From the Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama reached agreement Monday with Republican leaders in Congress on a broad tax package that would extend the Bush-era income tax cuts for two years, reduce worker payroll taxes for one year and give more favorable treatment to business investments…

It is that bit about the payroll taxes which is the worrisome bit. You see, it is pure Keynesianism – a move designed to spur consumption as a means to get unemployment down. Like all Keynesian proposals, it won’t work – all it will do is add to the debt, and this time by cutting directly in to the already tenuous solvency of Social Security.

It will, of course, be good politics. Just extend the Bush tax cuts and you really don’t get much mileage out of it – no one will notice because tax rates will merely remain as they are. Cut the payroll tax and, presto!, everyone who works gets a fatter paycheck. Trouble is that this will be a direct cut to revenues which means, while we’re massively in deficit spending, it will trigger more borrowing (if, on the other hand, we really had a trust fund and the money was just going in to a bank account – as it were – then temporarily cutting the payroll tax wouldn’t be that bad….but we’re already spending every dime of the trust fund, aren’t we?). We’ll be borrowing more money from China just to keep things going as they are.

This is not a good idea, and I’m a bit upset that my GOP fell for it (probably unthinkingly – we got the Bush cuts extended, and here’s another tax cut…no one, I’m sure, thought this all the way through). It is a time for fiscal discipline – technically, it would be a good idea to reduce income taxes even more, but it can’t be sustained while our government is functionally bankrupt. The reason I wanted the Bush rates extended is because failure to do so would certainly have pushed us back in to full blown recession. Going for happy, feel good tax gimmicks is just not the way to go.

So, I feel half delighted at this – glad we dodged the tax increase bullet, dismayed that we clearly have not learned the lesson of the last five years.

25 statistics about unemployment which will really wreck your day. So, you’ve been warned.

The wrong DREAM.

Everything sucks and it’s still all Bush’s fault. Kathleen Parker says so. What do you think – they might give the “it’s Bush’s fault” meme a rest by, say, 2020?

No, General Petraeus won’t resign. That is good – we need at least one smart guy in proximity to President Obama.

Sarah Palin takes on PETA.

Ted Turner figures that Obama was wrong to press ObamaCare; what he should have done was go after global warming! Some people really do seem to get dumber all the time…this the guy who owns 2 million acres of land and wants everyone poorer than him to limit themselves to two children because profligacy will kill us all…

Because, if you’re a liberal, you can never get too much death and despair in to your policies:

A pro-life organization that monitors end-of-life issues is worried the infamous “death panels” have been added back into the implication of the controversial ObamaCare health care law…

…Last Monday, The Federal Register (page 73406) published a new funding rule for “voluntary” advance care planning consultations that changes Department of Health and Human Services regulation pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid patients, the group explains.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), headed by rationing advcoate Donald Berwick, finalized its 2011 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and rules implementing key provisions of the ObamaCare law. The final update adopts without change CMS’ proposed elements of the first and subsequent wellness visits; however, CMS added voluntary advance care planning as a new element to these annual visits…

The problem? This may be combined with legislative efforts being pressed by the assisted-suicide people to insert such things in to the health care law. There is a two-pronged effort here – those who want to have, eventually, a single-payer plan know that if they don’t off people before their time the whole system will rapidly go bankrupt. In addition to these bureaucratic merchants of death there are those depraved people who feel that suicide is a reasonable solution to life’s difficulties. A twisted alliance is formed, and they will continue to press their case.

This is why I insist upon no truce in social issues. They, on their side, will never back down. It doesn’t matter what else may happen, those who are determined to destroy Judeo-Christian morality will just keep at it. They do so because they have convinced themselves that it must be done – not that its something you may want, but that it must be done. Personally, I think this stems from people who have gone so far in to immorality that they really think that evil is good – but regardless of what motivates them, they will continue to act as if the fate of the world depended upon the destruction of all that is decent and true.

As I’ve said, for right now economic and fiscal issues must take center stage. If we don’t get our financial house in order, all other American issues become moot. But we can never let up on the social issues – vigilance and, at times, a sharp counter-attack will be necessary just to maintain the status quo while we get our finances in order.

You know that big, yellow thingy in the sky? Well, looks like it might play a roll in earth’s climate – from The Sun:

…To simplify, the basis of his theory seems to be sunspot activity, or rather the lack of it. Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the sun’s surface that come and go in cycles.

They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” named after the scientist, Edward Maunder, who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age…

Its already been an extraordinarily cold fall for us here in southern Nevada. While, of course, the UK and northern Europe have been quite wintry, without any winter actually arriving, yet.

The bottom line is that it looks as though the largest thing in the solar system – the thing which emits huge amounts of energy which makes life possible – may actually determine if its going to be hot or cold here on earth. You might have noticed this from time to time. Like when we tilt on our axis and less sun gets here in the north, it gets cold…and then when we tilt back the other way and get more sun, it gets hot. Also, you might recall that it tends to be a bit more chilly on the cloudy days (when the sun doesn’t hit the surface, much) than on sunny days.

At the end of the day, there are so many variables in what determines the mean temperature of earth that to suppose one item – for which humans only provide a tiny increment – could trump all other things is just absurd. Its amazing that anyone bought it – but when you have a massive propaganda campaign from people who want to steal power and/or wealth, strange things can happen…like a dimwit, former VP getting an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.

