They won their first nine playoff games together, and six more since. But they also lost five playoff games, to the Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants, Baltimore Ravens, and New York Jets. These five teams are the reason why the Patriots have not yet seen their fourth title, and that debt must be paid.

Michael Corelone had the five families. The Patriots have the five ... um, winners. The story of this Super Bowl is not just about revenge against the Giants any more than the end of The Godfather was about Al Neri killing Don Barzini. Four of the five "winners" had a chance to go all the way this year, and should the Patriots win the Super Bowl, they will have directly ended the seasons of all four of them.

The fifth -- the Colts -- obviously had no chance to go to the playoffs this season, winning only two games. It's a far cry from the 2006 season, when Payton Manning and the Colts won a Super Bowl after handing the Pats' their worst playoff loss ever: the Colts down 21-6 at halftime, Manning steamrolled the Pats' D in the second half for a 38-34 victory.

So not only did the Pats beat the Colts in 2011 (a feat duplicated by many others), but they have a chance to win the Super Bowl in the Colts' own home stadium, with Brady using Manning's locker more than Manning has this season, capping the Colts' worst season in recent memory.

Then there's the last team to beat the Pats: the Jets, who drubbed the Pats in last year's divisional round. The Jets went 8-8 this season and missed the playoffs, but had the Patriots not beaten them, they would've gone 10-6 and won the Wild Card. But the Pats can only beat three teams in the playoffs this year ... so the Jets had to be knocked out before the playoffs.

Then there's the Broncos. The Pats fell apart in that 2005 divisional round, so it was priceless this season for them to end Tebowmania in December, then again in January.

The Ravens destroyed the Patriots in the 2009 wild card game. It hurt. This year, they had perhaps their last chance for Ed Reed and Ray Lewis to win a Super Bowl. That's gone, and in spectacular fashion: missing a last-second chip shot field goal.

Finally, we have the other New York. After they ruined the Patriots' "19-0" in the 2007 season -- and beat the Patriots again in 2011 -- all that's left now is to "Moe Green" the Giants.

The 2011 season is the time to settle all family business.

I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own: nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

There's so much wrong about this it is hard to know where to begin. I could talk the fact that the things she talks about that make it possible for people to conduct business -- other than the military -- represent a tiny fraction of the actual spending of the government. I could talk about how her argument -- even though she says we should be allowed to "keep a big hunk" of our own money -- has no real limits. I could talk about how the rich already pay their fair share, paying a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.

But I want to be clear: the biggest fundamental flaw here is that rich people actually are the ones who gave all of that to us moreso than the other way around. Most revenue comes from rich people. They gave us roads, they gave us public education, they gave us police and fire and military. Rich people paid for -- far more than the rest of us put together -- everything the federal government does. The top 5 percent pays over 60 percent of all federal income tax. The top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all federal income tax.

And instead of thanking Mitt Romney, and other people in the top 1 percent, who pay about $800 billion in income taxes every year (not including the income taxes paid by their employees), and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Warren and others on the left attack them as though they've done something wrong.

Granted, some a very small number of rich people don't pay their fair share. They dodge taxes and take subsidies and don't pay a higher effective rate than you and I do. But overwhelmingly, most of them do pay more than us, in both dollars and percentages. A lot more. They are the reason we have the government services we've got, and Warren pretends that these people, who are objecively the greatest contributors to the services she mentions, are somehow merely beneficiaries who are stealing from the rest of us.

Senator Lisa Brown said the other day, "to reach the ultimate goal of amply funding basic education as we've now defined it is going to require a new dedicated revenue source."

She's a liar. She knows this isn't true. She knows the state can cut existing programs to pay for whatever they think they need for basic education, and she knows that it's not education that would require additional revenue, but all those other programs that the state's constitution says are not the "paramount duty" of the state.

We do not need to increase any taxes, let alone come up with new revenue streams, to cover basic education. This is a fact. It's other programs that would "need" additional revenue, and instead of lying and saying she wants that money for education, she should be honest and say precisely what other programs she wants that money for. The constitution says it's not for education.

See, no sane person would want to raise taxes to pay for art at a halfway house for child molesters, so the Democrats have conducted a strategy of cutting the most popular programs first, in the hopes that popular support will swing toward increasing taxes. So far, it hasn't worked, but now that the Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that public education is underfunded, that may change.

Resist. Demand cuts in other programs. Demand that education be cut last. And if your local politicians tell you we need to raise taxes for education, call them out on their lies.

Now, granted, I think any decision that says schools are underfunded is completely wrong. It's a given that better education can always be provided without an increase in funds. I am completely unconvinced that education is actually underfunded, though I would agree that the students aren't getting a sufficient education. But this is beside the point, which is that if more money is needed, we already have that money, in all of the other places where it is being spent that are not the state's paramount constitutional duty.

And while you're at it, demand that our state return to priorities-based budgeting. Every item gets a priority, and we spend revenues on the top priorities first, and when we run out of money, we stop. We don't cut top priorities. We don't fight over what to cut during a recession. We only fight over what the state's priorities are, and then they are laid out for all the voters to see. This is how families budget, this is how businesses budget, and this is how our state should budget.

