suggestion is to not carry a checked bag, carry a polka-dotted bag. OK, OK, I am sorry. Had to do that... I am not a jet-setter, but I have flown a quite bit this year. I usually fly Southwest, the Greyhound Bus of the Sky . (I actually like Southwest... no funny stuff with the fares, they post all of their prices on the internet and even their highest price fares are not a total rip-off. I am not crazy about their check-in procedure, but it is a lot better now than...

When Barack Obama says that he did not vote to send troops into Iraq, he is correct. The asterisk is that he was not in a position to vote since he was serving in the Illinois State legislature in 2002. Given the nation's attitude at the time and the overwhelming evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction, it is hard to say what the non-Senator would have done. Of course, hindsight is 20-20, so he can boastfully say that he did not vote to attack Iraq. Well, he did not vote for the Civil Rights Act either! How did he become a US Senator? Few remember that he was about to face Jack Ryan (R) in the race for the seat of retiring Republican Peter Fitzgerald. Jack Ryan was the divorced husband of actress Jeri Ryan who played the ex-Borg Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, among other roles. Their divorce proceedings were voluntarily made public, but their child custody proceedings were sealed by the court to protect the children . When several media outlets sued to open t...

Pardon my fractured Latin, but for those who don't know, E Pluribus Unum means "From many, one." Well, the tendancy around the world and even in the United States is to separate people by their ethnic and religious tendancies. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that people cannot live in peace if there is any sort of sectarian difference between them. I guess the USA's bold experiment as a melting pot has run its course. E Unum Pluribus... "From one, many." Ralph Peters has a great article in the New York Post today about this very subject and how it affects Kosovo and numerous other ticking time-bombs around the world. I really like Ralph's perspective on world events, especially Iraq. In this case I agree with his premise that most likely larger, artificially-bordered countries are going to have to break up to remain viable. BUT, I totally disagree that it is the way things should be. With Rwanda seeming to be the notable exception, very few people...

In Virginia, there is a new tax coming. On April 1, 2008 a new 1% sales tax (or 'Titling Fee') goes into effect on all car sales. (This fee is only applicable in certain areas of the state and the receipts are slated to go specifically to new highway construction.) Typically, all of your taxes are included in the price of a car and the taxes are added into your monthly payments, so you really don't ever see them. As long as he can afford the monthly payment, the average buyer doesn't really care how that number was derived. It is all about what he can afford on a monthly basis. What the problem is, is that the Virginia automobile dealers decided that adding an additional $300 or more to the cost of a vehicle is a burden that they did not want to bear, so legislators wrote the law such that the dealers do not have to collect the tax at the point of sale, therefore, it is not financed. BUT, it has to be paid. So, how is it going to be paid? By stroking a good old-fashion...

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Today's front page article in the Wall Street Journal headline states " Clinton Team Seeks to Calm Turmoil " . It shows who is IN, who is STAYING ON and who is OUT. Patty Doyle, her campaign manager and Mike Henry, her deputy campaign manager are out and all of the old school Clinton lieutenants like Ickes, Penn, Grunwald and Wolfson are staying in. No problem, it is her campaign and she can do with it what she wants. What is the old saying? When your enemy is self destructing, just get out of the way and let them finish the job? So where does The-Asterisk come in? I am glad you asked... How does this reorganization, this reshaping, this house cleaning, differ from when President Bush, after six years of stability, decided to oust a few of his US Attorneys last year? Remember the hue and cry ? "Just because there is a little bit of policy difference, he has no right to clean house." Remember that John McCain did the same thing last year when his campaign was in...

No, this isn't about hope or change. In fact, it proves that change is soooooo easy to say, yet so difficult to cause to happen. Today Barak Obama won the Louisana primary, the Virgin Islands caucus and several other states. He is also expected to win the "Chesapeake" primaries of Virginia, Maryland and DC on Tuesday. Why is he expected to win these primaries and most of the South? Because the South has a lot of African-Americans (aka black people.) Hillary is expected to pick up Puerto Rico's primary because she is strong in the 'Latino community'. If I proposed any sort of tendancy toward any 'community', be it African-American, Latino, Gay, TG, Muslim, etc., I would certainly be branded a racist, or at a minimum, a bigot, because I would be putting forth a stereotypical view of a group of people that have one specific item in common. But, here, no one even gives a second thought about everybody in the media lumping 'these people' together. A...

First, let's get it out of the way that The-Asterisk has nothing to do with Asterisk, the Open Source telephone platform (although I actually work with a product that uses that technology.) You can find out more about Asterisk here . What my Asterisk is, is a way for me to put forth my opinion and realization about things that I observe, things that have become conventional wisdom or accepted as truth, things about which I feel the whole story is not being told. Thus The-Asterisk , that little piece of punctuation that floats above the line, looking down on his little brother, the period. The period connotates the end of a thought, whereas the asterisk, looking down past the period... down to the bottom of the page, wants you to find what Paul Harvey would call " The Rest of the Story ." So, if you want the rest of the story, or at least my version of it, Welcome Aboard!