Tone deaf:

The CIA has launched a taskforce to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables. Its name? WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short.

The group will be charged with scouring the released documents to survey damage caused by the disclosures…

Wish we had adults in charge…

So far its been a busy Christmas week and it isn’t going to get any less busy for the next few days – so, not much time for writing, and I’m sorry about that.

So, have at it with this and I’ll try to get more up later.

The Magnificat:

Mary said:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;

my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

for he has looked upon his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:

the Almighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,

and has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel

for he remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise he made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children for ever.” – Luke 1:46-55

I feel extra hopey-changey, now – from Reuters:

The U.S. government fell deeper into the red in fiscal 2010 with net liabilities swelling more than $2 trillion as commitments on government debt and federal benefits rose, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Tuesday.

The Financial Report of the United States, which applies corporate-style accrual accounting methods to Washington, showed the government’s liabilities exceeded assets by $13.473 trillion. That compared with a $11.456 trillion gap a year earlier…

It is just staggering to think that we’re that much in debt – and that our debt load is rising that fast. We’ll see how long the banksters and bureaucrats can keep this up, but I’m thinking we’re very close to the end of our rope.

From the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, says Federal Communications Commission should be renamed the “Fabricating a Crisis Commission,” following a vote by the panel’s three Democrats to approve proposed rules that amount to a hostile takeover of the Internet by a government agency acting illegally.

The proposal – misleadingly described by proponents as an attempt to insure “net neutrality” by guaranteeing equal access to the Internet – was introduced a year ago by Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s appointee as FCC chairman.

A federal court has ruled that the commission has no authority to regulate the Internet, and a bipartisan group of senators and representives warned Genechowski not to attempt to impose a regulatory regime on the Internet earlier this year….

It is rather insane for the FCC to do this – the courts and Congress have strongly indicated that the FCC has no business doing this. The only explanation of it is that the Democrats, being by default Statists, just figure they can’t have anything out there being uncontrolled by government. Everyone has access to the internet – heck, if I’m on here, then anyone can be on here.

We must roll this back – and, in fact, this would be an excellent first step in curbing government and starting to re-establish Constitutional government. The liberals on the FCC will rue the day they made this step too far.

From the New York Times:

Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash…

Pakistan’s ungovernable “tribal areas” are clearly the weak link in our battle against terrorism in that area – but I do wonder if we’re not about to make a mistake here: meaning, are we about to expand our forces in Pakistan to the point where we offend but not expand them enough to ensure a quick suppression of Taliban/al Qaeda activity? As usual in war, if you’re going in, go in all the way…don’t just increase drone and special forces attacks as there will inevitably be a point where we hit the wrong house/village and we’ll have a lot of dead civilians on our hands.

My worry is that this is going to be yet another half-measure by the Obama Administration – an unwillingness to go all out for victory coupled with an unwillingness to lose. You know, a quagmire…

Ed Morrissey notes a 60 Minutes report about the bankruptcy of our States – that the Day of Reckoning is here. This might have come as a shock to some, but not to me and not to anyone who read this blog, or Noonan for Nevada. I’ve been talking about this for months – but I freely admit that I got my first good look at this issue over at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis as well as some of the articles over at Zero Hedge (both sites have oddball views on some matters, but both also have a highly realistic attitude on economic affairs; I trust economic stuff from them far more than, say, MSNBC or the Wall Street Journal). Some samples of what I’ve been writing about are here, here and here. Nice to see that the MSM is finally picking up on this story – a year or so behind the curve, but what else can we expect from them?

The States have, quite simply, spent themselves in to oblivion – and not only are most of them facing deficits (and some of a quite crushing nature), they’ve also got massive, unfunded liabilities in the form of over-generous pensions to some of the State employees (our cities and counties have similar problems). As Governor Christie puts in the video linked by Morrissey, “we literally don’t have the money” any longer. Its all gone – everything is wrecked and no matter how painful it will be, gigantic cuts in spending will be required.

In fact, the cuts really needed to happen a year or two ago – but various federal bail outs allowed the States to paper over their fiscal cracks and kick the can down the road. The problem is that now its all much worse (more unemployed for a longer time with spreading poverty putting increasing pressure on State and local expenditures at a time when revenues, at best, are just holding steady after precipitous declines) at a time when no more bail outs will be forthcoming – the new GOP-led House simply will not vote themselves in to political suicide by bailing out State and local government.

For some States, this won’t be all that horrible – those States which now have Republican governors coupled with total or partial control of the State legislature by the GOP. It will be a hard road for such States, but they’ll just make the difficult cuts and get on with it. The real problem will come in with those States under Democrat governors coupled with total or partial Democrat control of the legislature – Democrats simply will not want to cut. We can expect that they’ll try various gimmicks to dodge the bullet (the most entertaining bit of this, I think, will come out of California where, God bless the poor people of California, Jerry Brown and the Democrat legislature will try to cover a $28 billion shortfall), but it will avail them nothing. Crunch time is here – you might be able to buy yourself 6 months or a year by fiscal hocus pocus, but no more than that.

