Room For Improvement

   I just received the third call from Chase in the last three days asking for someone that does not and has not lived at our phone number for at least 3 years (if ever). Each time I've told the person calling that their information is wrong and to please take us off of their lists.

   Each of the three callers has said they would do so but only the caller I spoke with a few minutes ago informed me that it would take up to 30 days for my phone number to appear on their internal Do Not Call list so I should not be surprised if I'm called again in the meantime.

   This is garbage, especially in this day and age with the technology available! I wonder if it is such a wise idea for people to be entrusting their money to Chase if it takes the company a month to put your number on a list. Are these people using pens, paper, and sliderules?! Yikes.

Getting Caught in a Layoff Is No Good

   Today I met a friend for lunch. When we met up I could tell immediately something was wrong. He didn't delay in telling me that he had just found out that his company was going to be laying off folks and he was on the list.

   My friend is a very experienced, very solid programmer and will have no problem finding a new job. However, he's still hurting. He said that working for startups nearly his whole career he has lived through many company layoffs but until now, never been one of the victims.

   I can relate to how it feels as both my wife and I have been layoff victims in years past. I was a consultant so I knew it was coming when I'd been unbillable on the bench for too long. But it still hurt when it happened.

   It is never good to leave a company unless it is on your own terms.

Time Flies The Older You Get

   Though I always thought it was just what people said, the older I get, the more I think the old cliche is actually true.

   I distinctly recall early summer days when I was in elementary school, bouncing a tennis ball against the garage door, counting the days until school was out for summer vacation, feeling as if that magical day would never arrive. Fast forward two months and you'd find me doing the same thing, only this time I'd be counting the days until Labor Day weekend, when the start of the new school year would be looming. Invariably, by this time, I'd become bored with summer and ready to go back to school.

   In both cases, time seemed to CREEEEEEEEP by, each day as slow as the previous.

   Today things are vastly different. It seems that I blink and a week (or two or three!) has elapsed. When I pause and think hard about what has transpired during that period, it makes sense that the time has passed but it is a bit frightening how caught up in things we can get. So much so that our sensation is that 24 hours today is only a fraction as long as 24 hours was 24 years ago.

Clear As Mud

   Two people I respect a great deal for their accomplishments and opinions have two very different viewpoints on the Clear airport security screening program available now in several airports across the country.

   Adam Curry has spoken repeatedly (both in his No Agenda podcast [co-hosted by John C. Dvorak] and on his Daily Source Code about the laughable state of airport security in this country (and abroad) and how he sees the Clear program as tantamount to paying for the privilege of having the government keep tabs on you.

   Yesterday, Brad Feld, another frequent traveler, opined that the Clear program was equivalent to paying $128 to cut to the front of the security line, and seemed to have no qualms about his retinal scan being on record.

   My thoughts on the matter? I'm just glad I travel so infrequently now that I don't even have an opinion on the topic!

Clinton Getting More Pitiful by the Day..errr..Debate

   Yes, I'm slow again..Tonight I finally got some time to watch the Democratic debate from Austin.

   I have to say that my take on the performances match a lot of what the chattering classes have been saying. Namely, that Clinton, who needs to be delivering knockout performances at this point in the game, if she is truly to mount a legit comeback, is not getting it done.

   She is getting increasingly desperate as evidenced by her McCain-like badgering and pettiness. I actually felt sorry for her when she made her "...change you can Xerox." comment to Obama. The crowd booed her, Obama said something like "you should be ashamed of yourself" under his breath, and I just shook my head. Unless cornered you just don't say things like that. I think she realizes her message is just not resonating and she is getting mad. Mad that this Johnny-come-lately has cut in line and taken her earned turn. She (and her husband, of course) has put in her time, kissed the appropriate asses and now the movie is not progressing toward the fairytale ending that she expected it to. All very sad.

   Needless to say, I think if she really meant what she has said in the past about doing what is right, Clinton would either drop out of the race and get behind Obama now in preparation for the general election campaign or she would return to running on her merits, rather than trying to trip up Obama with petty shit.

