Saturday, February 25, 2006

Rodeo Time In Texas and Spring Is On It's Way


This Saturday the Houston Rodeo kicked off with it's annual rodeo parade. Trail Rides from all over the state converge on Houston every February each year then for two weeks the biggest rodeo in world will be held at Reliant Stadium.

For me personally it means that spring is about a week away and tax season has finally arrived. It will be long days and weekends of work from now until about mid June. I love my work but it requires me to miss some of the best weather days that Houston has to offer.

The golf courses will be greening up with the warm weather and the temperatures will be mild. I can already smell the fresh clipped grass of newly mowed fairways and greens. By the time I have get a break from the spring push, it will be summer. That means humidity and hot temperatures.

Such is the life of a Property Tax Agent.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Gore's Drive By Shooting (by Paul Nowak)

Beastly Child Part ll

Many in the mainstream media was heard this weekend using that fine American lament of " it is not our fault we are the victims" in response to the growing negative perception many Americans have as a result of press' behavior regarding the Cheney's shooting accident.

On CNN's show Reliable Sources, Dana Milbank, Washington Post reporter, proclaimed that the White House is taking advantage of the public's growing disdain for the media. She said "the press always looks awful. They (the White House) will once again make us look awful". On the same show Candy Crowley complained "the perception is that we are whining". Perception hell, you are whining.

Bill Plante of CBS on the same show complained "the Vice President and the White House have both used the constant coverage of this story as a wedge. It plays into the prejudices of the people who are predisposed not to like us".

Oh grow up!! The media elite is just mad because it has felt it has been ignored by the administration regarding the timing of the release of information concerning the VP's hunting accident. The media's image has been tarnished by it's own behavior. Frankly most of the time they look like a bunch spoiled brats who are overpaid. What do they bring to the party anyway.

In recent years the mainstream media's has lost creditability due to stories and missteps such as the Jayson Blair incident at the New York Times and CBS's reporting of the Bush national guard story. If the people in the media have forgotten trust is something that is earned and is not an entitlement.

Maybe the media's image would also improve if it would report stories with less bias and hidden agendas. Stories where the negatives are highlighted with the positives. America wants factual reporting and less opinion not shown on the editorial page. Remember people outside Washington and New York are not a bunch of dullards who need to be told what to think.

It time for the press to wake up and get a clue.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Arkansas Sex Offender


I know this is old news but I saw this and thought it was humorous.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The Shooting Party

February 15, 2006
The Shooting Party
By Tony Blankley

In the absence of any pressing news these days -- other than Iran's nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, ongoing worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore's near sedition while speaking in Saudi Arabia, the turning over of our East Coast ports to be managed by a United Arab Emirates firm, the criminal leaking of vital NSA secrets to the New York Times, Mexican military incursions across our southern border, the Iraqi crisis, Congress's refusal to deal with the developing financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare, inter alia -- the White House press corp has exploded in righteous fury over the question of the vice president's little shooting party last weekend.
As I understand the profound concern of the ever-alert White House reporters, they smell a constitutional crisis because the shooting party failed to alert the media of the accidental shooting down in Corpus Christi, Texas. Well, actually, they did alert the Corpus Christi media -- but that didn't count. Unless the exalted ones have been formally informed by an official government press secretary, no public communication has technically occurred.

I checked the bylaws of the White House press corp, and they are right. It seems that the bylaws refer to Article XXIII of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly designates that White House reporters with a minimum annual income of $375,000 (plus minimum stock options equal to not less than two-thirds their yearly salary, plus use of driver and long sedan during business hours, of which hours must include post-deadline dinner engagements of a semi-social nature) are the exclusive recipients of all government information.

If information isn't hand-delivered in gilt-edged paper to them while they are reclined on their chaise lounges, it hasn't been released to the public. And if they don't report a fact, it hasn't happened. This provision is vital to a vigorous and independent free press. [I should note, my copy of the Constitution must be outdated, because it doesn't have an Article XXIII.]
Of course, this provision technically makes the White House press corp not reporters, but receivers -- sort of glorified shipping clerks, but with the prerogative to re-write and re-package the material before they deliver it to the public.