We’ll see how this comes out – whether they get it together, or spiral out of control in to our own versions of Greece. The bad news is that the budget cuts will make another hit on employment in America, thus dragging down the economy as a whole, at least in the short to mid-term (economists who are predicting a solid economic rebound in 2011 are either trying to run some sort of scam, or smoking crack). 2011 will be a long but very interesting year – and I have to say, I’m more worried about our economic prospects now than at any time in my life. I wonder if I’ll have a job by next Christmas – or, indeed, if any of those I know will.

From Jim Treacher:

…it’ll give the terrorists yet another reason to hate us. The Gitmo detainees already go out of their minds when addressed directly by a female with her whole face showing. Just think how these 12th-Century dip$#!+s will react when they get their butts kicked by some gay dudes. It’ll just add to the humiliation…

Well, there is that – but to make it really cool, we have to make sure the Islamists know it was a gay man who just handed him his junk on a platter. Pink M-16s? Any ideas?

It is a serious issue – and not given nearly as much attention as it requires:

An Egyptian priest has explained that radical Muslims are trying to rid the Middle East entirely of Christians, who once comprised the largest religious group in the region.

“This is what the Muslim fundamentalists want,” the Egyptian Catholic spokesman Fr. Rafic Greische told Vatican Radio.

“They want the Christians to evacuate from the Middle East and leave. And this is what is happening every day…”

…Egyptian Christians face significant public and private discrimination, including policies that make it nearly impossible for them to build churches. In November, a crowd demonstrating for their right to build a church in Giza clashed with police, who fired on unarmed protesters…

Christians are routinely denied basic rights – and at any moment a Moslem can denounce a Christian to an Islamist court and the Christian really has no chance of defending him or herself from the accusation. Christians are robbed, raped, beaten and murdered. Christian churches and holy sites are desecrated. And no Christian really dare defend himself against a Moslem outrage because that might set off what amounts to a pogrom.

My view is that we should seek separation – set up what amounts to at least autonomous areas where Christians can live under their own laws, and be defended by Christians under arms. This is, I think, the only way to teach the Moslems to respect the rights of Christians…and from respect we can eventually move to cooperation and friendship. But as long as Christians are a despised and powerless minority in the middle east, the Moslem leaders will continue to stir up hatred for their own ends.

UPDATE: The threat sharia poses to our society, internally. Every time an Islamist group gets us to accommodate even the mildest aspect of sharia in our law and customs, it is an erosion of our constitutional republic. This is not like tolerating the peculiarities of Hinduism or what have you – Sharia is a complete world view and even Islamists who are not in any way, shape or form terrorists are determined to impose it everywhere.

The Hill is reporting that Democrats are confident they have the votes to ratify:

Senate Democrats appear to have the nine Republican votes they need to ratify the New START nuclear treaty this week and give President Obama his third major victory of the lame-duck session.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) told reporters Monday afternoon that he would vote to ratify the treaty and also support a motion to end debate, which the Senate will consider Tuesday.

“I believe it’s something that’s important for our country and I believe it’s a good move forward,” Brown said after emerging from a classified briefing in the Old Senate Chamber…

There is still a very slight chance that Democrats will come up short, but it looks like a done deal. My question: why on earth would any Republican want to vote for this? I realize that Democrats, servile and devoted to Obama, will just vote for anything he sends down…but Republicans are supposed to think about things before voting for them. What possible benefit does the United States gain by entering in to an arms control agreement with Russia?

Does anyone fear a war with Russia? Russia has 21 million males fit for military service, the United States has 60 million. Fully mobilized, we’d outnumber them at least three to one, and probably more than that because our much more productive economy can afford to spare more manpower for military service than Russia can. They do have more nuclear weapons in being than we do, but we have more than sufficient to utterly destroy Russia – and what could Russia hope to gain by a nuclear attack on us? Meanwhile, China has 382 million military aged males – which exceeds the entire population of the United States (true, with 40% of China’s population engage in agriculture they can’t even begin to deploy all those men…but if we ever went to war with them, it would be us outnumbered three to one). If there’s any nation we should seek arms control treaties with it is China.

But, even then, when has an arms control treaty really done any good for the world? Arms control didn’t prevent World War Two. Arms control didn’t bring down the USSR. Arms control is only good in theory when a free people is faced with a nation governed by a wicked tyranny – but the tyrants running such governments always cheat on whatever treaties they enter, so there’s simply no point in having them. This START treaty is an exercise in futility – a policy acting in a void; a continuation of something we used to do because our foreign policy “experts” can’t break free of habit and routine.

If we want fewer nuclear weapons in our arsenal, then let’s reduce our numbers. I only want enough to ensure that any possible combination of foreign powers knows that a nuclear attack on us will result in the execution of their nation. Beyond that, I don’t care how many nuclear weapons anyone else has, per se – though, of course, I am concerned when potentially insane regimes (Iran and North Korea, eg) have them. But even there I don’t want an arms control agreement – I want to force them to surrender their nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, by tying our nuclear security to Russia, we are hamstringing our own policy. Suppose, in the future, our nuclear needs require us to build and deploy nuclear weapons not allowed under this treaty? Because we’ve made a deal with Russia, we might not be able to meet threats from other nations. This is just so incredibly asinine – and it looks like we’re going to do it.