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Today President Obama gave a press conference, to apply public pressure to Congress (particularly the GOP), so that they will pass a bill providing for both a debt-limit increase and a tax increase.

We should have neither, we don’t need either, and anyone with half a brain knows it by now.

So why is he still pushing for this?

Apparently because he wants to see Americans (including politicians) “eat their peas” — i.e., sacrifice.

In his mind, sacrificing means something along the lines of, “doing things we may not like now, because we know that they will be good for us in the long term.” Much like, well, eating peas.

He wants Americans in general to sacrifice by being subjected to tax increases and, because he knows that the Republicans are opposed to tax increases — some Republicans are actually opposed to them on principle — he wants them to give up their “sacred cow.”

Well, sacrifice is the right word for him to use in this context. Because it would be a true sacrifice — and by this I mean the relinquishment of a higher value for something of lesser or no value — for Americans to pay more taxes, and for the United States to raise its debt limit, when what we really need is for politicians to spend less, and start to phase out the entitlement programs.

Perhaps it’s no accident that Obama used the “eat our peas” metaphor. Peas aren’t good for us, either.

I just watched Facebook’s product announcement. They’re rolling out a few new features starting today. First, a group chat feature, which will allow for real-time text chat among members of ad-hoc groups (think of adding a few friends to a chat session to discuss going to a movie). Second, they are redesigning regular chat to make it easier to use, and also to allow you quickly to send a message to a friend who doesn’t happen to be online at the time you want to chat. Third, they have incorporated Skype into Facebook in a way that makes it super-user-friendly, so that you can now have a video chat, one-on-one, with your Facebook friends. Apparently you will hear a ring when you are getting a video “call”, then be given the option to accept or not. You can accept even if you haven’t yet installed the software, as they say it will download in about 30 seconds. (You can see my twitter feed for more details, as I tweeted the event, real-time.)

I like the company’s focus on ease of use, and on facilitating sharing with others. I also like the fact that Zuckerberg said he wanted to allow independent entrepreneurs to develop most of the apps, as he recognized that they would be able to develop better apps independently than if FB did it all in-house. Zuckerberg is also interested in the sociology of the various forms of interaction that he is facilitating, which is good. I can imagine that there will be many dissertations on these topics for decades to come. Where I disagree with him is in his projection that sharing, on a per-person basis, will continue to grow exponentially, as it has for the last several years. After all, the amount of human attention span and energy is finite. I’m wondering if we’re close to being maxed out on our ability to share, and still lead productive lives outside of Facebook!

Now, to go put on some makeup I guess…

[Update: I thought everyone would have to wait for a lengthy rollout process, but apparently you can try out the video calling feature right now by going to this page in Facebook. Have fun!]

In case you haven’t yet, check out this post by Harry Binswanger, which was published over at American Thinker.

It’s not surprising that George Soros, under the guise of furthering “American Values,” is trying to divide those of us who have as our goal the return to a small, limited government, one dedicated to protecting individual rights. Binswanger’s response is excellent. Regardless of anyone’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof), in politics we need to deal with each other on the basis of reason. So long as we can do that, and no one tries to force his religious beliefs on anyone else, we can work together to oust this blood-sucking Obama Administration in 2012. The question then becomes: which non-Obama candidate is willing to set his (or her) religious beliefs aside in this manner? If a candidate is willing consistently to uphold the principle of separation of church and state, then he can avail himself of all the power of Rand’s moral defense of capitalism in the realm of politics. But if he’s not, then he has made himself vulnerable to the recent attacks by Soros et al.

To borrow from a Duran Duran song title, is there anyone out there?