Trifecta: it’s the Trillion Dollar Coin infomercial they don’t want you to see.

Honestly, I have never had so much fun at work, ever.

As if anyone needed yet another reason to like David Bowie.

Also, he just released his first new album in ten years, and I can’t wait for my copy to arrive. He turned 66 today.

Here’s the current status of the debt ceiling negotiations:

President Obama will not call for Senate Democrats to pass a budget in exchange for a debt ceiling hike, his spokesman said while refusing to say if a budget is important to managing the nation’s financial affairs.

“Congress — the Senate, the House — should act to raise the debt ceiling,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today during the press briefing. “This is not a negotiation the White House is going to have.”

Asked if the budget — which has not been passed in over three years — “is more important than ever,” Carney replied, “That’s a question for the Senate.”

Right now I want to hear more about how Obama and the Democrats are the grownups. Because laughter is the best medicine — unless you have Percocet or Valium or something.

This is unpossible! We raised taxes on the rich! And yet:

The CBO in its January 4 press statement (The “Fiscal Cliff” Deal) declared that Congress’s January 1 agreement will “produce (ten year) deficits that are smaller— but only by $0.7 trillion to $0.8 trillion.” Thus we face annual deficits of $920 to $930 billion even, in the unlikely case, that sequestered spending cuts go into effect and Obama Care’s costs come in on target. Continuing as is means trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

That’s Paul Roderick Gregory, writing for Forbes — which I rarely read anymore because so much of it is the worst sort of link-bait. But he goes on:

As we barrel down the road to fiscal ruin, Obama shows no interest in reforming the entitlements that are driving the crisis. He demagogues those who propose to control discretionary outlays, and he diverts blame to others: “Everything would be fine if the rich pay their fair share,” he repeats, while knowing the U.S. taxes its rich more heavily than any other country.

Obama’s indifference to the looming debt catastrophe could have two explanations (We rule out that Obama cannot do arithmetic. He claims he “can do the math.”)

First, “Politician Obama” understands the magnitude of the crisis, would like to do something about it, but is unwilling to come clean for purely political reasons.

Second, “Ideologue Obama” wishes an unaffordable European entitlement state as his legacy. We will have to pay for it with new taxes at a future date. Americans would reject this outcome now, but maybe not after they are hooked on universal entitlements.

There are two other possibilities, actually. One is that Obama simply doesn’t care. He’s a progressive Democrat, and will drive the gravy train full throttle, and hope he isn’t still at the controls when it inevitably derails. Honestly, I think he’s if he prays at all, it’s for a Republican to succeed him after 2016. Just like Bill Clinton’s Community Reinvestment Act was the time bomb which proved the final undoing of George Bush, Obama’s deficits could prove the final undoing of the entire GOP.

(That the GOP is happily helping him along is a discussion for another day.)

And the final possibility, discussed here and elsewhere many times before, is that Obama is a Marxian dedicated to the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

So we have four choices. Which is it? I dunno. I spent quite a few words trying to unravel this “Second American Sphinx” back in May, and came to the conclusion that it’s impossible to come to a conclusion regarding the motives of the 43rd President of the United States.

That’s a very strange thing to have to write.

The trillion-dollar coin: “Good luck with that.”

If you’re old enough to remember the Swine Flu Epidemic, you’d probably rather forget it. The 1976 epidemic was so serious, President Ford made a big deal of publicly getting his vaccination, and about a jillion doses were ordered up. Then flu season hit and one person died of it. Another 25 people died — of side-effects caused by the vaccine.

This year’s epidemic is worse. I know; I’ve had this thing. I also had my shot, but this year’s shot doesn’t cover this year’s big bad flu. The first couple days were so bad I was pretty much non-functional. The third day was such an improvement, I managed somehow to put on a coat and tie and tape a week’s worth of Trifectas — and have zero recollection of having done any of that. It’s like an entire productive workday simply exited my brain.

Actually, “productive” is too strong a word. I tried watching one of the segments from that week, but had to turn it off because I don’t like how I look or sound as a high-functioning zombie.

Thing is, that was exactly three weeks ago, and my voice still isn’t all the way back. My lungs and sinuses keep producing just enough crud to keep me sounding like a cross between Guy Smiley and Jennifer Tilly. And that’s just wrong.

This is one nasty bug, and before you ask — yes, I had a ten-day round of Ceftibuten, which I think is somewhere above azithromycin but below Cipro. Powerful stuff in any case.