Of course, this makes no sense: from everything we know, Benjamin Colton Barnes was a fugitive, heading to the mountains to evade capture from another shooting crime. There's no reason of any kind to think he would have obeyed a law that said he couldn't bring his guns into the park, any more than he obeyed the laws that said he couldn't murder Anderson with his guns. It's insanity. It's not even within one of the possible realms of reality. There is not a criminal like him on Earth, ever, who would have been stopped from entering the national parks with his weapons before the new law that was passed in 2010. Indeed, there's a strong chance he didn't even know what the law was, because -- simply -- he has no reason to care what the law was, since he would have no intention of following it regardless.

Maybe I am being too hard on Wade. Maybe he's senile or somesuch. But my experience with anti-gun folks tells me that they will use lies and extreme language to exploit gun tragedies to suit their agenda, so I won't assume he is disabled, and call him what he appears to be: a scum-sucking liar.

Rick Larsen, who beat John Koster by only two percent in 2010, was given the 2nd District by removing almost all of its rural areas. Similarly, Dave Reichert's 8th District was made more rural, solidfying his chances of reelection. So the 1st District -- which has no incumbent, as Jay Inslee is running for governor instead -- picks up the rural areas of the 2nd, and some of the more urban areas of the 8th, and kept some of its existing urban areas. And the new 1st happens to be where Koster, 2010's toughest challenger, lives.

Interestingly, although Koster (a Republican) has an Arlington address, he lives outside the city, in the unincorporated area northeast. Larsen also is originally from Arlington, though currently "lives" in Everett. Yet commissioners saw fit to put Arlington -- where Koster beat Larsen by double digits -- into the 2nd. It seems to me like it's a bit of a poke in the eye to Koster by Democratic redistricting commissioner Tim Ceis.

The most offensive part of the redistricting to me, however, is the new map for the ninth, which was carved out deliberately to give "ethnic minorities" a majority. I can't stand this sort of institutional racism.

Yes, I called it racism. This district is designed to get an "ethnic minority" candidate elected. Oh, they don't say it outright, but it's obviously true. They say they want to "[encourage] people of color" to participate, make them "feel their votes matter -- that they have the ability to swing future elections," and that the new representative will "be a champion for their interests." I happen to think that voting for someone -- even in small part -- based on ethnicity is racism. And the Redistricting Committee is making it a part of our electoral institution. So it is, indeed, institutional racism.

Granted, the extremely pale incumbent, Adam Smith, is going to be on the ballot in 2012, but the proponents of this district believe it will become more "ethnically diverse" (read: "nonwhite") in coming years, so when Smith is gone, they hope to replace him with an "ethnically diverse" (I mean, "nonwhite") candidate.

Y'all don't think the proponents of this new district will be satisfied if they continue to be represented by Adam Smith or some other paleface, do you? If they would be, then why bother with an "ethnic minority" district in the first place? It's obvious that Smith can be a champion for their stated interests: comprehensive immigration reform, and disparities in education and health care. So why is this change so important, since they already have someone who is working for their interests? Obviously their interests are not merely in the issues, but in actually having a nonwhite representative.

So if they think that voting based on ethnicity is important, then if no white candidates runs in the new 9th District (in the future, since Adam Smith is running in 2012), I am considering doing so myself (even though I am not certain I am actually white, I appear that way to most people), just to give white resident-citizens of the 9th a choice that the designers of this district map seem to think is so important.

I do not believe that there is any value whatsoever in grouping voters together by race. Some race-lovers may disagree, but I know plenty of conservative "ethnic minorities" who would rather live in a conservative district than a left-leaning one, regardless of its ethnic makeup. Playing to race just further instills in us that "people of color" are different than people of ... white? Non-nonwhiteness? No color?

Honestly, I don't even know what the hell these race-lovers are talking about half the time. But as for me and my house, we will ignore whatever color you think you are and I am.

The Republicans are in the same, swift, boat now. They too are in favor of the policy (extending the payroll tax holiday), for even longer than the Democratic proposal. But because they want it to work differently, they are getting accused of being against the policy altogether. Now, some of them are against it, but there's a majority of both parties sufficient to pass it, if they could work out how to pay for it.

The only difference with Kerry is that there was a majority of both parties who got it passed without him, so the policy moved forward without jeopardizing the timeline. But the timeline is upon us now, and the House Republicans had no more time to get a better bill now.

Of course, this bill lasts only two months. I wonder if this wasn't planned by Boehner, frankly: he waits for the conservatives of his party to go home, he strikes a deal to pass it without them, they return next year angry and ready to fight, and they get a better deal for the remainder of the year. People are saying Boehner and the Republicans lost big here, but I'm not so sure. Yes, they take a small and temporary hit from people who are lied to into believing that they were against the payroll tax extension, but if they can pull off a better bill in two months, that will be quickly forgotten.

