The-Asterisk

I just got back from a nice meal from Abuelo's a fairly new Mexican restaurant in our area. When we walked in we were greeted warmly and handed one of those flashing, vibrating hockey-puck pagers to let us know when a table would be ready, then we were informed that it would be about a 10 minute wait. I know you guys do the same thing I do... immediately survey the landscape and see how many empty tables there are in the place. Yeah, you do it too, don't you? You sit there and wonder why are they making you wait. What is it? Not enough busboys (bus- persons ?) Do they want you to wander into the bar and buy a beer? Are they trying to build up anticipation? Maybe they want you to think you are getting a commodity that is in short supply? Whatever their reason, it is a bit frustrating. I have noticed that many restaurants always seem to have a wait (no, I am not concerned about Cracker Barrel, they really do have a queue.) I just wonder if it is a ploy. So we sat there on that l...

Wow, it has been a while since I blogged anything over 140 characters. As you can surmise, I have been hanging out a lot at Twitter over the past month or so. I do miss posting 'real' blog posts instead of micro-blogging, but most of my previous rants took well over 45 minutes each, since I take my rants seriously. I created my Twitter account back in the dark days of January 2008. Can you believe that it was so long ago? I know! Me neither. But I didn't post anything else until a few months ago when I decided to dust off the old tweeter and get to it from a professional point of view, one where I put myself out there, talking about technology (my business) but also about thing that concerned me (a little bit of politics) and things that I really enjoy (like live rock concerts.) The latter brings me to the subject of this post, which is a contest that Collective Soul ( http://www.twitter.com/collective_soul ) is holding. CS has been one of my favorite groups for a long time...

Set aside petty differences. Let's see. Republicans tend to roll over, will the Dems drop the mantle? Remaking America. Restore science. Hopefully, we will lose junk science along the way. Stale political arguments no longer apply. Good things go forward, things that don't work are left behind. Obama's biggest impedement to what he has said so far will be his Democratic Congress. Mark my words! We are strong through restraint. I hope Osama Bin Laden agrees. Group hug with Ahmadenijiad and the mullahs. He is preaching to the looney left. They are the ones to be convinced. They are the ones with the bitter hatred. Let us see how cooperative they are as their oxes are gored for the common good. Great, uplifting speech. Odd poem. But I don't get poetry, anyway. Interesting prayer, but nothing embarassing. Now, off we go to govern.

It is a 'snow day' in our region. All of the schools are closed. Yes, it was supposed to snow this morning, but nary a flake is seen as we approach the noon hour. I suspect that the decision to call off school was prompted by the fact that probably half of the students and faculty would have stayed home anyway just to watch the show. I am impressed by several things. First, the extreme graciousness exhibited by President Bush and his staff. I doubt that anyone removed the 'O' key from all of the keyboards in the White House. Total, seamless handover of the reins. Compare and contrast with Clinton handover. Obama seems almost regal throughout this process because he has been allowed to take the reins, not seize them. Unity is easy to dish out if you agree with the premise. We have seen how well the left embraces unity when they hate the unifier. Now we get to see how well they receive unity from a newly disenfranchised right. I hope it all works out for our country. If w...

John Stossel wrote an insightful piece recently called The Road to Serfdom , a borrowing of the title of the book by F. A. Hayek . He talks about how everyone is waiting for Obama to come out with some action . He needs to be BOLD . Just do something . I guess that is the change that we are looking for. Here is The-Asterisk's take on it: The reason that we all look to Washington for solutions is that Washington is the place that owns the game and writes the rules. As long as they do that, we have to grovel at their feet. If we have a free market and we let things go laissez faire, we end up with very smart and very well connected crooks creating the mess that we are just now trying to fix. What is the difference between Las Vegas and Wall Street? Vegas has pit bosses and cameras. They know when they are being gamed. There is no way that our government can be swift enough to keep regulations up with the latest scheme by money people. So we cry (like Bill O'Reilly) that no one wa...

