A Two-Fer

Rush on The Colbert Report.  You don’t see these guys in interviews very often, especially all three of them, but the more I see them the more I really enjoy their sense of humor.  Oh - and the music?  “Do you ever get tired of being so awesome and kicking so much ass?”  “No, I [...]

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Independence Day 2008

Flags wave, fireworks fly, and magnetic stickers abound.  But what does it mean to be patriotic?  On the 232nd anniversary of the declaration creating the United States of America, it’s worth a few minutes to consider.  An essay from the Makinac Center for Public Policy captures much of how I feel.
It isn’t that flags, fireworks, or [...]

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It’s What Was Next

Of course it’s no longer news that George Carlin died yesterday.  I saw him in concert once when I was in college.  At the time I found his comedy really amusing, the play with words, the willingness to question things no one else would.  Listening to interviews with him years later I came to have [...]

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Heartbreaking

Both the earthquake in central China and the cyclone in Myanmar were natural disasters with magnitudes of their own.  But the more tragic disasters are of human origin - fear and greed, selfishness and corruption - and make the losses even more bitter.
Absolutely heartbreaking.

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Still a Bad Idea

Two weeks ago I was critical of Senator John McCain’s proposal for a national “gas tax holiday.”
Now Senator Hillary Clinton is backing a similar idea.  Though she has added a twist to the proposal with a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, the idea of a gas tax holiday is still a bad one, regardless of [...]

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Papal Visit 2008

Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the United States on April 15.  Since then he has been reaching out - to the Catholic faithful, to Catholic youth, to the victims of clergy sex abuse, to our Jewish brothers and sisters, and to the world.  On the whole, I have to say I have been very pleased [...]

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D’oh!

Our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling.  Fuel tax revenues have not kept pace with the cost of maintaining our transportation infrastructure.  This is because they are charged at a fixed amount per gallon, because overall fleet fuel economy is rising, and lately, demand has begun to slow.  And we have a candidate for president who [...]

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Blogged to Death

As you’ve no doubt been able to tell, I’m not killing myself writing new posts on my blog.  Seems there are others who have been, however.
Pity.

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Another Kind of Wireless

Wireless.  It’s hip, it’s modern, it’s what’s new.  It’s also retro, quaint, and old fashioned.  Radio has been around for more than a hundred years, had its “Golden Age” before television “killed” it years ago.  Not so much killed it, I suppose, as severely wounded it.
And yet, radio endures.  Commercial radio, however, is now as [...]

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Easter Meditations

For the last couple of weeks I have been reading Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth.”  (Note:  I was reading it before I had any idea it was enjoying a resurgence - heaven forbid I should actually do something because it’s popular.)  I enjoyed it well enough, though at the end it seemed to [...]

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