When an out-of-town newspaper got the scoop, the dignity of the White House press corp had been impeached, so they threw a public temper tantrum. As that has worked for many of them since their early childhood, they obviously expect it to work while on the job -- to use the term loosely.

To add to their indignity, the reporter for the Washington Post went on MSNBC dressed up in a hunting costume to ridicule the vice president. (It is said that the enfeebled and debased French dauphin, Charles VII, dressed in women's clothing to hide from Joan of Arc, who was trying to save France.)

I suppose most of us, as we rise in life, develop a sense of entitlement and pompous dignity. Doubtless we all think we are more important than we are. As Charles De Gaulle once sardonically observed, "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
But the Washington press corp, and particularly the White House press corp, has developed, as an institution, a grossly dilated view of itself. Most of us can tolerate arrogance if it is accompanied by extraordinary capacity and virtuosity. The brilliant scientist, the war-winning general, the great artists are entitled to their pride.

But the hallmark of the Washington Press corp these days is mediocrity, groupthink, a lack of curiosity and rampant careerism. These attributes were all on show in the shooting party incident. But this is just a trivial incident -- except for the poor, shot gentleman who suffered a heart attack, may he recover fully and quickly.
We live at a moment of revolutionary change in the international order. The rise and violence of radical, possibly caliphate-forming Islam and the huge, culture-changing, unexamined consequences of rampant globalization make the present one of the least predictable moments to be alive.

Both government officials and citizens are in desperate need of a national press corp that is alive to the change and digging to find factual hints of the near future. We need the kind of future-oriented intellectual vigor, curiosity and genuine iconoclasm that typified American reporters in the first half of the last century.
Instead, as the shooting party incident exemplified, we have in the White House at the most elite level of American journalism, self-absorbed, self-important men and women who stand on their prerogatives even over marginal and inconsequential matters.
Should they ever have a truly daring, creative, productive, hard-researched idea about what is going on in this dangerous world, they should alert the media.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The Beastly Child

The Washington press corp's reaction to the delayed announcement of the Vice President's hunting accident is like a spoil child being ignored throwing a tantrum. The Washington press hates to be ignored. There is an old adage about the press that says the "beast must be fed". Implied in that axiom is that if the press is ignore they will come after you and make you the issue. Well to bad boys there is a new boss (President Bush) in Washington that does not bow at the feet of the Washington elite media.

The President see his job as leader that is responsible for setting a bold agenda and seeing it through to the end. He does not suffer well a press that he sees as foolish and an impediment to his adminstration achieving it's objectives. That is why many in the press depise him. They simply can not stand to be ignored.

For the Washington press corp it is all about "goucha politics" with this adminstration, hence the reaction on Monday to the unfortunate events involving Cheney thisw weekend.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Christians Far Game


Paul Nowak political cartoon says it all, can't lampoon Muslims but Christians are far game. The fact that many in world governments and media have criticized the Danish editorial cartoon of Mohammed as insensitive is a sign that radical Islam has succeed in their goal of intimidation.

The world however does not have a problem in criticizing and lampooning Christians.

Cheney More Dangerous Than Gerald Ford Playing Golf

Gerald Ford was considered a dangerous man around a golf course after he beaned a couple of spectators a various golf tournemnts while President. Ford had nothing on Vice President Dick Cheney because evidently if you go hunting with the Vice President you better be wearing body armor.

While quail hunting this weekend on a ranch in Texas the Vice President accidently shot a fellow hunter. Cheney's victim or accidential target was 78 Harry Whittington. Whittington, an attorney from Austin, was taken to a hospital in Corpus Christi. At last report Whittington was listed as alert and doing fine.

With that shot I guess the VP had bagged his limit.