The Day Improved Vastly

   after reading about Huckabee's true colors showing, my day improved vastly as I ventured out and played my first nine holes of golf in 2008.

   I've made a New Year's resolution (or something somewhat resembling one) to get out and hit the range and the course significantly more than I managed in 2007. It is great exercise (if you walk and are terrible and consequently have to walk all over creation hunting for your ball) in a beautiful setting and provides both a physical and mental workout.

   My round was better than usual, which I attribute to my nonchalance and lack of expectation since I didn't make it to the course early enough to either hit balls at the range, practice putting, or chipping.

   The only tee shot I muffed was on a par 3 which I still managed to nearly par with a great pitch and nearly heroic par putt. My irons were solid and my putting was above average even with the brown, sandy, uneven winter greens.

   All in all, a very nice outing! Definitely a nice way to start the season!

Huckabee Not So Funny Anymore

   According to this morning's Denver Post, when Mike Huckabee was speaking in Colorado Springs on Friday (courting James Dobson and his Focusers) he took his right-leaning rhetoric to a new level, not bothering to stop at a repeating of his desire to tack on two new Constitutional amendments (one to ban gay marriage and another to ban abortion), but lumbering on through to unveiling the true right-wing nutjob that I feared lurked within.

   In a comparison that surpassed even former Senator Rick Santorum's lunacy a few years back regarding how the legalization of gay marriage would lead to sanctioned bestiality, Huckabee compared abortion to...slavery!!!

   Uhhhhh...friend?...That is pretty fucking offensive. Regardless of your feelings on abortion-related issues I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find many sane people that could take that leap. And further, I'd be really surprised if, should he run again for an elected office, he received a single vote from a person of color.

I Love Me Some Match Play!

   I caught most of the semi-finals of the World Golf Championship's Match Play event this afternoon. I am back in the golf mode after having finished up the NFL season with a couple quarters of the Pro Bowl and I have to say that I love the format of match play because the strategy employed is much different than it seems to be in stroke play. Though I typically do not root for Tiger, because it seems like rooting for a sure thing, and thus not much fun, I have to say given the alternative - Stewart Cink, I'll take Tiger.

   My dislike of Cink comes from my attendance at the final practice round of what turned out to be the last year of the International at Castle Pines. We watched Cink play a couple of holes and he spent no time chatting with the guys that paid big bucks to play with him. In fact, after hitting his tee shot from the tips, he hung back there with his caddie rather than moving up to the members' tees to hang with his group. This stood strong in stark contrast to everyone else we saw that day, most notably Phil Mickelson who encouraged his group's every shot the entire time we followed them.

   Anyway, I'd like to see Stewark sink tomorrow at Tiger's hands! Sorry..I couldn't resist!

How a Person Treats a Public Restroom...

   .. tells you an awful lot about the kind of person they are.

   It may not seem intuitive and it is certainly a little gross but I do think it is true.

   I work in a large office building with mid-sized men's and women's restrooms located on each floor. I can't speak for the women's restrooms but in the men's restroom on my floor I have witnessed some things that are amazing.

   We've all seen people leave toilet paper fragments on the ground beneath stalls but the frequency with which I see people not wash their hands, karate kick to flush toilets (both sit down models and urinals) without using their hands, and leave urinals unflushed is appalling.

   People, would it kill you to not be fucking pigs?!

   What this has told me is that I now have a list in my head of the people that

   A) I would never shake hands with or accept a high-five from
   B) I would never loan anything to that I wanted to use once they gave it back
   C) I would never help out of a bind because it is clear they are so selfish they'd never return the favor if I needed it.

Dreams That Stay With You

   I woke up this morning feeling pretty refreshed after what I figured must have been a relatively sound night of sleep. Shortly after hitting the road for work, however, a few disturbing "memories" popped into my mind.

