As promised, I did not stay up last night to watch Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address. Jamie Dupree provided us with an advance copy earlier in the evening, so I read it, made my notations, and bagged it with the latest issue of Fying magazine. Trust me, it was far more entertaining, and it contained information that might actually be important to me.

There are a few things that stand out in Obama's speech last night. I particularly like his line about "thanks to the tax cuts we passed". The tax cuts we passed? I wasn't aware that any tax cuts were passed. I do remember that in the lame-duck session there was a move to increase taxes, but that move failed. So suddenly when an attempt to increase taxes fails Barack Obama can call it a tax cut?

Sure enough, as I told you, Obama replaced the word "spending" with the word "investing". I've gone through this routine with you before, people just react better to the word investing than they do the word spending. Investing good, spending bad. What Barack Obama proposed last night was not investing at all, it was pure stimulus spending. Space and we all know how well the last stimulus plan worked. Where's the unemployment rate now? About 9.5%? Yeah, that worked. One of the mainstays oval bomb his new stimulus program is this high speed rail boondoggle. Obama said "Within 25 years our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail." Space you do know, don't you, that Amtrak has never made money. Amtrak is a constant drain on taxpayer dollars were ever those trains run. And how is it going to be any different with high-speed rail lines. Experts not working for the government or not working for the building trades unions, are pretty much unanimous in their opinions that high-speed rail in our widely disseminated population simply will not work. It high-speed rail doesn't work between New York and Philadelphia, or New York and Washington DC without losing money, how in the world isn't going to work between Orlando and Tampa or any other two urban areas in this country. Space the fact is that this whole dream about high-speed rail is nothing but a payoff to unions in order to put construction workers to work building rail lines, joining unions, paying union dues, and allowing unions to make massive political contributions to candidates. Democrat candidates.

One more thing before I close down these notes and go on the air: Obama called last night for a more simplified tax code. Space it's too bad he didn't call for a more simplified tax code that transfers power away from government and to the people. I think we all know that Barack Obama would not support anything that empowered people at the expense of government. But the clear answer to Obama's call for a simplified tax code is, of course, the FairTax. I'm sure we'll have some time to say something about that today on the show.

By the way I love the bit about the salmon. Come on, give the guy a break. That was funny. The people should've laughed a bit more thought one. Space it was a brilliant observation on the absurdity of government.

And, just for fun, here's a word cloud for the address. Click through to bigger version: