Presidential Inauguration & Iraq

Thursday's the big day.

George W. Bush will be inaugurated, for the second time, as the POTUS. His margin of victory was one of the narrowest margins ever for a re-elected president. 3% is not much I suppose, but it could have been a lot closer (i.e. 2000).

Bush is no wimp. He is going to swing for the fences in this second term of his. By his own admission, reforming the tax code and revamping social security are high on his priority list. These are huge domestic initiatives. Hopefully they won't go down in flames (i.e. the Clinton universal health care program). The tax code does need to be simplified. How many millions of productive hours are wasted, year after year, by citizens scrambling to get through all the forms and minutiae by April 15th? There's gotta be a better way.

On a more gloomy note, the Iraqi elections are still scheduled for January 30th. Much of that country is peaceful, and ready for elections. But there is still a lot of mayhem, insurgency, and killing. An Iraqi Catholic archbishop was kidnapped just yesterday. My dad and I both were saying, last night, that he was not likely to survive. Thankfully, we were wrong. The Vatican reported this morning that the bishop had been released, and was unharmed, and no ransom was paid for his release.