It's funny to me that so many people are accusing Boehner of being short-sighted, but they themselves can't see that just two months down the road, Boehner has an opportunity to turn it all around.

Now, on its face, the latter argument seems silly. If I can get some equipment for $10 million, but it will only provide me $10 million in revenue over its lifetime, then that obviously makes no sense. But if government will give me a $5 million tax credit for it, well, now it might make sense for me, depending on what other costs are associated with it.

But it also makes no sense based on the other behaviors of government, in particular the tax code: most of the tax code is designed to manipulate private behavior, whether it's through encouraging home ownership, or charitable contributions, or changing the windows in your home. So on the one hand the politicians use public policy every day to manipulate behavior, and then when it gets to the point that those policies become uncertain, they tell us that their policies don't affect behavior.

Actions speak louder than words: if they ever get rid of all of these manipulative features of the tax code, I'll believe them when they say that they don't believe policy affects behavior.

She would likely tell you that we need more revenues to continue to make that ample provision the Constitution requires. In fact, what the Constitution requires is, essentially, to make ample provision for education first, and pay for everything else afterward. So if anything else is being funded, then they have literally no excuse for not making ample provision for education. No extra revenues are required, as long as other expenditures exist.

The Democrats are trying to get kids and parents and teachers to hate on the Republicans and others who don't want to raise taxes, and to convince them that supporting tax increases is the only way to fully fund education. They are counting on you to be ignorant of their constitutional obligations. Don't let them get away with it!

But for the life of me I don't understand the hubbub over this Freddie Mac thing. Yes, it paid him a lot of money for his insights, whatever they may be, but there's no evidence he ever tried to convince legislators of anything on its behalf. And there's no evidence that their money influenced his own views or criticisms of the institution. It seems to me if anything that people should be upset with Freddie Mac for wasting its money on Gingrich.

And while I have some admiration for Michele Bachmann's tenacity and values and intelligence, my view of her character has taken a recent hit when she tried to convince debate viewers that the proof that he was "influence-peddling" was that he "took the money." So if you take money for A, that means you did B? Heck, taking money for A doesn't even mean you did A, let alone B. It's utter nonsense, and she knows it.

[Edited to change "Fannie Mae" to "Freddie Mac."]

The Obama administration apparently didn't even mean it when -- almost two years after the plant was announced -- they said Boeing broke the law in opening a plant in South Carolina. They dropped the lawsuit today, even though nothing changed about that plant since the lawsuit was announced. But Boeing did agree to open its next plant in a union state, and suddenly the South Carolina plant doesn't violate the law?

All along, Obama was just using the threat of a frivolous, but expensive, lawsuit by the federal government to force Boeing to go to a union state with its next facility.

This is part of why the health insurance lawsuit is so important: Obama and the Democrats literally believe they have the right to force anyone to do anything, as long as it has to do in some way with "commerce." Fire your CEO, cut these benefits, increase those benefits, set your prices, build your plant here, provide this service and these products.

It's total insanity. They literally have no right to do any of it.

Obama said just yesterday, "I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes as long as they live. How could it be that the only time there's a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class families?"

But, unfortunately, Obama is lying. They took no such pledge, and there is no "catch." The oath Obama refers to for members of Congress very explicitly does not cover the payroll tax. It reads:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and

TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

It only refers to the federal income tax, and deductions and credits on that tax. The payroll tax is separate and not addressed, in any way, by implication or otherwise, in the pledge. This is intentional. If you read the state versions of the pledge, they refer to all taxes, but the federal version is only about the income tax.

Obama and his people are smart. They know this. They are just lying.

A few other points on this payroll tax thing are worth noting:

First, the Democrats have tremendous gall to say that the Republicans should oppose a tax increase on fundamental principle now, while at the same time saying they are just going to increase that tax in the following year anyway.

Second, the Democrats have for years attacked anyone who called preserving an expiring cut a "tax increase." Now they are using that phrase for that purpose every other minute. Of course, some Republicans have switched their language too, but I've not seen one say that it is wrong to call it a tax increase, as the Democrats have done for years. I've actually been called a liar by leftists, several times, for saying that allowing a tax cut to expire is a tax increase. I've not seen any of these same leftists call the Democrats, like Obama, liars for the same language. Funny that.

Third, this is not paid for. Anything that takes ten years to pay for, won't be paid for.

Fourth, it's just bad policy, even if it were paid for. We should be reducing income tax, not payroll tax. Payroll taxes are what pay for Social Security and Medicare, the two most serious financial liabilities our country faces in the future, both of which are in serious trouble. We need to address those entitlements as wholes, and not monkey with it for short-term political gain.

Fifth, and most importantly, the Republicans should address all this by proposing income tax reform that will lower tax rates, or provide deductions/credits, at about the same level as the payroll tax holiday, but will be permanent. That will effectively demolish the dishonest Democratic argument that the Republicans are against helping the middle class, while highlighting that Republicans really believe that the payroll tax holiday is just bad policy. Given the lateness of the hour, maybe concede to a six-month payroll tax extension while the income tax reform is worked on.