   It dawned on me shortly thereafter that I had a dream last night that was largely based on fact and real personal history. However, as you might expect, there was a bit of fiction unconsciously injected to complete what is, in truth, an incomplete story. What hit me driving in was the realization that the "fiction" could have been the truth and I just didn't see the signs at the time.

   I have always been interested in dreams and their meaning and whether they really are, as some believe, a portal to incompletely documented or understood regions of the brain.

   This is not the first time I've had a powerful dream that stayed with me all day but this one really shook me.

All A-Twitter

   So I broke down and created a Twitter account.

   I've always thought short "micro-blogging" was cool - I built it into one of my own sites several years ago, long before Twitter was around (or I was aware of it). But I put off actually going out and creating a Twitter account because I wasn't sure it really fit into my lifestyle.

   My present employer has our internet access locked down pretty tightly so I cannot have Twitter up most days, which to me, somewhat cheapens your experience.

   However, I went ahead and did it to try it out and see how it goes. We'll see..

A Funky Day

   I hit some serious funk today and consequently am not feeling particularly lucid today. I think I'll just leave it at that for now!

I Love Laptops

   In the short time span that has elapsed between when my last laptop crapped out and this evening, I had nearly completely forgotten how much I love a good laptop.

   400 bones later I remember. Yes, thanks to showing up at Office Depot fifteen minutes before it opened yesterday morning, I was able to snag one of the four Toshiba laptops they had advertised at $399.99 (after two rebates).

   The first laptop I ever had was one given to me by my first employer, and it too was a Toshiba. I soon fell in love with the feel of the keyboard and the freedom to move about from network connection to network connection (yes, this was in the pre-wireless days!)

   I eventually bought several more, cheaper, Toshiba laptops, and enjoyed them while they lasted. I eventually migrated to a Gateway which served me well for several years until it too met its demise.

   I recall that when one of the laptops would finally die we'd buy the next one that was available for around $1200. It always had a Celeron or some similar processor and neither a ton of RAM nor a plethora of GB of storage but it seemed to work fine for our purposes.

   Eventually the day came when we ponied up the scratch to invest in an 802.11b wireless access point and two wireless cards for our two laptops. WOW - the freedom to work from the couch, bed, or the back porch was truly liberating!

   And now here I sit on the couch, not a cable in sight, with another Toshiba Satellite, this one about 2000 times better than my last, with a Pentium Dual-Core processor, a meg of RAM, 180GB hard drive, a beautiful 14.5 inch screen, built-in 802.11g wireless connectivity, a wireless mouse, and yes, that good old Toshiba keyboard I love so much! And for the bargain price of $399.99. Gotta love it!

Can He Get Any More Pathethic??

   Yes, the "he" of whom I speak is none other than former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

   While I already commented on his chickenshit exit from the presidential race, by officially endorsing John McCain and releasing his delegates to McCain, Romney is effectively flip-flopping once again. If he was the true conservative he claimed to be, he would have released his delegates to Mike Huckabee, an indisputable conservative, and much closer to Romney, policy-wise.

   Instead, Romney is trying to secure his place in line as the GOP candidate in 2012 or 2016 by unsurprisingly kissing ass:

      "I am honored today to give my full support to Sen. McCain's candidacy for the presidency of the United States," Romney said in a joint news conference with Sen. McCain by his side.

      "This is a man capable of leading our country in this dangerous hour."

   There's the GOP party line again - invoke the spectre of a new terrorist attack and forget about everything else, including taking steps to lessen the global hatred of our fair country.

Something I Think High School Teachers Must Do!

   If you are a high school teacher that interacts with ANY students that are 18 or close to 18, please, for the good of the republic, urge them to vote!

   Every election cycle I hear the same old statistics - that it is the old people that have the highest participation percentage and that teenagers are one of the lowest, if not THE lowest.

