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.™

It’s a balanced approach!

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.

In November, I said I was supremely uninterested in the details of fiscal cliff negotiations. Why?

Because as a resident of California, I have seen this game played before, and I already know how it’s going to end.

There will be plenty of drama and fiscal cliffhangers. There will be rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.

And then, in the end, we will arrive at a Solemn Agreement to Tackle This Problem Head-On . . . next year.

The details of this agreement will be a matter of intense interest to the same group of politicos who discussed polling every day during the presidential election and never really discussed policy.

Meanwhile, our massive government debt bubble will continue to grow, and nobody will show the slightest bit of interest in letting the air out.

Who is to blame? Those awful politicians in D.C., right? Certainly not the American people. Except that anybody who tried to tackle spending would get voted out of office instantly. I am no fan of David Brooks, but in the round table after Obama’s absurd Meet the Press appearance, once Brooks was finished with the mandatory Republicans Suck speech, he had a good point to make:

The big lie in this whole thing is that we have got the sensible country with the dysfunctional Washington. The reality is we have a country of people who want to bankrupt their children to spend money on themselves, and they will punish any politician who prevents them from doing that. And therefore they will punish Republicans if they– if they cut entitlements. They will punish Democrats if they cut entitlements. So what you saw today was the president shifting the attention from debt reduction to tax cuts, which is the easy thing.

You can blame the spineless politicians all you like, and I will happily blame them right along with you. But the fact is, this giant pile of irresponsible debt is what this increasingly soulless and immoral country wants. The longer we do this, the more we are wrecking our children’s futures. And tra la la, nobody seems to care. We’re going to “get the millionaires who are doing pretty well to do a little more,” to use the Huckster in Chief’s well worn phrase, and meanwhile the do-nothings who contribute zero to our society get to keep sucking on the socialist teat. And this is what we want, as a country. This is what we voted for.

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.

That’s where we are on this first day of 2013, folks. Our children’s futures are wasting away in front of our eyes, and nobody gives a damn, as long as we can keep injecting those sweet, sweet government benefits into our bloodstream. Just close your eyes and feel the calm wash over you, and try not to think about the small child gasping for air at your feet.

Ahhhh. Doesn’t it feel good, folks?

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: Thanks to Allahpundit at Hot Air for including a passage from this post as one of the Quotes of the Day.