I think that the far left wing of the Democrat party is going to throw something extremely radical at Obama as soon as he is inaugurated and Congress is in session. It may be card-check, it may be some crazy gay marriage thing. It is really irrelevant what it is. I think he will bitch-slap the Dems with a veto and make a huge deal about him being the President of the whole country, not just the Democrats. This will give him huge street cred. The liberals will go on a rant and call him all sorts of names, especially in the blogosphere. The 'asterisk' here is: will it be a ruse? Is Pelosi/Reid going to take one for the team to set him up as a centrist President for 'all Americans'? Will Obama allow his base to slap him around a bit to gain sympathy and support from the rest of us, setting up a huge sucker punch over the next three years? My take on this is: Either Obama has been 'opportuning' himself for 20 years, being the ultimate shape-shifter... saying, doing ...

I wonder if the Bush people will pull all of the "O" keys off of the keyboards like the Clintonistas did with the "W" keys?

Obama said that if you harm the world, we will defeat you. How? With what? Who gets to choose which war to fight? Or will we sit down and chat? Would he treat harm to the world differently than harm to our country? I hope that I am totally wrong about this man. That is the hope that I have.

Gushers of love. Mandate. Youth and no retreads to run the government. Bi-partisan. Orgasmic platitudes. * Remember Jimmy Carter.

I think that now, more than at any time in the last 100 years, we are ready for a new third party. Not a spin off of disgruntled Republicans, but a coalition of moderate to right leaning, thinking people that are just sick of old school Democrats. The biggest problem with our existing political system is that if you have a (D) or a (R) behind your name, you automatically elevate whomever is the oldest, crustiest, partisan pol into a leadership position. You could be the most moderate Democrat in the the Congress, but you will... you must caucus with your party and make Nancy Pelosi powerful. You will also cause the committees to be all Democrat controlled. It is actually kind of like the infamous card-check balloting for union elections. Woe be unto the Congressman or Senator who does not caucus with his or her party. Secret ballot? No way! When you vote for your representative, you are really voting for the party, regardless of what people say. We really need some of the heavy hitte...

According to Howard Dean... "Now is when the healing begins." Excuse me while I throw up...

After almost two long, excrutiating years, the election is here. Long lines, disenfranchisement, promises, lies, smears, counter-lies, hope, change, hope, change, hope and change. I am sick of it. McCain has run such a terrible campaign that the whole thing is an embarassment. If he were to win, I could understand how the other side would think that it was rigged. However, if he does win, there is going to be massive rioting by those that claim that they aren't racist. In my book (and most dictionaries), racism is defined as making a decision based solely on race. If you are a black person and you are going to vote for Obama because he is black, then that is a blatently racist decision. There can be no argument. They may justify it for any number of reasons, but it is still a racist decision. If a white guy votes for McCain because he isn't black and that is racist, then voting (many for the first time) for a guy because he is black is just as racist, no matter what color you...

I just watched the Sean Hannity - McCain/Palin interview. Seems that every time Sarah said something that went to the heart of the matter in her plain-spoken, folksy manner that simply answered the questions, John said "Can I say something else?" and then commenced to tell how Obama voted 94 times for this or said That when he really did something else. Totally wonked out. I am a self-admitted political crack head and I am sick of this $h!+. I can't stand it anymore. One cannot believe any statistics, anytime , let alone in a political campaign... especially the same statistics or figures repeated AD NAUSEUM until I have to hold my hand over my mouth to stave off the retching reflex every time I hear them. Say what you want about Gov. Palin, she gets to the heart of the matter. Especially when she isn't speaking in that kindergarten teacher, sing-songy voice that she (and Tina Fey) do so well. Totally refreshing. But does she know how DC works? Does she have foreign...