   Though I am no longer part of that demographic, and therefore not necessarily best served by increased teenage turnout, I think this is inexcusable. I recall quite clearly my excitement at registering to vote and then casting my first ballot in an election that decided our president in 1992 (and no, I did not vote for Clinton the first time around! :) )

   I have always felt it is one's obligation to exercise your right as a citizen to vote and the primaries/caucuses that we are in the midst of and of course, the upcoming election in November are especially important, in my estimation, because the viable options we have in this broken two-party system of ours represent very different things. I truly believe that Americans will choose to either look forward or stay back and retain much of the same. Democratic primary/caucus participants have a chance to make some generational decisions rather than let those who have chosen for so long (the seniors) make choices, unchallenged, about our future.

   This is not to slam the old folks, no siree. This is just to make the statement that as the old cliche goes, young people are the future and will be here in the future when the consequences of the choices made today become reality. Old people have already shaped the world - it is time for the young to make their voices heard.

Skylab Part Deux - The Sky is Falling!

   I vividly recall being scared to go to sleep in the late 70s as I was convinced that Skylab was going to fall on to our house and kill my entire family!

   Those memories of terror came rushing back to me when I first heard this week about the disabled U.S. spy satellite that is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in the next month.

   Granted, technology was MUCH different back then and I was just a kid so I didn't realize that there was no way Skylab or any of its fragments were going to land in California, so I certainly do not associate any fear with the current situation but it is funny when I think back to that how real my fear was.

   And though my kids are still to young to even be aware of this, I am sure there are plenty of 5 and 6 year olds that are now feeling the same way I did back in 1979!

Is a Bad Day Inevitable

   following a really good day?

   I think it might be but honestly I don't have enough data to be sure of it. Of course, the absence of hard evidence never stopped me from pontificating...

   Rather than having a number of absolutely terrific days each year I think in my life thus far I have had more good days than bad, more happy than sad (yes, that was a deliberate, sappy rhyme!) But when I recollect the insanely delightful days they have been surrounded by other good, if not great, days. The best days of my life - my wedding day, the days my children were born, and spectacular vacation days all were surrounded by other days where I was off from work and generally detached from reality. This buffered my bliss from the daily grind so that my return to it was gradual, over the course of several days rather than all of a sudden.

   Alternatively, when you have a day off from work in the middle of a week and by some random chance you end up having a wonderful day I think just the shock of returning to work the very next morning is probably enough to start a serious death spiral of depression.

   The good news is that the blues didn't last more than 20 hours - one good knock-knock joke from the little man and all is right with the world once more!

Please Send Me Your Presentation

   if you're just going to read it to me!

   People that read their PowerPoint presentations bullet by bullet kill me. Talk about a cure for insomnia. If you are not creative enough to come up with something else to say while your slides full of text are up on the screen you probably should not be the presenter.

   There are a number of very solid guidelines and strategies out on the internet (which are well-documented so I won't bore you with the details) for making your presentation something people will (A) stay awake through, (B) retain for more than 5 minutes after its conclusion, and (C) maybe even benefit from!

   So do yourself and your audience a favor - spend half the time you would normally spend typing up way too many words on your slides and instead go drink a beer the night before. Then when you get up to present the next morning you'll have to take your summarized bullets and flesh them out on-the-fly. Guess what? You'll probably present the ideas much more understandably and both you and your audience will come away feeling better for it!

A Year Older, A Year Wiser,

   A year closer to death.

   Birthdays are funny things, don't you think? When you're young it seems like it is an eternity between each one as your sole focus is to get to some magical age where life is like it is for the characters in your favorite coming of age flick.

   When you first have kids, you live for their birthdays as they represent milestones in their development, your evolution as a parent, and the countdown to getting them out of the house! :)

   But after your kids reach a certain age, say one where they have given up enough of their selfishness to actually acknowledge that there are not just two kinds of days - their birthday and "x days until their next birthday" but rather that Mom and Dad have birthdays too, the meaning of your birthday changes yet again.

   Instead of having a big party and just getting hammered with all your hip friends like you used to when you were first old enough to legally drink AND single OR at least childless, I now view my birthday as an annual reminder to be thankful I am alive and healthy, that I have a wife who I love very much and loves me back equally, that I have two healthy, happy, smart, and beautiful children, and that the clock is resetting on my next year of goals and aspirations. And oh yeah, that the (overall) clock is ticking so I should really ride my positivity and get my ass in gear!