Even the Washington Post recognizes that the new movie about Plamegate ignores the facts of the true story.

In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

This just goes to show you how the left need Hollywood to distort history in their favor. The left’s version of Plamegate has been debunked so many times, and yet, even now, in 2010, they are trying to sell their version, and hoping the public will pay money to see it on a big screen.

From AP:

Less than a year ago, struggling states and coastal towns saw crude exploration off the Gulf Coast and Atlantic seaboard as economic salvation.

Yet the backlash from the BP oil spill — most recently the Obama administration’s decision this week not to open up some of that area to new drilling — has residents wondering if the industry will ever thrive again in U.S. waters.

Some fear an exodus of oil rigs in search of friendlier waters overseas. And with each passing day, folks that rely on deepwater drilling say the damage is multiplying, creating a ripple affect from blue-collar Main Street to beachside drives. They warn it will only get worse…

Naturally, as this is an MSM story, it has to do something for Obama – so, they talk up how no off shore oil drilling will help tourism; essentially trying to slip in the concept that tourism will get better because of the ban on off shore oil drilling. This is absurd because tourism won’t get any better – at best, it will stay the same. More importantly, tourism cannot replace the production of wealth. A few business well-placed for people to visit the beach will be ok, but unless you have an economy making, mining and growing things, you’ve got nothing…the economic heart is being cut out of the Gulf.

Obama, however, just doesn’t care – he won’t win a single State along the Gulf coast in 2012, knows it, and so is playing up to the environmentalist vote in New York and California. Hard working people can just get stuffed – Obama needs to please well-heeled, environmentally conscious, liberal voters. And that is how Obama’s America works – a place where pure, political calculation to advance a liberal agenda is all that matters.

That is what Obama seems to be demanding in return for not having a massive tax hike on January 1st – from the Washington Post:

…Republicans are demanding that Democrats extend Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels at least temporarily, not just those that primarily benefit the middle class. They are also pressing Democrats to approve a measure to keep the government funded through September, a move aimed at avoiding a fight with the White House over spending that could provoke a government shutdown.

In return, Obama is seeking Republican support for as much as $150 billion in new spending on the economy, including an additional 13 months of emergency jobless benefits and another year of his signature “Making Work Pay” tax cut for working families…

Now, is it worth it? Yes – though we should demand that the $150 billion come out of some other spending and at least press the issue to getting $50 billion in cuts elsewhere. Having a massive tax hike on January 1st could send us straight in to Great Depression – something we’d all rather avoid. We still might get that Great Depression (what with China spiraling in to inflation and Europe on the verge of default), but there’s no sense in shooting ourselves in the foot. Getting the extension is worth a pretty high price – and as our President is a liberal, that price will have to be paid in useless and/or counter-productive spending.

The real battle over spending is for the summer – as we start to work out the FY 2012 budget; in that, we should insist not just upon big cuts in spending, but also on getting the whole budget enacted as of October 1st, the start of the fiscal year. It is in the 2012 budget that we can start to reform America as well as draw a lot of bright lines between ourselves and Obama’s Democrats in front of the 2012 election.

Here we are, Second Sunday of Advent, already. Some how or another, I am tending to remain in very high spirits during this time. It has been a bit of a rough couple years for my family as well as for our nation and world. My guess is that we have all had some great trials of late, and intense disappointments. There is a grim pall over this time, but it hasn’t darkened my spirit. For that I can only thank God – and this prayer from St. Teresa of Avila (courtesy of Catholic Fire) is highly appropriate:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received,

And pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones

And allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

And then there’s this, from Casting Crowns via The American Catholic:

The prisoners control our prisons – likely with the aid of bribed guards. An extreme example of this from NBC Los Angeles:

Charles Manson on Line One.

The murderous cult leader was one of thousands of California inmates busted with a cell phone last year, which he used to call unidentified people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s troubling that he had a cellphone since he’s a person who got other people to murder on his behalf,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections. She added that it is not known if the one-time cult leader, now 76, used the phone to order up any crimes…

A prison should be thus: no television, no radio, wooden barracks for most inmates, concrete cell blocks for trouble makers, no phone communication, all areas of the prison under audio and visual monitoring from off-site locations 24/7, backbreaking physical labor 6 days a week 52 weeks a year from all inmates. Prison guards should be regularly transferred to prevent corruption networks from developing; prisoners should be known to guards only by their numbers.

Under such a regime, Manson wouldn’t be able to get a cell phone – and we wouldn’t have rape, drug abuse, murder and mayhem in our prisons…nor gang lords being able to run their criminal empires from behind bars. Prison is not supposed to be a nice place – it is supposed to be a place where a prisoner has time for really only one thing: thinking about what got him in to prison. The ultimate hope is that the prisoner will finally admit culpability and begin the process of personal redemption – but that is up to the prisoner. Our main concern is that the prisoner be kept away from the public, safe from harm and incapable of doing anything other than thinking about what he did.

We have become a very un-serious society. Creeping barbarism coupled with moral cowardice has led us to a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland world in which welfare recipients and convicted murderers can obtain cell phones while hard working Americans wonder if they’ll keep their job for another month. Revolutionary change is necessary to fix this – and, trust me on this, November 2nd was only the tiniest first step in the journey of a thousand miles. We’ve got a long way to go – and only a limited time to save our nation.

We’d better get ready to put our backs in to it.