image from Gateway Pundit who got it from jwf

So I sat down in front of my TV this evening looking forward to another great episode of House. What I got was very disappointing. Our new President had a press conference instead. I wish House had been on as opposed to the fear mongering I was subjected to. I am really sick of hearing the phrase “worst since the Great Depression.” We are in a recession. Things are rough. Guess what, it isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. At this point, the recession we are currently in can’t even compare to the recessions of the 70’s and 80’s let alone the Great Depression.
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In my previous article discussing the folly of the Obama Administration’s impending legislation I tried to point out the three primary problems that each of their goals share and specifically how these problems apply to the ‘Gun Show Loophole‘. All three of these problems are equally true for the Obama Administration’s goal of requiring all firearms to be ‘child proofed’; The legislation will be ineffective at accomplishing it’s intended goals, it will impede the Second Amendment rights of Americans, and it will further reduce the powers of individual states to create laws commiserate to their citizens.

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So it has been announced that Obama along with Congress will limit the executive pay for companies accepting bailout money. I understand the sentiment, I understand the anger and resentment, but I don’t understand why anyone would think this is a good idea. A lot of these companies who need to accept bailout money need to do it as a result of poor leadership in executive positions. The only way for these companies to recover is to fire these executives and replace them with new blood or old experienced blood. The problem is that these companies will not be able to attract the most talented executives who can really turn the company around because the companies those talented people helped run didn’t suffer to the point to require a bailout - their companies can still afford to make them a great offer and they will.

This leaves us with keeping the ‘talent’ already in the companies, we have to keep the people who got us into this mess and hope they’ve wizened up. Unfortunately a lot of these people have very specific contracts stating how much they are to be paid and in what form, what perks they will receive, and what their bonuses will look like. These contracts aren’t somehow dependent on whether the company takes a bailout or not. If these companies wanted to be out of these contracts perhaps they should have just filed bankruptcy. As it stands now congress may be wishing a pile of litigation on these companies.

I woke up Friday morning and did my usual perusal of the news. With all of the action taking place in Gaza this past week I expect to see plenty of news about this. The headline that greeted me, however, was one mentioning that Obama wanted the DTV Transition to be pushed back. According to the media, and a number of U.S. senators, we cannot risk millions of Americans going dark on February 17th. This is all so silly I’m not sure where to start.
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During the holidays political news generally slows to a halt but this year there are a few things conservatives should be paying attention to.

Obama’s new transition team has begun reviewing all of President Bush’s executive orders to determine which they should over turn in their first days in office. Obama has previously stated the need to repeal many of these orders and this is well within his rights. Some bloggers have pointed out that some of the executive orders being targeted relate to abortion and may change the landscape of the abortion issue. The most interesting part of this for the libertarians among us is that Obama may end up simply reissuing his own executive orders allowing the power of the federal government, and specifically the president, to further spiral out of control.

The media has begun calling Biden the “Working Families Czar” in light of the new task force Biden will be heading up. I don’t know which is more alarming. That the media continues to use the word czar, that Obama’s administration said they would not use this word, or that the Obama administration thinks this is a necessary use of our resources. I had written a long spiel about the problems with spending tax dollars on this kind of thing but I deleted for brevity sake. Most of the readers will already know my complaints (hint, I’m a libertarian) and for those who aren’t familiar look here or here.

CNN is claiming that in their poll 63% of Americans supported the Auto Bailout. This figure may not be entirely correct but the fact that these numbers are even leaning this way should be a good indicator that fiscal conservatism is in even more trouble than we thought.

The NY Times and the White House are at odds with eachother after the NY Times tries to dump the mortgage crisis on Bush’ door step.

Obama’s invitation of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Presidential Inauguration is really a good idea for him and the rest of the country. Obama made a lot of claims during his campaign about how he intended to change the way business was done in Washington. He promised to toss partisanship out the door and usher in a new era of cooperation between the two major parties. I, like everyone else, thought this was mostly a load of crap. However, I am willing to point out when the man does something correct. I may not agree with his politics but so far we have seen Obama explain that he won’t be withdrawing troops nearly as quickly as he promised during the election and now this.

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I generally have a strong dislike for the slanted news coming out of the Huffington Post. However, this recent article detailing, with video, John McCain’s response to questions on whether or not the Republican National Committee (RNC) was in the right to try and use the Blagojevich issue to drag Obama down was very reassuring. It’s as if now that McCain isn’t running for president he is back in the saddle and ready to get real work done in the mostly non-partisan way he always has. It’s a shame how different he was while on the campaign trail. Welcome back John.  Read the article, with video, here.

Obama is planning a new public works project similar to that of FDR’s New Deal. He has apparently done a good job studying the history of how the New Deal was implemented. He wants to raise taxes on the rich to create jobs that are out of the scope of what the federal government is supposed to do.

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