Hey, it’s a better idea than anything we’ve heard from Obama:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler has an admittedly “out of the ordinary” solution to the coming fight over the debt ceiling.

“There is specific statutory authority that says that the Federal Reserve can mint any non-gold or -silver coin in any denomination, so all you do is you tell the Federal Reserve to make a platinum coin for one trillion dollars, and then you deposit it in the Treasury account, and you pay your bills,” Nadler said in a telephone interview this afternoon.

I asked whether he was serious.

“I’m being absolutely serious,” he said. “It sounds silly but it’s absolutely legal. And it would normally not be proper to consider such a thing, except when you’re faced with blackmail to destroy the country’s economy, you have to consider things.”

The one thing you can say is, it’s an approach with a proven track record in other countries. (Of course, that track record is one of hyperinflation and economic misery. Details.)

I actually own a $100 trillion dollar note. It was given to me the last time I ever saw Andrew Breitbart, about a month before he died — and when he saw it he pulled out his own $100 trillion note, which he said he carried with him at all times in his wallet, as a reminder of what happens when a country resorts to hyperinflation to settle its debts.

Because our $100 trillion notes were, of course, from Zimbabwe. And didn’t things work out great in Zimbabwe?

Hats off to Rep. Nadler for his seriousness on the budget discussion. And rest assured that other Democrats, including President Obama, are every bit as serious as he about fixing this problem.

Thanks to Hot Air.

Conservatives started this year badly, learning the news that their representatives had failed them on the fiscal cliff deal. We are once again kicking the can down the road, and watching seemingly helplessly as the politicians in D.C. squander our children’s futures.

We have tried going the traditional route: voting for “conservatives” like Mitt Romney, or ensconcing “conservatives” in the Supreme Court like John Roberts. Obviously, this path is not working. Most of us feel frustrated. The politicians in D.C. — and, let’s face it, the general public — don’t see the crushing debt as the problem we do. They don’t see the abandonment of the free market as the problem we do. They don’t see crushing regulation, increased taxes, and overweening socialism as the problem we do.

We want to do something. But what?

This is the time of year when people set New Year’s Resolutions. I suggest that, this year, you set your New Year’s Resolutions according to principles of conservatism — or, if you prefer (as I do), according to principles of freedom.

Take actions in your everyday life that will promote freedom in this country, in small ways. What am I talking about? Here are some ideas:

1. Stop giving aid and comfort (your hard-earned dollars) to the enemy. Why is anyone spending money on the New York Times? Why is anyone spending a dime on the Los Angeles Times? Why spend money for HBO? Stop giving money to the enemy and redirect it more appropriately.

The long-time reader who gave me the idea for this post told me the following story. He was at a drug store and started to pick up a copy of the New York Times out of habit. Then he thought better of it, and decided instead to pick up some markers that his young daughters could use to color with. Now, he tells me, his daughters are happily drawing away with “the markers that the New York Times bought them.”

This year, you will not give these people a cent. You will take the money you save and give a third to your children, a third towards daily expenses, and a third to a conservative charity. Not one dime to the people who spend their days propping up a huckster who is trying to run your children’s finances into the ground.

2. Promote the free market. Take some action to educate yourself and the people around you about the free market. Send three people a copy of a book by F.A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell. Listen to the EconTalk podcasts by Russ Roberts, a hard core free market economist who explores how society would improve in countless ways if we stopped trusting government and started trusting people to make decisions for themselves.

3. Learn more about firearms, and/or spread the word about them. Buy a friend copies of a book by John Lott. Go to a shooting range. Buy a high capacity magazine before they get outlawed! Buy a gun, if you are ready. It’s a serious decision, but even if you’re not ready to take that step, you can become educated about firearms.

4. Tell five friends about your favorite conservative blog. It doesn’t have to be this one, but whatever it is, find a post you really like and send it to five friends who should give the blog a try. We are the check on the liars in the media, and we could use the help. Don’t forget to buy your Amazon products through widgets like the one on the sidebar, too. (And many thanks to people who have done so.)

5. Take a strong stand in favor of free speech. I suggest making a donation to FIRE. Buy a copy of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, by Greg Lukianoff, the president of FIRE. I stress that FIRE is not a conservative organization but a free speech organization. But conservatives should be as concerned as anyone about efforts by colleges and universities to indoctrinate our children. This is about as an important an issue as anyone can imagine. Our children’s education is truly central to our future. The place to donate to FIRE is here. I just sent them $50 myself. Send them something today.

I’m sure readers will have ideas of their own. Leave them in the comments!

If you care. I don’t, really.

A couple of days ago, I envisioned the following editorial cartoon to summarize the fiscal cliff deal, as well as the debt situation this country faces:

In the editorial cartoon I envision, a child is lying on the ground dying. On the child are the words “our children’s future.” Obama is a doctor, stethoscope hanging from his neck, standing over the dying child who needs CPR. Obama is handing out heroin to onlookers so they won’t notice he’s doing nothing to save the child. Every so often someone says, what about the child? and he starts making speeches about how we need to save the child, but it needs to be a balanced approach. We need the rich people to give us more heroin, so I can have time to save this poor child. What I won’t do is cut off your heroin just because the fat cats want to keep it all for themselves. And everybody in the crowd applauds and takes more heroin, and passes a law that the rich people need to give them more heroin.