   In all seriousness, I really do think a birthday can serve as a great, annual goal setting event that is thankfully (for all of us not born on January 1st) not New Year's. New Year's resolutions, unfortunately, come with so much baggage and expectation attached that I think for the vast majority of the population, they are next-to-impossible to stick to.
   But a personal set of birthday resolutions, set on your own special day each year become a unique opportunity to better yourself, your relationships, your work, your play, your legacy.

   And so you can start your year off right, please take the day off from work. You, your family, and your friends will be better for it!

Falling Rock

   Falling Rock Tap House is awesome!

   I had heard numerous reports to this effect, and each year leading up to and following Great American Beer Fest that sentiment is echoed as it gets reported that craft brew aficionados and craft brewers themselves, all show up at Falling Rock to sample special one-off kegs and casks that have been procured or hoarded especially for this knowledgeable crowd.

   Though I went on a Monday, for an early lunch, and found an empty place, the service was excellent, as was the Great Divide Titan IPA on cask I had with my blackened cheeseburger!

   I will be back as soon as I can, and hopefully will make it back during the magical week in October when the REALLY special stuff is on tap!

Customer Service Is Dead

   I'm sure you've heard it a million times but evidence continues to mount.

   We were out to dinner this evening at a relatively new (opened in late December) local establishment. Though not a white tablecloth joint, it is somewhat upscale, at least in their own estimation - sufficiently so that they maintain separate menus for lunch and dinner and smoothly (at least in theory) swap out the menus appropriately so that diners for each meal do not see the menu for the other meal.

   This didn't happen exactly right for our dinner. Not only did we get a mixture of lunch and dinner menus but my two year old daughter managed to get a menu with only a single page - the mixed drinks!! Not exactly the kids' menu!

   Anyway, short story long, two of us ordered things off of what turned out to be the lunch menu, were told rather unapologetically by our waiter that those options were not available, and then had to scramble to find something from the correct menu to order.

   The manager did not come over until much later to apologize and nothing was comped or discounted. Very poor form in my humble opinion. Will people ever learn?!

Memo to the Clintons

   Please don't strong-arm the superdelegates or worse yet, try to seat the Michigan and/or Florida delegates, if Barack Obama pulls ahead with primary/caucus-pledged delegates.

   I say this because if they do employ tactics like this Hillary Clinton seriously risks getting ignored in the general election by independents and Republicans that are not enamored of John McCain's warmongering.

   This topic is on my mind as I see the returns from today's primaries and the clear message that Obama's call for change is resonating across the nation. His sweep may make the Clinton camp get more desperate and desperation typically makes one look pathetic. Not exactly an attribute we'd like to associate with presidential aspirations, me thinks.

The Ridiculous Political Correctness Movement

   Ben Casnocha has a great post up today that illustrates just how ridiculous the PC movement has become.

   While I wholeheartedly encourage people to be nice to each other and treat one another with respect, it is also important to maintain a sense of humor and not one that is restricted merely to corny, PG-rated jokes.

   As Sergeant Hulka so brilliantly put it, "Lighten up, Francis."

Flip Flopney Stops the Bleeding..

   of his bank account!

   So much for the Dean-esque (minus the howl!) claim that "we're going across the country and we're going to take back Washington!"

   I suspect, the solid businessman that he is (despite what I might think about his track record as a politician), took a good, hard look at his finances and realized he was pissing away an awful lot of good money on a failed attempt to cut in line. John McCain is clearly next-in-line for the Republicans. He sat back and took the abuse from Dubya in the 2000 campaign and played the good soldier, knowing that he was up next in 2004 or 2008. Somehow, incredibly, due to a combination of insecurity by voters and Kerry's gaffes, Dubya managed to defy all logic and get re-elected, pushing poor McCain back another 4 years.

   But now his time has come.