So when you read that Chicago hospitals are turning away flu patients because they’re out of room, remember that this isn’t one you can just pin on Chicago’s typical dysfunction. This flu gave me a one box a day Kleenex habit for a solid two weeks, and I’m still going through the stuff like, well, tissue paper. I can hardly begin to imagine what it must do to folks who are older or not in as good a health to begin with.

If there’s a message buried underneath all the mucous, I suppose it’s this: Don’t catch it. But if you do, get to the doc immediately.

I totally forgot to link to Hair of the Dog yesterday afternoon.

So, uh, here you go, if you’d like to have some fun at the expense of Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Operative George Stephanopoulos, and Both David Gregorys.

Is should that be “Davids Gregory?”

Trifecta: Ring in the new year with the new year’s stupidest new laws.

Talk about burying the lede.

Barrack Obama: “We don’t have a spending problem.”

Oh. OK then. My bad.

It’s been a busy day of make-beleive, going from fiat-fiat-fiat money all the way to fiat governance. Wynton Hall has the latest:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly told President Barack Obama that he would back the president overriding congressional authority and unilaterally raising the debt ceiling.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was more forceful: “I’ve made my view very clear on that subject: I would do it in a second. But I’m not the president of the United States.”

That last line has already given me several nearly-orgasmic shudders of relief, but it’s not really germane to the story. The story is that the two highest-ranking Democrats in each chamber don’t give a good got-dam about the rule of law, so long as the gravy trains run on time. And if that means a one-man junta? So be it.

It’s time we realized there’s no more gravy and the train is ready to derail.

I am filled with shame for not having seen this one coming:

Paul Krugman, the liberal economist who pens a widely read column for the New York Times, on Monday joined the calls for the U.S. to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin as a way around the debt ceiling.

In case you missed it, yes, there have been calls for the Treasury to mint itself a platinum coin, stamp a one and a dozen zeroes on it, and call it money. Yes, Tim Geithner has the Constitutional authority to do so. Yes, he’d be removing a trillion dollars from productive use by the stealth tax of inflation.

To date, most of the idiots and vile progs (but I repeat myself) hopping on this particular bandwagon have been low-level blogger types. Like me, but viler and even dumber. Now they have Paul Krugman on their side, which will drum up big support in Blue States where political idiocy is what people have with their coffee every morning.

Is there an end to the madness? Absolutely there is. Probably nothing short of the economic ruin of the nation. Maybe nothing short of its political ruin, too. But, yes, there is an end to it. And if you look closely, you can see it just over the horizon.

RELATED: You know when you’re three years old, and you pester your parents with silly what-if questions? “What if the sky was made of lizards?” “What if gravity worked sideways?” “What if Chewbacca and Bigfoot got married?” Well, no three-year-old ever came up with a question as outlandish as this one:

But were President Obama to take up the oddball suggestion gaining traction online to skirt the Congressional debt-ceiling debate by having the Treasury mint a $1 trillion coin, some American’s mug would be memorialized as the richest head on earth.

But who is worthy of such a sum, as well as the deft political maneuver of depositing the massive coin with Federal Reserve?

May I suggest that, instead of an American, we emblazon the Trillion Dollar Coin with the smiling face of Robert Mugabe?

Of course, Carter only had four years to wreak his havoc, but thanks to the exploitation of those low-information voters, Obama and his pals will get eight. Here’s what’s in store next:

Democrats say they want to raise as much as $1 trillion in new revenues through tax reform later this year to balance Republican demands to slash mandatory spending.

Democratic leaders have had little time to craft a new position for their party since passing a tax deal Tuesday that will raise $620 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

The emerging consensus, however, is that the next installment of deficit reduction should reach $2 trillion and about half of it should come from higher taxes.

The cuts won’t happen. Bas as the GOP is, the progressive Democrats are functionally unable to cut spending. Expecting them to cut spending is like telling your dog to balance your checkbook: He’ll look at you blankly then go back to licking himself.

But they sure know how to tax the ever-loving life out of stuff, and they’re just getting started.

It’s official: Nobody likes Bandar Assad’s “peace” plan for Syria.

The fighting has been so bitter and gone on for so long now, the question is no longer one of who will rule Syria when it’s all over. The question is how many countries will occupy the space still labeled “Syria” on the map?

And if anyone will effectively rule or govern them at all.

A liberal talks sense about guns and gun control.

My buddy Bruce Carroll, aka GayPatriot, is bringing Match Game back for radio. We taped a pilot episode a couple weeks ago, and it went pretty well. Tomorrow night, we’re taping the real deal.

