Something to Know -

1.  It is a sad situation to have the House of Representatives under the majority control of the Republicans.   The Republican Party has no leader.  Romney should never have been nominated, and now he's gone and we will never see him again.  The Tea Party rabble and Grover Norquist are around just enough to splinter what is left to the point that the GOP is dysfunctional leaderless.   However, there are signs that there may be enough Senate and House Republicans gusty enough to break away, as some have already done to form an alliance with the Democrats to go around the carcass of Boehner and get something done before it is too late.  Even this is an indication that they are not all scared crazy:

http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-worst-congress-in-60-years/

http://www.nationalmemo.com/gop-senators-propose-raising-medicare-age/ 

2.  Stupidity and poor decisions are not the sole property of the leadership of Republican leadership.   Hobby Lobby is a privately held corporation, which is good, since no stockholders are around to accuse the CEO and bring lawsuits.  By not complying with federal law, and knowingly doing so, and being liable for a potential $1.3 million/day in fines, it's not too hard to figure out how long he's going to run the business into the ground.  A competitor, Michael's, is a publicly held company with stockholders, and is in a good position to pick up the business that is left after Hobby Lobby Hobbles its way out.  May be a good buy for those who are interested in speculation:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/28/1378741/hobby-lobby-ignoring-court/

3.  As this column points out, Obama is setting the stage for the Republicans to be the point of focus the success or failure.  If the Republicans insist on protecting the uber-wealthy, while everyone else pays higher taxes, and all of the unemployment checks, that are keeping people from going under, cease.....each and every GOP legislator will pay the pain:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/28/obama-to-gop-last-chance/?print=1

4.  In all of the talk going around on guns and violence and the connection to mental illness, it is hard to be optimistic.  If it isn't the shootings, it's people setting homeless people on fire as they sleep on benches, or others shoving subway riders onto the tracks of approaching trains.   Is it that we are a sick bunch of people, or is it that a few sick people can expend very little physical action and do great damage in a very short period of time?:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/opinion/nocera-guns-and-mental-illness.html?ref=opinion&_r=0&pagewanted=print

5.  The demise of the Tea Party is at hand.  It has given the Republicans the misfortune of being hijacked and ruined all in the span of about 7 years.  Although the original grass root Tea Baggers have not fully realized it, they are in desperation and as they have been dumped by their former billionaire donors, they are running out of money to sustain themselves.  The resulting current mess in the House Republicans is responsible for the dysfunctional inability to lead or legislate anything.  As soon as they are out of the way, maybe an actual governing Congress will return:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-worst-year-in-washington-the-tea-party/2012/12/28/f41da4d0-4f8b-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_print.html

--
Juan

"Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe."
       -- Jackie Mason

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together."
       -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position."
       -- Pat Conroy

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
       -- Bill Watterson