   Ever the slick politician he appeared to be at every turn in the campaign, Mitt Romney exited the race without appearing to lose any face whatsoever. Instead of acknowledging that his message did not resonate with nearly as many voters as did McCain's, he instead went out with a FUMP-worthy, pure anti-Democratic blast:

      "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win," he said during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

   Gotta love a drama queen and doomsday prophet named after a baseball glove.

   We'll miss you, Mitt. But we'll be excited to see you in 2012, clamoring about how you epitomize whatever it is perceived voters hunger for most at the time.

Ron Paul = No Love

   It is abundantly clear that the mainstream media is afraid of Ron Paul because he is not spouting what Republicans are supposed to be saying in February, 2008.

   I watched nearly 5 hours of ABC's coverage of Super Tuesday last night and heard not a single mention of the Texas congressman's name, even while he was showing up third in the returns from places like Montana.

   Additionally, today I received this week's Newsweek issue with John McCain on the cover. This is the fifth in their series of covering the Democratic and Republican candidates in detail. Yes, you guessed it, they've previously covered Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. I am expecting to see Ron Paul on the cover next week.

   OK, I lied - I will be very pleasantly surprised if this is the case. I generally like Newsweek a lot. I think their coverage of world events is relatively balanced. I am thoroughly disappointed that Fareed Zakaria was born in India and therefore can never be President. I relish the opposing viewpoints that Anna Quindlen and George Will present on alternate weeks. I even enjoy reading Karl Rove's musings. But I will frankly be shocked if they give Ron Paul anything more than the one page conspiracy blurbs they've thus far limited coverage of him to.

   The guy is a Constitutionalist in the purest sense and the lack of attention he's been granted by the media, coupled with the clear disdain from his fellow GOP competitors, is mind-boggling to me. For a party that continuously harps about the need to appoint Supreme Court justices that are strict Constitutionalists, I find it absurd that they would consider any of Paul's views wacky. While I do not agree with 100% of his positions, I think it is great that he is trying to get people to bust out of their traditional mindsets and hear his message of radical change.

   Unfortunately, he has not gained much ground and I am afraid it is only a matter of time before he drops out and we are left with just McCain and his running mate, Huckabee (just the man to shore up the evangelicals that feel the old warrior is a closet liberal).

Super Tuesday from the Sidelines

   Returning to the title of my blog for a moment, here is one of those situations where I feel California has a clear leg up on Colorado - the presidential primary.

   California has open primaries, where you can request any party's primary ballot. This is huge for independents because one can vote for a candidate rather than a party (isn't this what the Founders had in mind??) and do so before it is a essentially a binary choice (as it is by the time you get to the general election).

   In Colorado, by contrast, there are partisan caucuses. That means that my wife and I, along with THOUSANDS of others who feel that neither of the two major parties adequately represent us, will be standing on the sidelines this evening, watching without a voice, as 24 states commit their delegates to particular candidates on both the Republican and Democratic sides.

   Now from a pure "fairness" standpoint, I have no problem with the parties restricting participation in their caucuses (in Colorado's case) and primaries to only those that are registered members of their party. HOWEVER, the reality is, sadly, that today we live in a two-party system. Though I am sure the Libertarian, Green, Reform, and Peace & Freedom parties are all backing their own presidential candidates, we hear precisely ZERO about any of them from the mainstream media.

   Plus the mainstream media's odious practice of conducting and reporting on exit poll results further restricts the choices that voters feel they really have (think of those voters, who on Election Day, finally get to leave their California jobs and make it to the polls just prior to 8PM and hear on the radio on the way over, that "Exit polls show that So and so is winning by 30%"). Afterall, who wants to vote for a loser if the contest is perceived to be over?!

   Obviously there is much more related to this topic that must be raised to present this cohesively, and I'll get there eventually(!), but these feelings are certainly starting to well up inside me again as the Super Tuesday coverage begins in earnest.

