Let me get this straight. So, now we have a two guys who don’t pay their taxes. One guy heads the committee that writes the tax laws and the other guy is going to be appointed to head the agency whose mission to it is to see that everyone pays his or her taxes.

Welcome to the National Laughing Academy that is the United States Government.

Update: Doug Ross takes a look at some of the other members of the Washington Laughing Academy, including Rose Law Firm Partner, Futures Trader, First Lady, Senator Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

I don’t feel like blogging, nor would I have much of anything interesting (and certainly nothing humorous) to say if I did feel like blogging. Frankly, I am still bummed out by the events of yesterday, from the fawning slobberfest on display at mainstream media outlets (which carried through to today) to the hate-filled and thoroughly hateful behavior on the part of the “progressive” left towards the outgoing President.

The fact is that the new President has never advanced a single policy with which I agree. More to the point, I vehemently disagree with every damned thing he has in mind for the country. Every Goddamned thing. Still, when it is eventually time for The One to leave office (assuming there’s anything left of the country when that happens), I wouldn’t think of behaving toward him as the animals did toward President Bush.

I’ll snap out of it; I just don’t know when.

Thank you, President Bush.

That is all.

It is impossible to read any media, listen to any media or watch any media without being bombarded with stories about Obama Stuff. It’s frankly exhausting. I don’t remember anything in my lifetime that has rivaled this, with possible exception of the invention of the Hula Hoop or the appearance of the Beatles. In both instances, the country went positively nuts.

I was a young boy when the Hula Hoop dominated the media, and I was a teen-ager when the Beatles descended upon the U.S. I admit it. I was absolutely caught up in both.

Now that I’m all grown up, I know that the Hula Hoop was silly and the Beatles, despite their great music, were just four regular guys from Liverpool who were in the right place at the right time to enable them to catch the brass ring.

So now I’m faced with tomorrow – the Inauguration. On one hand, it marks a peaceful transfer of power, which is, or ought to be, the envy of the world. I’m proud of that. On the other hand, tomorrow is sort of like the Hula Hoop and the Beatles lunacy, except that what happens on the day after tomorrow is deadly serious, and it scares the shit out of me.

Sometimes it ain’t easy being a grownup.

Have you seen this?

I cannot help but wonder if the marketing geniuses at Pepsi realize that 58 million people did NOT vote for The One and do not buy into his “Hope and Change” baloney. I wonder if the same marketing geniuses realize that many of those 58 million people used to drink Pepsi, but now will not spend one dime on the stuff.

I am one such person.

This is a photo of the thermometer I took this morning at the House by the Parkway. The temperature had warmed up a couple degrees by the time I thought about taking the picture with Mr. Cell phone. I hope to remember to take another picture of the same thermometer in August when it tickles 100 degrees.

As is often heard around here, “We love the changing of the seasons.” Today – not so much.

My daughter and my son-in-law, knowing what tickles my fancy and knowing what always fits, for Christmas bought me a variety of most-excellent bourbons. One such bourbon is Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey.

Let me tell you: this is one fine drink. Like all liquor that can call itself “bourbon,” Bulleit is comprised of at least 51% corn. What makes Bulleit different from the rest of the bourbons is the heavy dose of rye grain that finds its way into the mix, which was formulated from a recipe created before the Civil War.

I will spare you the “oaky … and hint of vanilla” baloney to simply say the stuff tastes great. I have drunk it only neat, but I’m sure it would stand up very well to ice (clear cubes only, of course — assuming you wish to be civilized)..

Finally, a word about the bottle. What’s not to like? It looks like a bottle one would find in the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, complete with a cork, which in a pinch, could be removed with one’s teeth.

There aren’t many better things in life than a bottle of kickass bourbon on a Friday night, especially on a Friday night when the temperature outside is in the single digits.

Here’s to ya!

I was walking into the office this morning, and the temperature was in the teens. Add a bit of wind, and that’s pretty farookin’ cold. I was hunkered down and lost in thought, when I heard:

“CAUTION!! WATCH YOUR STEP!!”

WTF?

I continued to walk.

“CAUTION!! WATCH YOUR STEP!!”

It was a shouting “cone.”

Scared the shit out of me, it did.

I can handle being talked to by beets, but I resent being shouted at by a damned yellow plastic cone-type thing.

Somehow society managed to lumber along just fine for at least two-thousand years without shouting farookin’ cones.

If my mother were alive, she would blame the Beatles.

Take a listen to The Lifters (I know one of the guys in the band) playing a down and dirty Blues tune called “Personal Bailout.”

It makes me feel like makin’ music.

Do me fave and check out their website.

These days of multiple bailouts have us tossing around some pretty big dollar numbers as if they were pocket change. Three-hundred billion dollars for this, fifty billion dollars for that, and now President-elect Barack __ Obama it talking about a stimulus package that will be a whopping $775 billion.

Let’s step back for a moment.

A billion is a thousand million. Consider that a billion seconds equals approximately 32 years. So, a billion seconds ago it was 1976. 775 billion seconds ago would take you back to 23,000 B.C., and you could very well bump into a Cro-Magnon man. He’d probably want a bailout.

Here’s an interesting depiction of how a mere 315 billion (feh!) one-dollar bills would stack up.

Pretty sickening, if you ask me.