By LAMAR THAMES

I am not sure whether the health-care protesters are all dealing with a full deck, but make sure of this: The Obama administration would be wise not to ignore them.

The protesters carry with them  the greatest threat to the status quo of the present administration — distrust. If Barack Obama wishes to carry the legacy of his presidency into the next election and beyond, he must face up to the fact that people are unhappy, scared and just plain angry about the state of the nation. And I don’t blame them.

Distrust is one of the worst enemies a political party can face, even if the distrust is founded on disinformation. Obama must share in the blame for not having more specifics in his health care proposals. All that did was leave a vacuum for naysayers to fill in the blanks, which you knew they would. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Larry Horne of Clay Electric for supplying a link to the following letter:

In a letter to President Obama, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Glenn English voiced strong objections to the Administration’s plan to auction the carbon emission allowances under a cap and trade scheme.

In the letter, English pointed out that “[s]uch a program would only serve as a backdoor, variable tax on consumers. Even worse, the level of the tax would be determined by Wall Street and large multi-national energy companies who would likely be the highest bidders in any auction.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I know you may be expecting commentary about “American Idol” in this posting, but not this week. For one thing, nothing is really happening on Idol worth talking about, and for another Idol Chatter is just meant as a catch-phrase for all kinds of chatter, which is what I am doing this week. So here goes:

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FALLEN IDOLS

Too bad about Michael Phelps, A-Rod (I hate those nicknames) and all the other athletic superstars who have been, or will be, discovered to have used illegal and/or performance-enhancing drugs. I don’t really waste too much time worrying about them or their images, except in the regard that so many of our impressionable young people might be seduced into Read the rest of this entry »

Every year when I prepare my income tax return, I check it once, twice, three times, and sometimes even four, to make sure I didn’t make an arithmetic mistake or leave something off the form that should have been there. And every year I hold my breath (not literally) until the return comes back and I get my refund, afraid that the IRS will find a mistake. Maybe I am just too cautious, I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to tangle with the IRS over my tax bill. I wish some other people would exercise that kind of caution, especially congressmen and new members of the president’s cabinet.

I was impressed with President Obama’s confession on NBC Nightly News Tuesday night when he said, “I made a mistake, I screwed up.” He was talking about the failure of his vetting process that led him to pick Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle for his Cabinet when both of them had failed to pay back taxes, or report income that would have been taxed. I was feeling good that the president was taking the heat for making the wrong choices, quite a turnabout from former President George Bush’s firm denials that he ever made a mistake. Then Obama said something that didn’t set well with me. He said he didn’t think Daschle intentionally did anything wrong by not reporting all the income and benefits he had received. Read the rest of this entry »