By all signs, Americans are preparing to send Washington a clear message in the 2014 elections.

The question is, will Washington listen?

Republicans - poised to take control of Congress - should set our sights on three big goals to make Americans feel confident in their futures once again: jumpstart the economy, safeguard constitutional liberties, and strengthen our national security.

Here are ten critical priorities for the 2015 Congress:

First, embrace a big pro-jobs, growth agenda.

For six years, the Obama economy has been trapped in stagnation, hurting millions. A Republican Congress should immediately help Americans get more jobs by embracing America's energy renaissance.

This means passing legislation to make it easier to build energy infrastructure, such as the Keystone pipeline. But, we need an energy policy that's bigger than Keystone.

An effective energy plan would also protect innovative energy technology, such as hydraulic fracturing, from being handcuffed by the federal government. We can also open up land for exploration and ensure that American companies can export liquefied natural gas around the world.

And, lastly, stop the EPA from implementing rules that will destroy coal jobs and drive up our electricity bills.

Second,

These are the two most common accusations the Left hurls at the Right.  It's what psychologists call "projection" - accusing others what you are guilty of.  Let's take them one at a time, then see how they are connected.

To understand how the Left is racist, we'll do a thought experiment by asking: What if Obama were white?

Let's suppose that his bio is exactly the same, except that his Kenyan father was white.  Kenya, of course, was created by white British colonialists at the end of the 19^th century as the British East Africa Protectorate, and renamed the Crown Colony of Kenya in 1920.

So - flaming Marxist anti-Western Civilization self-hating white guy, community organizer who never had a real job, professional Alinskyite agitator turned professional politician with absolutely no business or executive experience whatever, freshman Senator with no legislative accomplishments whatever, no real intelligence, just a pathological narcissist with a shrewd manipulative cunning behind a glib voice and flashy smile.

Would anyone in the Democrat Party, the Enemedia, the Moonbat blogosphere, Academia, or the public at large have paid any attention to this white guy's running for president - much less clamored for him to do so or swooned when he did?

Of course not.  The only, single, solitary reason anyone paid any attention to Obama is that he's black.  His candidacy, his election, his presidency is entirely racist.  America has a Racist Presidency because he wouldn't be president if he were another white guy, albeit with exactly the same bio.

[Letter to the Wall Street Journal]

This is in response to "Our Incompetent Civilization" by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens.

Mr. Stephens ascribes failures to profile Moslems at airport security, think rationally about climate change, or eliminate Somali pirates to "civilizational incompetence."  Such failures are not due to a lack of ability but to a lack of will.  It is not civilizational competence that we lack but civilizational confidence.

On the same day as Mr. Stephens' article (01/04/10), Der Spiegel ran an editorial bemoaning the lack of Western outrage at recent Moslem attacks on Danish cartoonists who caricatured Mohammed.  It was entitled, "The West Is Choked by Fear."  But fear of what?

Whatever that fear is of, it is the cause of our collapse of civilizational confidence.  Please allow me to identify it.  It is the fear of envy.

Amid the current maelstrom of war, disease and politics, you might have not been paying much attention to bitcoin, the electronic form of money favored by radical libertarians and drug dealers. Yet it is possible that when the history of these days comes to be written, bitcoin's story will loom large.

Unnoticed except by the tech-obsessed, the technology behind bitcoin may be slowly giving birth to a brave new world, with eventual implications well beyond money.

So argues Bitcoin: The Future of Money?, a new book by Dominic Frisby, a columnist for MoneyWeek magazine published in Britain.

Frisby makes the case that it is just possible that bitcoin and its rivals - known as altcoins - and the "blockchain" technology that lies behind them have the potential to spark a radical decentralization of society itself. They could change the way governments finance themselves, make banks redundant and transform the ways companies are run.

If he is right, then the founder of bitcoin will take his place alongside the great inventors. So who is he?

I want to wish you the Merriest of Christmases today, Wednesday December 25, but according to the song, the First Day of Christmas is the day after Christmas, December 26.

Ancient Christians celebrated "The Holidays," as our militant secularists insist on referring to them now, starting with the day after the birth of Jesus and ending on January 6th with the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:11 known as the Epiphany. Start with 12/26 and end with 1/6 and you get: the Twelve Days of Christmas.

You may be really tired of hearing Christmas songs by now, including this one, yet you may still be wondering what the heck partridges in a pear tree and eight maids a-milking have to do with the birth of the founder of Christianity.

So I thought we might take a break from Serious Thoughts About World Events, and take a look at the song's origin, meaning, and myth.