If you read this blog regularly, you might wonder why I’ve not commented directly on the fiscal cliff deal reached recently. For starters, I’ve wanted instead to concentrate on some bigger issues—bigger in the sense of greater in scope and fundamental to the innumerable crises we seem to be facing. That’s why I’ve written about the problems in modern Christianity; more correctly, I’m referring to the problems in what is perceived as Christianity in our day. Some of it, however, is a false perception because the supposed Christianity isn’t the real thing at all.

When the real is on the wane, a door opens for all sorts of problems. Spiritual poverty begets moral, economic, and political poverty, to name a few. Our governmental crises focusing on the economy are directly related to our spiritual blindness as a people. That’s why we don’t deliver genuine solutions; instead, we become captive to a false ideology promoted by a highly ideological president. How ideological? An interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner reveals that in his one-to-one talks with Obama, the president stated flatly that we do not have a spending problem.

This is the conclusion of the man who has added approximately $6 trillion to the national debt on his watch. And how does he propose to remedy the situation? Tax more those in the upper echelons of income. What will we receive from this new tax rate on the evil rich people? About enough to run the government for 8 days. Yes, that’s a real solution.

Everyone was so worried. Now they’re trying to believe that something has been resolved. It takes a lot of blind faith to hold that view. No precipice has been avoided, no crisis averted.

Instead, we find ourselves staring into a rather gargantuan black hole—or is it red?

Next we have to tackle the debt ceiling. Obama says he should have unlimited authority to raise that ceiling at will. He also says we need more revenues, which is Obamacode for higher taxes. Republicans have countered with statements that sound good—no more revenues, only spending cuts—but will they follow through?

The task may appear insurmountable. Yet I believe if we can get on track spiritually, hope remains. I am realistic about the odds, but I am never without some hope.

Speaker John Boehner says President Obama “checked out” of being president quite a while ago. Instead, he has been in full campaign mode. He’s jetting around the country on Air Force One, paid for by the taxpayers, holding one rally after another. Of course, at every stop he schedules one event he can claim is policy-oriented. This provides wonderful cover for the real purpose of his travels. Why pay for campaigning with one’s own money when one can use the money provided by all Americans, regardless of political party? And everywhere he goes, the campaign strategy is pretty obvious:

This week, his choice of venue has been college campuses where he can talk about keeping the student interest rate low and blaming Republicans should it rise. Of course, this is a program that is now fully under control of the federal government rather than just guaranteed by the government—another takeover of the private sector, but one that didn’t get the same scrutiny as his healthcare ploy. As he talks to the swooning college audiences, he likes to use the “common touch,” which is really rather a stretch for him:

He seems kind of hooked on that “silver spoon” rhetoric:

Of course the silver spoon comment is directed at Romney—you know, the guy with all the advantages—while our poor, beleaguered president has to overcome tremendous financial obstacles:

I get worried when I see the rapture in the faces of those college students as he speaks. College used to be a place where one learned how to think. I didn’t see much genuine thinking going on. Will the emotion of “hope and change” carry the day again? Well, I’m certainly hoping for a change.

Something happened the other day that has never happened before: when the president wanted to make a speech to a joint session of Congress, he met some resistance and had to change the date on which he wanted to speak. The White House scheduled his speech the same night as a Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library. Spokesmen claim they didn’t intend to stomp on that event, but how believable is that? Really? House Speaker Boehner suggested President Obama switch to the next night. Surprisingly, he agreed.

It’s supposed to be another economics/jobs speech. Most commentators, even some on the liberal side, aren’t expecting much new. It looks to be a rehash of spending programs and minor/temporary stimuli he has proposed before. In other words, he has learned virtually nothing from his own past failures. Expectations aren’t high because it appears he doesn’t really understand the dangers we are facing.

The president claims we are experiencing growth; nearly everyone else examines the situation and calls it what it is—a continuing recession, no matter what some economists might say. Those are the economists Obama listens to, and they want more spending to “create” prosperity. I’ve never understood that logic.

Keynesian economics, which posits that government spending is the engine to jumpstart the economy, contradicts all sound economic reasoning. Government involvement in the economy is the problem, and just making a few minor adjustments is no solution at all:

Economists are very adept at offering theories, but the real world has a way of testing those theories and showing which ones are out of touch with reality:

I’m not saying all economists are wrong or useless. I’m just saying the ones who agree with the president, the very ones on whom he relies, are wrong and useless. Their ideological blindness is killing us.

We’re still waiting for a vote in the House on the Boehner bill. It was supposed to be last evening, but it has been put off, I understand, to tweak it some more. Hopefully, the tweaking that is going on will give it more muscle so that the rest of the Republicans can feel comfortable voting for it. If you look at this whole episode without undue bias, one thing you have to admit, no matter which side you’re on, is that Republicans are certainly working hard on the debt issue. Can the same really be said of the Senate, which has not passed a budget for more than 820 days? Or for the president, who offers nothing concrete, but spends most of his time campaigning and attending fundraisers? I think his tactics are captured rather well here:

There have been some tense moments in the White House briefing room lately, with some reporters apparently growing a semblance of a spine, but overall, the media—otherwise known as Obama groupies—are still in love with their anointed one:

Anyone read the New York Times lately? Be sure you know where to go to find it:

And if you really want to see the true nature of this media, just wait. If Sarah Palin decides to run . . .

