[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So around 9 p.m. Obama is going to make some kind of speech on the so-called debt crisis.  That title is deliberate because I am about to share some facts on this whole silly debate which will expose that this isn’t about the debt.  It’s about our spending.

Of course it is worth noting that right now the Federal Government is taking in more than enough to actually make every single payment on the debt.  Let me express that mathematically:

Debt payment < total monthly income of the federal government.

You see right now that money that the government is garnishing from your wages?  They are getting that.  And in my case, and the case of everyone else I know, that amounts in significant part to an interest free loan in that they always take too much and give me back some of my money in the form of a refund at the end of the year.  Kind of them to do that, huh?

(note: I am being sarcastic.)

For instance, right now they estimate that the Federal Government will take in about $2.6 trillion dollars in revenue this fiscal year.  And how much do we have to pay on the interest this year?  $386 billion.

So the debt crisis?  It’s completely illusory.  The only reason why we are having a crisis is because of this:

Debt payment + Spending > total monthly income of the federal government.

That’s it, that’s all it is.  If you take out the spending we have no trouble paying our debts.  And smarter people than me have crunched the numbers and pointed out that you could still for social security, national defense, and still make the payments.  Which is why part of me says, f— it, no deal, no debt limit increase, no how, no way. It’s time to starve the beast.

Anyway, so Obama will continue this bogus debate tonight.  He will pretend to be fiscally responsible (while defending his desire to spend beyond our means), and he will claim to be a grown up, when nothing could be more child-like than to be completely unaware of where money really comes from.

And I invite you to sound off on the subject.  As if you needed any encouragement from me.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Posted by Karl]

What would be the political implications of a deal for a short-term hike in the debt ceiling? The following tweets from Jonathan Alter, Nate Silver and Mickey Kaus shed light on the gap between the establishment media’s narrative of the debt ceiling fight and political reality: (more…)

…here’s a New York Times article to start the ball rolling.

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

I missed the part where those bloggers advocated shooting and killing dozens of people — I had this impression they were against mass murder — but I admit to being fuzzy on the details.

UPDATE: Robert Spencer on being blamed for inspiring the murderer:

If I was indeed an inspiration for his work, I feel the way the Beatles must have felt when they learned that Charles Manson had committed murder after being inspired by messages he thought he heard in their song lyrics. There were no such messages. Nor is there, for any sane person, any inspiration for harming anyone in my work, which has been consistently dedicated to defending human rights for all people.

Thanks to aunursa.