The-Asterisk

No, I am not talking about the Republican answering machine that repeats the same tired message over and over and over. Well... maybe I am. Republicans are always talking process, Democrats are always talking about how great things will be. Which goes over better: "No, you can't have a candy bar and besides, it is right before dinner and you are already too fat"? Or this: "Sure, you can have another Snickers. We are having kale for dinner, and since you won't eat kale, the candy won't spoil your dinner"? The face of the right is Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan (pushing Granny over the cliff.) The impressionable 'yoots' of America see Ann Coulter as a caricature of herself and Sarah Palin has been rendered a into holographic cartoon character. Is anyone on our side even the least bit cool? Even the highly respected Clint Eastwood was reduced to wacky curmudgeon status after a one stand-up bit at the Republican Nation...

If you go back 40 years and follow the progression of taxes, rates, brackets, loopholes, dodges, etc., it becomes readily apparent that people don't like to pay taxes and will do just about anything to avoid them. It also is true that the middle and lower classes (i.e. the famous 50%) pay very little income taxes. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, everyone paid around a 20% effective tax rate regardless of what bracket they were in. Jealousy and greed kicked in when Congress decided to make the wealthy pay more for wages over $1 Million. Corporations pushed back by capping wages at $1 Million and providing deferred compensation to make up the difference. Thus began the fulfillment of the law of unintended consequences to where today we have CEOs and other corporate leaders making hundreds of millions of dollars, and the same group of people is still jealous. . I personally think that everyone should pay some taxes so that they have at least a little skin in the game of funding our...

I'm no Alton Brown , but I have a quick and easy recipe for a fluffy omelette that I kinda, sorta made up. It is really tasty and not hard to cook, which is a prerequisite for any kitchen adventure on which I embark. First, the ingredients: Eggs Optional ingredients: Cheese Tomatoes Lobster (or other meat) So here's the deal. I use one of those non-stick skillets that has a curved side so that I can flip the omelette.  This is the skillet that I use  (and no, I didn't pay that much for it. It was part of a set.) You take your eggs (my omelette today had 5 eggs) and separate the whites from the yolks. The yolks can go into a small bowl, but the whites need to go into a mixing bowl. Since we used cheddar cheese this morning, I dumped some shredded cheddar onto a cutting surface and just chopped the cheese up until it was in small little pieces which makes it better for quick melting. I then poured the cheese into the yolks and mixed them together into a thi...

Watching the Sunday morning news shows today, it amazes me the perspective of Dems vs Republicans. Rep. Chris Van Holling (D-MD) was on Fox News Sunday with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). The juxtaposition between the left and the right could not have been clearer, nor could it have been more stark. Van Holling shook his head in disgust at Jordan's assertions on the budget as well as gun control. "Balanced" this, and "comprehensive" that... everything to him is a compromise. They all pine for a bi-partisan resolution to disagreements. That is how progress is made, isn't it? It is only fair to give a little for the American people, right? What we are really seeing is the math of the Democrat Two-Step . It is a variation of the famous "one step forward and two steps back" but in this case it is "two steps forward and one step back" with a twist. While Republicans are pragmatic and are quite happy to leave most things as they are, the Democrats alw...

Except for those poor souls who win life's lottery early by being born into wealth, most of the people in this country who are rich, are rich by choice. Having been in business for 30 years, I know a little bit about pricing and profit. I make a comfortable living, my employees make a decent salary, I pay enough taxes for myself and a few others, but I don't make Bill Gates-like amounts of money. I don't make Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Alex Rodriguez, Lil' Wayne, Bill Clinton or Warren Buffet type of money. Why not? Are they that much smarter than me? Mmmm, maybe. Lucky? Probably quite a bit of that. Maybe they ask for too much money and then people give it to them. I have always had a bit of a problem with people who can sell something for $1000 when it takes them $100 to make it. Even more so, if they sell 100,000 or even 1,000,000 of them with the same margin. Now that is gross profit. Sure, I know what value is. It is the price someone is willing to pay ...

Today on Fox News Sunday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) was on to talk about the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT. What Sen. Durbin, who always sounds sincere and grandfatherly when he speaks, said was this: But gun control is part of it. We need to sit down and have a quiet, calm reflection on the Second Amendment. Are there guns that really shouldn’t be sold across America? Military assault weapons such as the one involved in this horrific incident in Connecticut? Are there high ammunition clips, high capacity ammunition clips that have no value, whatsoever when it comes to sporting and hunting and even self-defense? The person could buy body armor, take that body armor and use it to protect themselves as they kill innocent people. Can we have a thoughtful, calm, reflection on these things? And do it in the context of our Second Amendment? I think we need to. David Muir, on ABC News Sunday Night, said on several occasions that they will be fostering a "national conversation...

