One year ago, in April 2009, the US had a budget deficit of around $20.9 billion; one year later, with the economy fully his administration’s responsibility after a year full of government auto rebates, bailouts of just about everyone but student loan recipients, and the passage of government-controlled health care, and we’re already at $82.69 billion in budget shortfalls … in April, of all months, when the government is typically flush with money from income tax collection.

That’s over four times the budget deficit of a year ago, and one hell of a lot of money. And government-controlled health care won’t even kick in for another four years or so, barring the idiotic measure doesn’t get overturned after Congress and this administration get overturned by voters.

The brinksmanship of the Obama administration has gone about as far as it can go, if it’s ever to swing back around, and word out of Capitol Hill is that Pelosi, Reid and company are readying one final round of new government takeover legislation and tax hikes before Tea Party activists and others toss them all out on their shiny keisters.

That can’t come too soon. We’re barely to the edge of summer and already I can’t wait for November.

The procedure, which strangely is performed without the aid of convex mirrors, is nevertheless a procedural trick called a “self-executing rule” or “deem and pass.”

The upshot is that Pelosi would package a popular set of fixes to the Senate bill – a vote only on those changes – and then “deem” the whole package to be passed by the House. While the procedure has been used in the past, it has never been utilized on such a major, economy-shifting piece of legislation.

Of course, even those popular fixes would not be guaranteed to receive passage into law, as the whole mess can still be messed with in other processes both before and after final passage by President Obama, who has staked so much of his presidency on this thing that at the moment, he’d sign a bill approving the cloning of Adolph Hitler if it meant passing something called “health care reform.”

Most. Corrupt. Congress. Ever.

While this means Dems no longer have unfettered access to the MMF drawer, it by no means diminishes their substantial majority and ability to pass just about anything they want to pass, considering they are nine votes over a 50-50 split even with Sen. Brown sworn in.

Of course, look for Sen. Harry Reid to blame anything and everything that doesn’t work out on Sen. Brown and the GOP from here on out, because, of course, anything short of a “we don’t have to play fair” majority is, for Reid, “a stranglehold on power by the GOP.”

Whatever.

The power-drunk Dem diva said, “Let’s remove all doubt, we will have healthcare one way or another. Certainly the dynamic would change depending on what happens in Massachusetts. Just the question about how we would proceed. But it doesn’t mean we won’t have a health care bill.”

Never mind that most Americans would rather hear William Shatner discuss acne home remedies than hear another presentation on ObamaCare; we’re gonna get it shoved down our throats no matter what, apparently. After all, 59 votes is still a vast majority.

According to RealClearPolitics, Brown currently leads Democrat Coakley by nine points. In liberal Massachusetts. Wow. Of course, it helps that Brown is talking issues while Coakley is mumbling something about handing out Nordic Track promotion codes or some such nonsense.

Levity aside, a nine-point lead could be enough to put Brown beyond the margin of error; all eyes will be on Massachusetts over the next 24 hours or so.

Less concerned with New York jobs than with maintaining a Dem majority, Sen. Schumer has also been quotes in other reports as saying that any state that didn’t get something in the ObamaCare bill “didn’t have a very effective Senator.”

By which he means Republicans, who stood by principal for the first time in maybe a decade or so and refused to play ball with the majority. That’s why the vote was only 60-40.

Of course, the self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet notwithstanding, it’s pretty amazing that with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House, as well as the White House, the Democrats are too afraid of poll numbers to do anything stronger than verbal support of acne treatment to full citizens. Or something like that…

Of course, Nevada is typically GOP territory and Reid has been a business gifts-getting, major ass for the better part of his current six year term, so it ought not be surprising. Tark would best Reid 49-39, while Lowden would get the job done with a closer shave at 45-40.

Tarkanian seems the best bet to overcome any Reid resurgence. Get it done, Nevada GOP! Make it so.

In an incoherent speech that rambled on about the GOP moving “too far to the right” (actually, it’s been suffering a severe leftward drift toward Specter’s side), about the only thing Specter didn’t blame the GOP for was plotting the spread of mesothelioma – and apparently only because his speech writer needed more time.

Considering his voting record, Specter’s switch matters only on paper; as long as Franken prevails in his election fraud victory, the Dems will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for the next couple years. Which is great, when you think about it; no longer can anything Barack does be blamed on Republicans going forward.

This is the Dem majority’s mess, like it or not.

The good news is, Specter was facing a primary challenge from a real conservative in the Pennsylvania GOP, who now should sail to the nomination. And there’s no guarantee the Dems will nominate Specter. Even if they do, let them have him. He’s 79 and shouldn’t be running for a sixth term anyway.

While we’re at it, let’s show the rest of the RINOs in the Senate the door, too; it may bury the GOP in the short term, but it could very well save the party’s conservative soul.

While otherwise acting like mold killer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who bears a distinct resemblance to the hindquarters of his party’s animal symbol, is proving that even in overwhelming victory, the Dems are sore losers.

If the trend continues unabated into the 2010 census, that could mean the loss of one U.S. House seat from the Minnesota delegation; currently, Minnesota boasts eight U.S. Representatives, but that number could retreat back to seven in the next census. Although Minnesota’s population base is growing, it is not growing fast enough to keep pace with the highest-growth states, such as California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina, all of which have grown by 1 million or more.

Louisiana and North Dakota were named as the only states to shrink since 2000; North Dakota’s losses are minor, but Louisiana’s losses numbered nearly 60,000, most of the population shift attributable to the migration following Hurricane Katrina.

Time will tell if Minnesota’s growth is too slow to keep their current Congressional delegation; in the meantime, we need to call back all our snowbirds from their Las Vegas hotel before the counting begins in earnest.

An anonymous House of Representatives staffer recently revealed to NewsMax.com, among others:

“We sometimes have days with just one hour of votes from 3 to 4 p.m. on renaming post offices before calling it a day,” the staffer told NewsMax.

“No votes are scheduled on Fridays this month. And Pelosi hopes to close the House down for the year on Nov. 16.

“Pelosi made a big deal of saying she would make the House work five-day weeks. You can see how long that lasted.”

One has to wonder, with the Dems in control, how long it will be before the days of $6,000 cordless phone battery purchases return with a vengeance.