Talks broke off again yesterday between President Obama and Speaker Boehner regarding the debt crisis. Obama held a press conference first, claiming the Republicans just don’t know a good deal when they see it. Boehner followed with his own, noting that they were close to an agreement until Obama made a last-minute demand for more tax increases. He still labors under the ideology that seeks to drain as much out of the private sector economy as possible for the benefit of government control. I’m grateful Boehner rejected his “generous” terms.

Of course there’s another reason why the president is anxious to get more money:

The plain fact, though, is he could take ALL the money from every rich person in the country and still not have enough to cover the massive outlay of expenses for which he is responsible. And if he did so, he would undercut all economic growth. He seems bent on continuing his usual pattern:

Amazing, isn’t it, that the media portrays him as the adult and Republicans in Congress as the petulant children? Republicans in the House have twice passed legislation that would be fine steps toward reining in the spending and setting up a more responsible system. How have they been received at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Then there’s that other “remedy” offered by the so-called Gang of Six. Now, there are some good people in that group, such as Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, but their proposal again focuses too much on raising revenue immediately and taking control of spending somewhere down the road—which means it would never happen.

While the fiscal fire rages, and the administration burdens businesses with more regulation and uncertainty about the future, the prospects for recovery are bleak:

Two Democrat big businessmen, one of them the CEO of Home Depot, blasted Obama this week, saying, in effect, he doesn’t know what he is doing. Well, I could have told them that back in 2007 or 2008. Late to the game, but if the lesson sticks, there might be hope in 2012. In November, that is.

The grumbling on the Right is increasing with respect to the budget deal agreed upon last week. At first glance, it appeared that $38 billion was cut from the current budget. That, by itself, was a reduction from the $61 billion the House Republicans had passed.

It wasn’t much of a cut to begin with—consider that $4 billion gets added to the debt each day—but now it’s beginning to look even worse. More careful scrutiny of those cuts reveals most of them are a little phony. Some are budgetary sleight of hand, many are simply unspent funds from this year for certain programs that weren’t going to be spent anyway. One estimate says that only about $14 billion can be called “real” cuts.

Does this mean that the Republican House leadership under John Boehner has been taken for a ride?

I freely admit I’m more than a little disappointed in the results. Within me is a desire to cry, “Where are your principles? Why did you settle for so little?”

Yet there is another side of this that has to be taken into consideration. First, if Republicans had pushed harder, it might have led to that vaunted government “shutdown,” an action that the media would have pinned on the Republicans despite the evidence that the blame rests on the other party. Second, there is still another party in D.C. I wonder if some people have forgotten that Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. Republicans have only one-third of the components of the legislative and executive branches.

It’s a daunting task to get anything done with that kind of entrenched opposition.

Another factor to consider is that this was just the first skirmish in a long battle: coming up next are the debt ceiling debate and the new fiscal year’s budget. Even if Republicans had achieved their original goal of a $100 billion cut in expenditures, that would have been the proverbial drop in the bucket.

I’m not going to rush to judgment and declare the Republican leadership to be devoid of backbone–just yet. Let’s see what future negotiations accomplish. If something is done that deals substantially with so-called entitlements like Medicare, and if they hold the line on the debt ceiling, there is still hope.

President Obama has finally decided to be honest. Ever since he began running for president, he invented the fiction that he was not in favor of homosexual marriage. After all, saying you approve of marriage between two men or two women was not a vote-getter in states where he had to appear as a moderate. Now he has come out of the closet, so to speak.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] against legal challenges. A letter from Attorney General Eric Holder to Speaker of the House John Boehner states that both he and President Obama consider the law to be unconstitutional. Yes, you heard that correctly—defining marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman is “unconstitutional.”

What kind of legal reasoning led to this declaration? According to Holder,

The [legislative] record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships—exactly the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.

Well, I have animus against  the promotion of sexual relations between adults and children. I’m also opposed to human beings having sexual relations with animals. Are those protected by the Equal Protection Clause as well? Should I be ashamed of my blatant stereotyping of individuals who practice such things? Am I a horrible person for expressing moral disapproval of those activities? The slippery slope has never gone away; it still exists, and we are seeing it in operation now.

It’s fascinating how the president and the attorney general have this greater grasp of the essence of our Constitution than the Founders. Apparently their history lessons and legal understanding differ from mine. We must bow to their superior insight and learn to change our views of American history:

In one sense, I’m glad to see Obama show his true colors. His views are now on full display: he approves of homosexual marriage, no matter how he may continue to dissemble. If you are unwilling to defend the traditional definition of marriage, then that means you believe other types of marriages should be allowed.

What’s a little more puzzling is why he decided to take this step publicly. It certainly consolidates his base, but that’s a base that comprises no more than 20% or so of the electorate. I would venture that this declaration of the “unconstitutionality” of heterosexual-only marriage will cost him many more votes than it will win.

What other pronouncements can he make now to rival this one? I suggest he go ahead and make a public commitment to socialism instead of perpetuating the pretense that he is not a socialist. I recommend he state categorically that he wants the United States to be a declining power in the world rather than simply letting the country slip into irrelevance.

Since he has finally decided to come clean on the marriage issue, it’s now time to let the people of this nation know who he really is without the political doublespeak. Of course, I and many others have known all along who he is, but unfortunately, many still have eyes that don’t see and ears that don’t hear.

May that blindness and deafness be cured.