Whine steward Andy Rooney quipped:
I can’t think of many sounds more annoying than the sound of a motorcycle.
Coming from anyone but him or, say, Pee Wee Herman, that wouldn’t be ironic.
Whine steward Andy Rooney quipped:
I can’t think of many sounds more annoying than the sound of a motorcycle.
Coming from anyone but him or, say, Pee Wee Herman, that wouldn’t be ironic.
So Gillette has a new razor coming out.
Pricing one is, to say the least, a humbling experience.
The company is famous for their business motto: “Give ’em the razor, but sell ’em the blades.”
All well and good.
But whatever happened to the “Give ’em the razor” part?
If there’s anything of value we should have learned from Hollywood over the years, it’s how to distinguish information volume from information quality.
Apropos, my sister just told me the plotline of “Brokeback Mountain”.
If you’re a “South Park” fan, I need say no more. You’re rolling on the floor laughing with me.
Just a quick rememberance of Burdines, which has been bought and replaced by Macy’s.
I haven’t had a compelling reason to go to Macy’s. I did go there when I visited Manhattan.
The bean counters surely deduced that maintaining two brands is more expensive than maintaining one.
But Burdines had been a part of the Florida landscape since long before I moved here.
The bean counters don’t see that there are people who would shop at Burdines, even Burdines by Macy’s, but who have no real interest in shopping at the Macy’s that used to be Burdines.
You’re either part of the history, or not. And I for one love history.
Somebody in the paper today actually accused Bush of being a terrorist. And that made me think:
I guess he snuck into Iraq
under cover of broad daylight,
rebuilt hospitals and churches,
installed a democratic government,
opened the schools and colleges,
vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children,
flushed out al-Qaeda,
restarted the economy,
trained their security forces,
provided interim defense for the country,
and started restoring women’s rights,
all in the name of striking terror
into the hearts of Iraqis.
If he’s a “terrorist”, seems to me he’s not a very good one.
Now of course, Bush has some shortcomings.
Everybody does. I still have lots of teeth marks in my tongue from eight years of Clinton.
But I’d be lying if I said I was sure that I’d face a test like September 11 as well as the President did.
I also think that almost anyone who’s being completely honest with themselves could make the same statement.
So somebody in the paper today accused Bush of being a terrorist. And that made me think:
One of the little-discussed benefits
of having a society that encourages free speech
is that it makes it easier to figure out
who’s been willing and able
to think seriously about an issue
before forming an opinion,
and who shouldn’t be trusted with anything
much more valuable
than a used match.
Well, we’re at that time of year, where the airwaves are saturated with tax-preparation and tax-software advertisements featuring happy people waving their tax refund checks in the air.
One would think that if they were to consider how much money was taken from them in the first place, their mood would be a little more somber.
Apropos, I bought The FairTax a few weeks back, skeptical about the concept as I understood it, but trying to be open-minded. I read the book looking for the “deadly hand-wave”, the dismissal of critical assumptions by simply skipping lightly over them.
There weren’t any.
The whole concept is well-researched, well-intentioned, and intelligently presented. Potential “deadly hand-waves” are replaced with in-depth tracking of the assumptions made and the historical precedents behind their thinking. Boortz makes it entertaining– even where he reins in his predictable opinions on certain highly-partisan topics– and Representative Linder’s co-authorship lends serious credibility to the movement.
So I suggest you read it. The book is short enough that practically anyone could finish it in a week of spare-time reading.
But if even that is too much for you right now, spend five minutes reading the FairTax FAQ, or the first page of the plain English summary.
You’re going to start hearing a lot of debate over this issue in the coming weeks, as the grassroots support continues to grow. If you take nothing else from this post, take my word on this: Anyone who attacks this plan by claiming that it will increase your taxes is either misinformed or outright lying. Whatever else may be up for debate, FairTax was designed from its inception to bring the same amount of revenue to the government as it receives right now.
So, yes, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a convert.
Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said,
“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
I can’t add anything to that.