Meanwhile the child is dying right in front of this crowd and nobody cares because they’re all too high. And you can tell they’re going to keep ignoring the child and getting high until the child is dead.

After I wrote that, a reader submitted this image to me:

Obama, the Entitlement Pusher

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

The reader wishes to remain anonymous, obviously because of how racist this all is.

First we had the ObamaPhone.

Now, the ObamaPad?

It goes without saying that even noticing this story is racist.

From the Vice Presidential debate:

MS. RADDATZ: OK, on to taxes. If your ticket is elected, who will pay more in taxes? Who will pay less? And we’re starting with Vice President Biden for two minutes.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: The middle class will pay less, and people making a million dollars or more will begin to contribute slightly more. Let me give you one concrete example: the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. We’re arguing that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should be allowed to expire. Of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, 800 million — billion dollars of that goes to people making a minimum of a million dollars.

Isn’t he the guy who negotiated this fiscal cliff deal with Mitch McConnell? Why, yes, he is. And was he pushing raising taxes only on people making a million dollars a year? Why, no, he wasn’t.

But of course, asking these people to stick with their promises is asking too much, isn’t it?

[Guest post by JD]

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. . . . Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Senator Barack Obama, 2006

Now, he refuses to debate the debt ceiling, and is proposing new tax increases, and taking investments off the table in spending debate. They are just getting started.

– JD

Because the Senate is the Great Deliberative Body, that cools the passions of the electorate and carefully weighs decisions of great moment.

The U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to approve legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff despite having only 3 minutes to read the 154-page bill and budget score.

Multiple Senate sources have confirmed to CNSNews.com that senators received the bill at approximately 1:36 AM on Jan. 1, 2013 – a mere three minutes before they voted to approve it at 1:39 AM.

The bill is 154-pages and includes several provisions that are unrelated to the fiscal cliff, including repealing a section of ObamaCare, extending the wind-energy tax credit, and a rum tax subsidy deal for Puerto Rican rum makers.

Reuters has more detail on the goodies crammed into the last-minute legislation:

But senators also extended higher rum excise taxes to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and provided tax breaks to a wide range of other groups and interests, including motorsports entertainment complexes and mine rescue teams.

Among the other sweeteners:

* special expensing rules for certain film and TV productions

* tax-exempt financing for New York Liberty Zone, an area around the site of the World Trade Center.

* extension of American Samoa economic development credit

Thank God, we avoided the dreaded Dairy Cliff:

Also tucked in the bill, known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, are measures to avert the so-called “dairy cliff” – a steep increase in milk prices that would otherwise take place this year.

The measures would extend farm subsidy programs and prevent dairy subsidies from reverting to 1949 levels, which would have meant retail milk prices could have doubled to about $7 per gallon.

All hail government subsidies, without which we would be subjected to the working of the free market.

The composition of every post is becoming an exercise in making it to the end without using profanities.

House caves as well:

The House gave final approval Tuesday night to a bill to rescind tax increases for the vast majority of Americans, but only after a day of closed-door debate among Republicans, who were forced to allow a vote on a compromise many in their party disdained.

The final tally, 257 to 167, included most of the chamber’s Democrats and fewer than half of the Republican majority.

The deal, largely negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), had passed the Senate early Tuesday morning. It blocked income tax hikes for roughly 99% of households, but allowed rates to rise for those with incomes above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples.

Buried in the L.A. Times story is the depressing news that ought to be the lede: this crap will increase the debt $4 trillion from the “fiscal cliff” option.

The official cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office also added to the misery Republicans felt. The tax increases and spending cuts in the fiscal cliff would have sharply reduced the deficit — too sharply in the eyes of most economists. By comparison with those measures, the Senate-passed legislation would make the deficit worse by nearly $330 billion for the 2013 fiscal year, and just shy of $4 trillion over the course of the next decade.

My favorite movie of all time said it best (language warning):

UPDATE: The roll call. My hero Tom McClintock refused to take a bite.

(Note: “The Power of the Jump”™ is a semi-regular feature of this site, documenting examples of the Los Angeles Times’s use of its back pages to hide information that its editors don’t want you to see.)

I have not written a “The Power of the Jump”™ piece since 2010, but it’s time to resurrect it. The main page of the Los Angeles Times recently featured the following story:

“was shot when officers” . . . dot dot dot. Gee, what comes after that phrase? Here it is, complete with extra space and missing period — and relevant facts:

A man who was fatally shot by a Moreno Valley police officer while lying on the ground handcuffed has been identified as an 18-year-old Ontario resident

Authorities on Saturday said Lamon Khiry Haslip, 18, of Ontario, was shot when officers . . .

Here’s where the story broke on the front page. If you click, through, you see the rest of the sentence:

. . . noticed that he had a handgun.

There’s more:

At the time, Haslip was lying on the ground and handcuffed, but officers said that he had rolled on his side and one “officer backed away from the subject and announced that the subject had a gun,” according to a press release from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

. . .

When the officer attempted to stop the vehicle, Haslip allegedly attempted to flee on foot. The officer captured Haslip and placed him in handcuffs on the ground, police said.

A second officer arrived just before the shooting. The officers reported finding a gun in Haslip’s possession.

Studies show most people don’t click through from the Internet’s front page (or turn to the back pages from the front page of the increasingly irrelevant print edition).

This is how editors gin up outrage where none (or little) would exist — if they told you the whole story up front.

Enjoy . . . the Power of the Jump.™