Barack Obama reached the high point of his 2nd term just 19 days before he is sworn-in for his 2nd term.  The passage of Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill will be the zenith of his remaining 4 years in office.

Obama will sign nothing of substance into law unless conservatives in the House of Representatives  --  who suffered a temporary setback on the first day of 2013  --  approve of that law. 

Indeed, Speaker John Boehner will not allow any major legislation that conservatives do not approve of to reach the House floor after the fiasco which occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives last night.  In violation of former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert’s rule of not bringing to the House floor any major legislation which does not have a majority of the Republican majority approving of the legislation, Boehner caused the Republicans in the House to suffer a major defeat. 

Boehner managed to get only 85 Republicans to vote for Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill. An overwhelmingly majority of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats (172 out of 188 voting Democrats) voted for Obama’s tax increase bill.  It was a stunning defeat for Boehner’s leadership style.   

Just when you thought that some of the European countries were gaining some economic commonsense and rejecting the disastrous path which bankrupted Greece took  --  with attempts to balance their budgets and cutting some of their bloated government programs  --  one of the major European nations went even further to the left this past weekend.  Incredibly, French voters elected the Socialist Party leader, Francois Hollande, as their president over the “conservative” President Nicolas Sarkozy who broke many of his campaign promises made five years ago when he was campaigning for president. 

After his victory on Sunday, the socialist Hollande actually promised that he would institute far more government spending programs to turn the French economy around and increase taxes on  --  altogether now  --  “the wealthy.”  Hmm.  Sound familiar?  Barack Obama instituted a whopping one trillion (with interest) dollar spending program shortly after he was inaugurated and then rammed through Congress:  the multi-trillion dollar ObamaCare.  Of course, Obama’s trillion dollar “stimulus” was an abject failure just as French president-elect Hollande’s socialist programs will be. 

Is It Over? 2009?  Really? MilesTonesTake
By Rev. Austin Miles
 
Today, I finally stuck my head out of the covers to make sure. It is no longer 2009?  Phew!  What a strange year!  A family in New Bedford, Massachusetts returned a library book that they had borrowed and kept for 99 years after the due date. The title? “Facts I Ought to Know about the Government of My Country.” So it was a book about how to understand how our government works. The borrower probably spent the whole 99 years re-reading it and still couldn’t figure out how the government works.  D.C. Congressmen and Senators seem to have the same problem….Much more coming including a notable quip about the Tiger (obviously not made out of) Wood and the quip was made at a Senior Citizen’s Bible Class of all places!
 

Interesting tid-bits in the wake of Tuesday's election...

Election already having consequences for Obamacare?

Maybe.  The Hill reports that Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) on Wednesday indicated that he was opposed to the House version of Obamacare: "I oppose the creation of a new government-run public option and continue to have serious concerns about its unintended consequences for Missourians who have private insurance plans they like. I remain concerned about the bill's impact on rural hospitals and doctors."   The dominoes may be starting to fall.

Super stimulus...saves more jobs than actually exist!

Beware all ye who doubt the power of the super stimulus.  The Associated Press documents the proof. 

President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

From the "who didn't see this coming" department, we find out that
the administration that promised us great leaps for governmental
transparency...to say nothing of the extra steps they promised to take
in order to sell enough members of Congress to pass the stimulus
boondoggle...has failed to deliver.

Via the Denver Post: 

The
goal was to build a reporting system that allows the public to follow
the zigzagging paths of dollars awarded under the $787 billion federal
stimulus package. A financial GPS of sorts. But despite federal
lawmakers’ pledge of transparency, the final stages of most
money trails, along with key information about job impacts, will remain
invisible to users of the Recovery.org website when it debuts next
month.

Only details of a stimulus grant’s passage
through its first two stops after it leaves the federal government must
be reported, according to guidance memos from the White House Office of
Management and Budget. That means billions of dollars will be
untrackable and thousands of recipients will be left unidentified
through the database, officials acknowledge.

As if Barack Obama's trillion stimulus legislation (which includes interest on the $787 billion final bill) was not enough, Americans found out today that the Democrats' health care legislation  --  which greatly increases government intrusion into Americans' health care  --  will cost American taxpayers another trillion dollars during the next 10 years if it is passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress this year.  This is what the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the Kennedy/Obama health reform bill will cost in a letter to Senator Ted Kennedy today.  

These two one-trillion dollar Obama programs are on top of the nearly 1/2 trillion onnibus bill passed to fund Obama's government until the end of this fiscal year.  Obama's first deficit is estimated by his administration to be $1.8 trillion, but many economists believe it will actually be a gigantic $2 trillion by the end of this fiscal year.  Obama has quadrupled the deficit and quadrupled the debt according to Sean Hannity on his show tonight on the Fox News channel.  

Incredibly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is talking about passing yet another stimulus bill, after just spending $1.2 trillion -- not including hundreds of billions of dollars in interest passed on to future generations -- for a stimulus bill and a FY09 omnibus bill, both signed into law by Obama. The latter bill, with some 8,500 to 9,000 pork projects (which Obama promised to end during his campaign) was signed into law without anyone looking on in the White House today. Could it be that he had a slight tinge of guilt?

Americans are becoming sick and tired of the Democrats' spending and borrowing which will hurl future generations into bankruptcy. First was the $700 billion Wall Street bailout which Obama voted for and, unfortunately, President Bush signed into law. That was followed by the Obama so-called "stimulus" bill with hundreds if not thousands of pork projects; the Obama FY09 omnibus spending bill with the thousands of pork projects, and next on Obama's agenda, his gargantuan $3.55 TRILLION budget for fiscal year 2010. Republicans say that the Obama budget spends too much money; taxes too much, and borrows too much.

Out of 535 members of the United States Congress, only 3 Republicans (all liberal Republicans) voted for Barack Obama's so-called "stimulus" bill, H.R. 1, the Democrats' number one bill for the 111th Congress and for Obama's presidency. That means Obama's Democrats now own 99.4% of the American economy and will be responsible for the expected decrease in America's gross domestic product and the continued unemployment. Even Democrat policy analysts predict this if Obama's stimulus bill becomes law.

Indeed, the stock market experienced a Great Crash today after the Democrats passed their pork-filled non-stimulus bill which will cost the American taxpayers way over $1 trillion (including interest.) The Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly dropped a whopping 400 points.

At Obama's press conference, the Associated Press reporter who asked the first question of the evening, actually asked a reasonably tough question asking whether or not Obama is talking down the economy with his Cassandra-like talk about catastrophes if Congress does not pass his bill. Obama, in his answer to her question, referred to Japan's "Lost Decade" and that America is in danger of duplicating that.

Senator Jim DeMint sponsors amendment to Obama "stimulus" bill, with co-sponsor Senator Sam Brownback, which deletes the prohibition of grant money from being spent on facilities that are used for "sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity, or in which a substantial portion of the functions are subsumed in a religious mission" - DeMint Amend. Loses 43-54 Last Night - Democrats' goal is to put people of faith at yet another disadvantage

Examples of pork and non-stimulus items in Obama's "stimulus" bill includes $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts which has funded works such as "Piss Christ", $45 million for fish passage barriers and ATV trails, $2 billion for national parks, $1.2 billion for "youth activities", $448 million for a new Dept. of Homeland Security headquarters, $850 million for Amtrak