Well I am going to stop posting the Boortz podcasts, for now at least.  I have been streaming the show live from Atlanta for several months now and rarely listen or download my recordings.  So unless a need arises I am going to remove the link from my main page and I pretty much stopped posting new shows during the holidays.

It seems that the President and his minions have already pissed off the press and caused major frustration with the white house press corps.  There have already been minor scuffles over matters as simple as not allowing press photographers into the Oval Office and at his mulligan swearing in.  The AP and several other wire services even went as far as not passing on the official white house photographs of the events.    This is curious behavior for someone who was claiming that his administration will be “open and transparent”.  It is very reminiscent of the scuffles the white house press corps and the Clinton administration went through.

Are they truly surprised though?  If you paid attention during the election there were several fights with the press about access.  His campaign kept a tight reign on how his message was delivered.  They even went as far as to “scoop” the press by using blogs and text messages to deliver important content and leak their agenda.  The amazing thing was that the press didn’t seem to care and continued to avoid digging deeper into the Obama campaign.  I think there will be more of this behavior as time goes on.  The true question is whether the press will finally take it personally and start to actually dig into the administration and it’s agenda.

There are some interesting developments afoot in the approval process for the President’s cabinet nominees.   

First off was the surprise delay to Sen. Clinton’s nomination.  It seems that at least one Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, was willing to cause some mischief about the questionable links between the international donations that Mr. Clinton’s foundation receives and the conflicts of interest this could cause with Sen. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.  I’m not sure this is a real problem to her performance at the job, but it will be nice to have this discussion on Public record in case something questionable comes up later.  I heard a reporter on the radio claim that Sen. Clinton pulled Sen. Cornyn aside during yesterday’s festivities and had a verbal confrontation with him.  Haven’t seen it in print, but it sounds in character for Sen. Clinton.  Fun stuff.  

The second is the President’s nominee for Secretary of Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner, who apparently had some  “issues” paying his taxes. It looks like his nomination may be in for a bumpy ride.  Now while I find it ironic that the person tapped to head the division of government that includes the IRS has tax evasion policies.  I really don’t consider it to be a deal breaker.  Of course I hold a dim view of our current confiscatory tax system and hope that perhaps someone with real experiences with the IRS mafia will be sympathetic to restructuring the system.  It appears that I am not the only one who feels this way.   

Of course you know that I am going to use this as a chance to advocate for the passage of the Fair Tax.  Although the writers of the article cite the current move around the world to simplify the tax code into a flatter system with little or no deductions, people often forget that we tried that approach here in the United States during the Reagan administration.  A flat two tiered system was created and most deductions were eliminated.  Now we have this monstrous system that has five (or is it six) tax brackets and politicians are getting elected by promising to further muddy the waters with Byzantine tax credits and deductions.  So I say scrap it all and replace it with simple consumption tax with no deductions and no reason for corporations or industries to send thousands of tax lobbyists to Washington. 

 

It may be a pipe dream, but people need to understand how much freedom would be enhanced and grow under a system where the primary technique of politicians to manipulate and control us is simply taken away.

 

Evil Out.

Today is the big day.  America's first "African-American" president will be sworn in.  For a nation that has dealt with the history of slavery and institutional racism within recent history it is a big step.  I know I will be listening to the festivities most of the day at work.  I Hope that this milestone will Change the culture of victimization that has been growing in our society.  Many of us have been living MLK's dream of a society where someone is judged by "the content of their character, not the color of their skin" for our whole lives.  I hope that those on the left and those who are defenders of President Obama will remember that as he will start to face the criticism any president of the United States faces during his tenure in office.  Most of us who stand against his policies and ideas are doing it out of philosophical differences, not racial prejudice and bigotry.

 

To me the more standing legacy of today is not the color of President Obama's skin, or even his history as a mixed race child (which truly shows just how far this country has come in the past 50 years) but the 44th time that we have had a peaceful transition of national leadership.  In this world where many governments have been toppled within the past 250 years by rebellion, insurrection, and coup d’état, it is one of America's greatest legacies that we have been able to quietly and without bloodshed change our government every 2 years and our national leader every 4.  (The civil war wasn't about national leadership, but an attempt to leave the union) 

 

So let's take today to celebrate two milestones for this country and revel in our national pride.  Tomorrow the gloves come back off and the politics start in earnest.

 

God Bless America.  Good luck Mr. President.

First up, I was directed to an interesting Blogsite this week, Big Hollywood, it is a repository for conservatives from Hollywood to put their thoughts up.  There have been some interesting articles including this one about the decaying morals of the superhero genre and this rant by 'one pissed off dude'.  It is a great site with lots of news, reviews and opinions. 

 

There were also two articles this week written by two of my "must read" writers, Walter Williams and John Stossel.

 

Stossel rips into the dual personality of the politcal class that will condemn a Ponzi scheme run my a millionaire like Madoff and then tolerate, laud, and defend the Ponzi schemes run by the government such as Social Security and Medicare.

Saw this headline today: CBO to project $1.2T deficit for 2009...This following the announcement from PEBO that we could have trillion dollar deficits for years.  This announcement on the back of his "plan" to spend $7 Billion on states for unemployment reform to cover more people and some obscene number of new government jobs.  Isn't it good to see that fiscal responsibility during a financial crisis is at the center of the government's plan for recovery?  I guess I should take an example from our new leaders in the federal government and set my own personal budget in a similar manner.

 

Using this example I guess there are a few things I need to change in my personal budget.  First off I need to increase spending on everything by about 10% this year and even bills are not being increased this year.  I need to start spending on several new budget items to "stimulate" my personal economy, perhaps a new car, a new house, new furniture, and a new television.  Now this will exceed my income by a large percentage, but no fear I will simply borrow large sums of money in order to subsidize my spending.  When the bills come due I will simply tell my creditors that I am going to defer some of their payments for an "indefinite" perdiod of time.  According to our leaders and PEBO this is what it takes to "Fix" a bad economic situation.

 

Yeah, that'll work.

Sorry for the long layover.  It's finally time to head to work again after a 2 week hiatus (and a 1 week business trip to Mexico).  Been trying to ignore news and politics as much as possible.  The PEBO is about to have his inauguration and the congress is preparing to "fast track" his economic "stimulus" package which includes "targetted tax cuts".  PEBO is also throwing Bill Richardson under the bus because of some questionable political alliances, guess he is getting on top of this scandal rather than let it fester like the Blago one.  Finally, Israel is defending itself with maximum force and PEBO is saying little to nothing, guess that's "the Office of Secretary of State Nominee" Hillary Clinton's job now...

 

Should be a fun year, Evil Out.