Late in life, St. Augustine characterized his youthful, wayward ways in a droll prayer: “Lord, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!”

Today, politicians of both parties understand the sentiment.

On Monday of last week, President Barack Obama unveiled his budget to Congress with this nicely worded maxim: “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

Obama proposed a record budget of $3.8 trillion — including a deficit of well over $1 trillion. We can’t keep deficit spending like this, but we keep deficit spending like this.

Talking to reporters, Obama admitted that he and his friends in Congress “won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight.” He cited the need for more job creation as reason to continue to spend so much money.

Money we don’t have. So it will be borrowed. Against future taxes. Or future default.

Sure, the president is proposing a freeze. To start next fiscal year. And he’s proposing a bipartisan committee to cook up some way to balance the budget. The committee hasn’t been formed yet.

That seems like too much procrastination for the state of our nation. I think St. Augustine would agree with me: Virtue is not something you put off until next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last week, two major speeches caught our attention.

Barack Obama wagged his finger at the Supreme Court and orated in front of Congress. He said the state of the union is sound.

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave the other big speech, presenting the new iPad, a portable device that accesses the Web, allows users niftily to buy and read e-books, and much more.

Which speech will usher in real change?

Both have their critics. Many people no longer trust Obama, whether he’s pushing more government or a freeze. And many folks second-guess Apple’s newest project, despite Jobs’s spectacular success record.

For my part, I don’t buy Obama’s agenda. But I probably won’t buy an iPad, either. I tend to regard even the best new tech breakthroughs as just more vacuum cleaners. They really do suck . . . one’s time, anyway.

But to succeed, Apple doesn’t need my excitement. Just enough from others.

Early in each of Apple’s revolutions, it was hard to prophesy success, with certainty.

The neat thing about a possible neo-Gutenberg Age of tablets, e-books and virtual libraries is that I will still be able to read a normal book. One the other hand, if Obama gets his way, his policies will, willy nilly, crowd out better ones.

Still, it’s heartening to realize that to most of us the eloquence of a revolutionary thing means more, now, than the eloquence of any politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

If you can’t pay your bill at a restaurant, management may set you to washing dishes to cover the cost of your meal.

Or so it’s said — I’ve never heard of it actually happening. Clean dishes are a must for serving food to paying customers; restaurants simply can’t wait around to press non-paying customers into service. Instead, they hire folks to do the dishes.

This came to mind when our president and congressional leaders began pushing to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion.

The raise would allow the federal debt to increase to $14.3 trillion, about the size of our country’s entire yearly economic output.

Senator Max Baucus of Montana is all for raising the limit. He says it simply must be done: “We have gone to the restaurant,” he explained. “We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we will pay the check.”

No dishwashing for Baucus.

Most of us avoid Congress’s unseemly situation by looking in our wallets for cash or ready credit before we order the filet mignon, not after we’ve consumed it.

I’m no wizard of high finance, but hey: If we want to stop piling debts onto our children, at some point we will have to prevent our so-called representatives from borrowing more trillions.

Oh, and if a congressman enters your diner, better make him pay cash up front.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up himself and 277 other people on Flight 253 to Detroit Christmas Day. Fellow passengers subdued and disarmed him.

Lessons? Start with the obvious: There are still terrorists in other countries who want to hurt us.

Some will say that we must beef up security. But consider: America’s security state, which has been in alleged high gear (or some bright color) since 2001, has already been beefed up. And yet, once again, this security broke down.

It could be that preventing violence is just not that easy to do. If you have determined enemies who spring up in unexpected quarters, it’s really hard for government to stop them.

Herbert Spencer, a 19th century sociologist, explained it this way: “The law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.”

We cannot expect government to always foresee dangers. We cannot even rely on government to transmit warnings of a specific terrorist from one department to another, and do something about it.

I’m not saying we should expect nothing of government. Just don’t expect too much.

All hope is not lost, however. We have each other. From the heroism of

Flight 93 on 9.11 to this Christmas Day incident, passengers have shown they’re not powerless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The funniest show on TV? Health care reform. It’s a laugh a minute.

More awkward pauses than The Office. The melodramatic back-stabbing that makes Desperate Housewives amusing. Plus, nearly as much deliberation as Wife Swap.

Boy, do we have great politicians. For Christmas they got us much better medical care and at lower cost. But wait, the federal deficit gets reduced in the process. They just vote it into being. Shazam!

How can they do it? By sticking it to the insurance companies!

Funny, the stock prices of health insurance companies have shot up . . . just as this legislation is passing. President Obama brought the House down, in his weekly television bit, proclaiming these bills are “the toughest measures we’ve ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable.”

The more sophisticated humor is how polls show most Americans opposed to the plan Congress rushes to pass. So, who are the beneficiaries? Those who slipped special deals into this 2,000-plus page bill?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that’s what legislating is all about. But giving unfair deals to certain states to entice their senator’s vote looks, well, sorta blatantly crooked. Not to mention fiscally irresponsible. The sale of Senator Ben Nelson’s vote gained Nebraska a Medicare expansion on the federal taxpayers’ tab . . . forever.

The silver lining is that, at the rate they’re going, forever may not be so long.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.