Backing into Parking Spaces

   What the hell is up with this? Though I'm sure it has been happening since the first car with a reverse gear was produced, I have never noticed it as prominently as in the garage in which I currently I park in in downtown Denver.

   Are people really in that much of a hurry to get the hell out of the garage at the end of the day that they want to take the extra time to back in to their spaces in the morning so they can drive straight out when they leave?

   Different strokes and all...but, what doesn't make any sense at all to me is that because you need to be DRAMATICALLY more precise in your backing up when you are backing into a parking space than you need to be when you are backing out into space to leave, you end up taking more time overall for yourself parking daily, and what's worse, you clog up the garage, with your precision maneuvers, when people are trying to get in to the office in a timely fashion.

A Giant Upset!

   Gotta love it!!

   Very little makes me happier than to see that cheater and low-class individual, Bill Belichick, lose the Super Bowl that had essentially been bequeathed by the pundits to his Patriots mid-season.

   Though I do feel sorry for classy guys like Junior Seau, my dislike of his fellow former Charger teammate "Hot Rod" Harrison, Randy Moss, and others seals my satisfaction in the outcome!

   My one gripe, however, is again Charger-related. That is, that Weas-li Manning, who was "too good" on draft day to want to play in San Diego, not only won a Super Bowl (while my Bolts sat at home) but also was awarded the MVP.

   Uhhh..anyone see how the Giants' defense abused Brady and the Pats' offense all game long? Maybe there were a few MVP candidates on that side of the ball? Or if you just HAVE to give it to an offensive player, do you think perhaps the three clutch plays (OK, one of those was on special teams) that David Tyree made had a slight impact on the ultimate outcome of the game?!

   Oh well, all's well that ends well, right?!

Income Tax Gripes

   Is anyone else irritated by the fact that it is next to impossible to correctly estimate and have withheld what you owe the IRS (and for that matter, your state, if you live in one that collects state income tax)?

   I consider myself a law-abiding citizen and though it certainly brings me little pleasure to do so, I dutifully pay my taxes each year. All I really want to know (as far ahead as possible) is how much the government says I will owe them for a year's work (and investment income). Yet, year after year, I am always off and end up with a rebate, which while better from a psychological perspective, than a bill due, is a worse "investment" obviously. What I really want to accomplish is that apparently unattainable goal - the zero balance!!

   I fear that under our current system this will never be within reach which is why I have to tie this into all my recent prattling about the presidential race.

   I am very interested in the "Fair tax" that Mike Huckabee has been enthusiastically championing. A consumption tax, such as I believe this is, would allow families and individuals to control their tax burden by deciding whether they could afford to buy non-essential items (and pay the large, national sales tax that would be attached). This is very attractive to me because it removes the penalty for doing well financially that I think our current income tax scheme applies. I think it would generate plenty of revenue to replace what the IRS presently collects, would encourage Americans to save substantially more than we do currently (the lack of which is a huge problem for both our economy and our national security), and likely remove much of the bickering in Washington around taxes in general.

   Maybe I am completely wrong about its viability but it does seem odd to me that no one else is considering this seriously. It seems to get tossed by the wayside, into the "big bin of lunacy" into which the mainstream media (and the Republican candidates, for that matter) has also cast Ron Paul and all of HIS "off-the-wall" ideas (curiously pulled straight from the Constitution, by the way!)

Down to Two? Uh..Where's Gravel?

   Down to Two? Uh..Where's Gravel?

   I watched the Democratic debate from L.A. and was immediately struck by the repeated statements about how the race to the Democratic nomination is down to two. Whatever happened to Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska? He is still officially in the race, from what I can tell.

   I don't know about you but I am starting to feel like the mainstream media is REALLY starting to shape the race, which I sincerely resent.

   As for the debate itself, it reinforced my previous feelings about Obama and Clinton. Namely, that although I think either would be a good president, I sincerely hope that those with a say in selecting the Democratic nominee, see the huge change that Obama stands for. While I think Clinton does represent some aspects of change, she brings along a lot of baggage with her and frankly I am concerned about her electability in the general election.