Fun lineup of panelists, featuring Breitbart chief Larry O’Connor, CDN’s Michelle Ray, Ace of Spade’s Gabriel Malor, Breitbart reporter Mary Chastain, Right Hook’s John Brodigan, and your friendly neighborhood VodkaPundit.

Real prizes, real cocktails, and hopefully some real laughs. Full details at GayPatriot.

It’s almost as if Democrats just rush through legislation without really thinking about it first. Read:

According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), automobiles are almost completely recyclable, down to their engine oil and brake fluid. But many of the “Cash for Clunkers” cars were never sent to recycling facilities. The agency reports that the cars’ engines were instead destroyed by federal mandate, in order to prevent dealers from illicitly reselling the vehicles later.

The remaining parts of each car could then be put up for auction, but program guidelines also required that after 180 days, no matter how much of the car was left, the parts woud be sent to a junkyard and shredded.

Shredding vehicles results in its own environmental nightmare. For each ton of metal produced by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds of “shredding residue” is also produced, which includes polyurethane foams, metal oxides, glass and dirt. All totaled, about 4.5 million tons of that residue is already produced on average every year. Where does it go? Right into a landfill.

CARS was a bad law for other reasons, too. It hurt the poor by removing almost a million not-so-old used cars from circulation, raising used car prices. Poorer folks had to hold onto their older cars, longer. And it was bad for driver safety as well. Newer cars have more and better safety features. They also have newer brakes and all the rest. Cash for Clunkers raised the average age of the used car fleet, which again mostly affected the poor.

What it did do was provide a nice tax incentive for well-to-do people to trade up sooner than they might have, but without the safety and price benefits that would normally trickle down to used-car buyers.

It’s obvious what we need here, and that’s for Congress to pass a law against unintended consequences.

Here’s an article about how to remove Google+, but you have to be logged on to Google+ to read it.

Needless to say, I can’t vouch for how well it works.

Hat tip, the Bearded One.

Or perhaps not:

On Tuesday, California released a report that revealed state tax revenues have plummeted even further below Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) estimates, even after residents voted to increase taxes via Proposition 30 in November’s elections.

At the end of November, “taxes were 3% short in the fiscal year that started in July,” which is “a gap of $936 million.” The state was 0.7% short a month before.

California voters are getting the government they demanded — good and hard.

Trifecta: Put down that Shakespeare and pick up Executive Order 13432, because the Obama Administration is forcing public school English teachers to drop the classics in favor of government pamphlets.

Seriously.

I haven’t found it unusable the few times I’ve been forced to work with it, but this video sure does a fine job of explaining how poorly conceived and executed W8 is.

The socialification of search continues:

Google Inc. is challenging Facebook Inc. by using a controversial tactic: requiring people to use the Google+ social network.

The result is that people who create an account to use Gmail, YouTube and other Google services—including the Zagat restaurant-review website—are also being set up with public Google+ pages that can be viewed by anyone online. Google+ is a Facebook rival and one of the company’s most important recent initiatives as it tries to snag more online advertising dollars.

I noticed this on YouTube a few weeks ago when I was trying to reply to comment left by a vile prog on one of my PJTV segments. I’d deleted my Google+ account not long after I’d started my Google+ account, because it was a difficult to use, boring to maintain, and filled with annoying email alerts I could never seem to turn all the way off. But when I tried to comment on YouTube, Google popped up a challenge window informing me my comment wouldn’t be published until I set up a new Google+ account.

No. Way. José.

So I set up a dummy Gmail account for dialing into the weekly Trifecta conference call using Google Voice. That mailbox isn’t tied to anything, I haven’t used it for shopping or search or social or anything — and yet it’s filled with Google+ alerts.

But wait — it gets creepier still:

Some users of Google’s services are startled to learn how far the integration can reach. Sam Ford, a 26-year-old Navy petty officer, says he signed up for Google+ on his smartphone because it would let him automatically upload new photos to a Google+ folder—one that he kept private. Later, he says, he was surprised to see that his Google+ profile page—which includes his name—was tied to a software review that he wrote recently on the Google Play online store.

Google is “trying too hard to compete with Facebook, and if people aren’t going to share willingly, they’ll make them share unwillingly,” he says.

I started using Bing not long after Google turned Image Search into an unusable mess. But then Microsoft turned Bing’s image search into an even unusabler (shut up — it is so a word) mess. DuckDuckGo is great in the non-creepy way Google once was, but it’s limited pretty much to text searches. So when I need to grab stills or video, I have to slink back into Google’s or Bing’s haunted castles.

It makes me feel old to realize I’ve been on the internet so long, I can remember when the creepiest things on here were the users.