Tuesday's agreement by mega-bank, HSBC, to pay a record $1.9 Billion in fines has inadvertently revealed a secret Obama administration scheme to quietly reduce the national debt and allow more social spending which, according to one unnamed administration official is "the funnest part of getting that mandate from the American people." In light of the HSBC $1.9 Billion, the Standard Charter $327 Million, the $619 ING Million, and previous penalties assessed against Barclays, UBS and Citi, today's page one article in the Wall Street Journal about UBS's near settlement of yet another penalty due to interest-rate rigging, it appears that Washington has fallen upon a win-win situation. Because these violations never result in prosecution of any individual ( I guess corporations are people after all ) due to a newly revealed trick called deferred prosecution, several beneficial benefits occur. First and foremost, the number of attorneys both on the financial si...

Is it time for a new murder charge? Let's call it "intended" murder rather than "attempted" murder. According to a front page article in today's Wall Street Journal , homicides are falling despite soaring gun violence. Part of the decreasing number of deaths by shooting or stabbing is not from reduced numbers of violent acts, but from better trauma care. Just like the space program gave us Tang and integrated circuits in the 1960s, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2000s has taught our medical practitioners how to patch up and save victims who would have surely died if their misfortune had occurred only a decade before. While this advance is hailed as a societal benefit of modern medicine, does it actually benefit the perpetrator more than the victim? The victim of traumatic violence will likely have to endure painful and sometimes disfiguring injuries for the rest of their unnatural life, while the purveyor of the deed will avoid being charg...

Let's be clear. Most consumers of the Obama post-campaign campaign agitprop have as much of an idea of the difference between an increase in the tax rate and an increase in tax revenue as they do the difference between profit and profit margin. President Obama campaigned relentlessly on raising the tax rate on the top earners... "those people like me, who can afford to pay a little bit more to help reduce the deficit", he would say in that sotto voce that became so familiar on the stump. And really, who could disagree that the filthy rich (most of whom are Democrat Party supporters), couldn't afford to pay "just a little bit more"? After all, for them, a checkbook rounding error would fund my family for a year. So what is the harm in raising the top rate from 35% to 39.6%. I mean, that was the rate during Clinton's final years in office. They were the golden years and look how great a shape he left the economy in. (Discussion of the Internet bubbl...

I found myself yelling at the TV today while watching Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner telling interviewers what "we" (meaning the President's administration) are willing to give up to avoid plunging over the Fiscal Cliff. He talked about needing a tax rate  increase (nevermind the ultimate goal of revenue  enhancement). He spoke to Chris Wallace of Fox New Sunday about the trillion dollars to be saved by not fighting two wars (that President Bush had already started ending), and how they want to increase beneficial spending on extended unemployment benefits (to help relieve the mortgage crisis {he actually said that}), $150B in infrastructure, and another year of payroll tax holiday and more. Is this guy kidding? I have never seen as cocky and condescending an individual in politics as Geithner. No wonder Sen. Mitchell laughed at his proposals and Speaker Boehner called it a "silly" proposal that left him "flabbergasted". It all reminded me of...

The gamesmanship and pettiness of our newly re-elected President and his enablers  acolytes in the Legislative branch is fast becoming epic. Those that know Obama for what he is see that he now has donned his true cloak, that of a player,  not a leader. It is obvious that this man has no plan to avoid the Fiscal Cliff, nor does he really desire one. All that his side wants is a scapegoat and many in the Republican party are lining up to be the first to slaughter. With his lapdog, Senator Harry Reid, going after Grover Norquist while the MSM looks the other way, the pressure mounts to quickly bring the Republicans to the point where the President not only does not totally get what he wants (higher taxes on the wealthy Republicans), but the Republicans will split their party in the process of trying to stop him. Then, and only then, can Obama get down to the real work at hand. Obama is greasing the skids even now by photo-opping with random small business persons, unio...

I just read a great blog post called Manufacturing Fallacy Debunked . It echoes many of the things I have said in the past... that the creation of that $58 Blue-Ray DVD player is a minor part of the value accumulated by the time you plunk down your hard earned cash swipe your credit card with your unemployment earnings. The process involves licensing on the parts and intellectual property (assuming that the Chinese actually pay for IP), shipping, off-loading, customs, trucking to warehouse, warehousing, re-trucking to retail store, stocking the shelf, cashiering and then clearing the money for the transaction. All of these things are profit centers that fuel HUGE amounts of additional money and jobs. PLUS, don't forget the actual profit that goes to Wal-Mart's or Target's stockholders and the state/local sales tax. I still laugh at the term "good manufacturing jobs". No one wanted to work in these jobs. Parents forced two generations of children to get a bett...

Fifty three percent (53%) of my being wants to let this corrupt and incompetent administration and its acolytes in the Congress just go ahead and have their way with this country because that is what the 53% want. It is all about the majority, right? Even though the Republicans have a small majority in the House that can thwart some harmful legislation, there will be a white-hot push to get the Republicans to "compromise" with the Left so that we can "progress" as a nation. (Remember, Republicans who stick to their principles are called  obstructionists , while Democrats who stick to their beliefs are labeled  principled .) At this point in my life, I want to let go and give these brilliant thinkers and their tribal / herd / pack-animal followers the keys to the machine. I guess I am going all "Who is John Galt" in my old age. I am going to hunker down, grow my business to the extent possible during the expected economic decline and do what I can do ...