I have listened over the past three months about all of the different solutions, fixes, schemes or inaction that have been proposed to solve the housing crisis. I think that I may have come up with something that can fix it. First, let's be clear what the problem is. For the past several years we have had inflating housing prices, caused by a number of things previously discussed, and these houses have mortgages on them that the owners took out in order to purchase them. Some, if not most, of the mortgagees got mortgages based on their actual ability to repay the original loan amount. In other words, a conventional mortgage. However, as the prices were skyrocketing, lots of speculators and average citizens saw the ever expanding bubble as a way to make either a quick profit by flipping the house, or as a way to buy way more house than they could normally afford by entering into a risky mortgage with the hope of refinancing it in a few years, leveraging the increased equity create...

Thoughts about last night's second Presidential Debate: Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Boring. Opportunities squandered. Town hall format? What town hall format? Uncomfortable. Massively uncomfortable. Blah, blah, blah. Same old, same old. Joe Lieberman? Can I turn the channel to a rerun of Dancing with the Stars? Oh my God! President Obama. Sigh...........

To the McCain Campaign (and handlers) I know that your campaign is going on the attack and I like McCain's response that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Bill Clinton proved that fact. In fact it is the modus operandi of the Democrat Party. However, I emplore the campaign to start telling Americans what you as President are going to do. Pretend Obama doesn't exist. Tell us how you will push for energy independence, how we will get off of foreign oil in 10 years, how you will nominate non-activist jurists, how you will get legislation past the Do-Nothings in Congress, etc. We need to hear positive examples of how these things are going to get done. Obama speaks in generalities and platitudes. Show us all that you have a plan (I assume you do.) I follow politics like some people follow baseball stats, and I don't really know what your plan is for any of these things. When false accusations are made, respond swiftly and don't be nice about it. Hit ...

During the debate, "Fact Check" Biden stated "And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit." If anyone cares, here is a direct quote from the US Constitution " The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.The Senate shall choose their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States ." The only other mention of duties of the Vice President is to succeed the President in a variety of circumstances. I know that the Constitution is supposed to be a "living, breathing document", but u...

Well, it was a good night for Sarah Palin. She held her own, and though at times she seemed scripted (what politician doesn't), I thought that her composure was confident and she didn't make a lot of obvious mistakes. Right after the debate started, Joe Biden stated that Barack Obama "warned us two years ago on the Senate floor about the subprime mortgage mess". I was curious about this and I wondered why a junior senator would go before Congress to warn about something that he and his party had made a centerpiece of their housing policy. I pulled up Google and typed in "barack obama warned about subprime mortgages". The first hit was factcheck.barackobama.com . I swear that within 30 seconds of the words leaving Biden's mouth, these guys had literally 5 paragraphs written on this site about how Palin was wrong. I watched this during the debate and with every question, there was an instant (almost prescient) rebuttal of how Palin was wrong and Obama/Bid...

I follow a blog from a guy who is into technology, but also lets his political views be known. Vlad pulls no punches. He recently posted about the bailout mess on Wall Street and I commented. I have posted my comments here (slightly abridged), since a blog is where you should pronounce your own views and wait for comments from others. If you and I sat down to discuss politics, I would venture to say that you swing (or veer) to the left and that I hang to the right, but on this point I totally agree with you. What is really sad with our political discourse these days is that in order to be a successful politician in a party apparatus, one must take a view opposing the other party on EVERY subject (or at least blame the other side for each and every ill that blows our way.) Having spent the last four days at the Summit, I see all of the hard work and brain thrashing it takes to keep our tiny, tiny slices of the business world moving in a positive direction. One speaker made the point t...

Former Alaska Governor Knowles and current Lt. Governor Parnell were on Fox News Sunday this morning. Now I see why Sarah Palin has an 80% approval rating in Alaska. Gov. Knowles seems like a major tool and it almost looked like he was reading his talking points off of the TelePrompTer. Chris Wallace had to keep interrupting him as he non-answered all of his questions by going alphabetically off of his point list. And they say that Palin looked bad on ABC????