Last night was a bitter pill to swallow, but I forced myself to take it all in. I even forced myself to watch Obama's victory speech in Chicago. All of the pageantry and stagecraft came to the fore. The crowds, the flags, the huge video screens, the music, the choreography. The only thing missing was the balloon drop. But, you won. You won pre-existing conditions. You won free birth control pills, insurance exchanges and adult children on your employer's health insurance. You won a clear road to cap-and-trade (a clearer road than some of those  on the Jersey Shore have after Sandy), you won expanded oil and gas exploration (yeah, right) and you won lower taxes for the middle class (uh-huh). You won more green energy pushed down on you from Washington instead of up from the market. You won the ability to lay higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals (ask the luxury boat industry how that all worked out) and you won the right for more marriage equity or...

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The Left talks about health insurance as a basic human right and they make anyone who opposes universal coverage out to be a rotten, selfish bastard. As I have stated, if health care is a basic human right, then food, shelter and sex should be provided to each according to his need, as well. This posting will stipulate that everyone needs access to health care whether they can afford it or not and whether they have helped pay for it or not. My own feelings on personal responsibility have been made well known. I do not like paying for slackers and moochers. Having said that, there are millions in the US who want to work and either cannot find work or the work that they do have does not provide any sort of health insurance. These people need some sort of protection. As for the moochers, they always seem to find a way. I am not a professional journalist or researcher, so my facts and figures should be taken with a grain of salt, but I ...

After watching the lastest spewtum from the Obama campaign, specifically the new video with Lena Dunham (any kin to Obama's maternal side of the family?) starring as the #MyFirstTime girl, I have to ask a few questions.  Do these women really represent the majority of females in this nation? Liberal women express a reflexive and overpowering desire to have their own way with their bodies (uh, that didn't come out right did it?) while demanding seemingly unlimited intrusion by the Grand Overlord of Government on every other facet of their lives. (Speaking of Dunham, I wonder if Obama's mom had had access to the panoply of the modern tools of "Reproductive Rights", if we would even be having this discussion, but I digress.) Be it health care, tax policy, suppression of the Second Amendment, helmet laws, Dodd-Frank, mandatory health insurance taxes, mandatory seat belt laws, mandatory recycling laws, mandatory GMO labeling, mandatory solar power, EPA contro...

This whole faux issue of accusing Republicans of promoting voter suppression by wanting positive ID at the polls brings up a subject that I have been solving in my mind for the past 30 years... how to stop real voter fraud at the ballot box. I would like to throw my two cents worth out there for comment. First, I am a strong believer in requiring just a little bit of effort in order to be allowed to vote. Now, before the left goes off hollering that voting is a right that cannot and should not be suppressed by any method, according to the Constitution of the United States, there is no explicit right to vote. Most voting rights are granted by the states and by extension apply to the Federal elections. In fact, when the Constitution was written, the people actually voted for only one office, their Representative. The Senate was chosen by the several states' governing bodies, and the President and Vice President were chosen by Electors. These Electors were chosen by various s...

For the past several days, the huge topic in the Twittersphere (at least the precinct that I hang out in) has been getting Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Virgil Goode voters to shift over to voting for Romney this November. The argument is that a vote for either of those men will be a defacto vote for Barack Obama. One need look no further than the Ross Perot vote in 1992 to realize that Ross Perot gave us Bill Clinton for eight years. That is a fact. Americans are typically not sell-outs (don't get me started about Middle Eastern foreign policy.) As a rule, we make up our minds and stick with it through thick and thin. How else can you explain unwavering devotion to the Chicago Cubs? Along comes a primary season before a Presidential election. Your guy gets in there and mixes it up with the other candidates, the weak ones drop early, but the strong ones hang on, often staying in the race until the convention. At the convention the eventual winner is anointed, usually with vote...

Here is a quick tale of two homeowners... There are two houses on the same street. Both were built in the same year and both were identical houses. The first house has been owned by Joe for five years. It was a decent house when Joe got it, but Joe has neglected his home, choosing to spend his money on lottery tickets and having a good time. Joe has several kids still at home, but he never makes them mow or do anything around the house. Each year, his home is assessed at an ever decreasing value, meaning that his property tax bill decreases, even though property taxes are primarily used to fund public education for kids like his. The second house was owned by Joe's brother who was an even bigger loser than Joe and he was finally foreclosed out of his house after three years of effort by the bank. Even though the house was just like Joe's when he bought it, he took care of it even less than Joe did. When he lost his job at the mill, and the bank started to foreclose on his m...

Today is the day that President Obama gives his acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention. Driving home, listening to the POTUS channel (ch 124) on XM Radio (yes, I am hopelessly a political geek), I hear the Foo Fighters complete a song at the DNC and then a video comes on the big screen.  From the sound of it, there are about six or seven people talking about what America is to them. A land of hope and dreams, a land where you are one paycheck away from financial destruction, one illness away from bankruptcy, and a land where there is infinite possibilities if only there is help to get to the promised land. While hearing that, I am thinking to myself, what is wrong with all of that? Then one of the speakers blamed President Bush for an all-out assault on the middle-class. Tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the hard-working, broken-back (not broke-back) middle class workers. Through the gauzy music and the misty eyes, I start feeling li...