(Obama's New Year's resolution is to avoid or otherwise circumvent Congress's, and by extension, the people's wishes in order to maintain the appearance of presidentiality and enhance his re election prospects. What say? All Hail Julius Ceasar! or simply Sieg Heil!
Notice how the members of the journolist, the LA Times and Google represented here, don't hesitate to pile onto the story extolling the message that their God, their Messiah, is "Free! Free! Free at last!)
"Reporting from Honolulu— Heading into the new year, President Obama will insist that Congress renew the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012, but will otherwise limit his dealings with an unpopular Congress, and instead travel the country to deliver his reelection message directly to voters, a White House aide said.
"In terms of the president's relationship with Congress in 2012 — the state of the debate, if you will — the president is no longer tied to Washington, D.C.," spokesman Josh Earnest said in a news briefing in Honolulu."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-plans-20120101,0,2595075.story
"HONOLULU (AP) — Leaving behind a year of bruising legislative battles, President Barack Obama enters his fourth year in office having calculated that he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda and may even benefit in his re-election campaign if lawmakers accomplish little in 2012.
Absent any major policy pushes, much of the year will focus on winning a second term. The president will keep up a robust domestic travel schedule and aggressive campaign fundraising and use executive action to try to boost the economy.
Partisan, down-to-the-wire fights over allowing the nation to take on more debt and sharply reducing government spending defined 2011. In the new year, there are almost no must-do pieces of legislation facing the president and Congress.
The one exception is the looming debate on a full-year extension of a cut in the Social Security payroll tax rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Democrats and Republicans are divided over how to put in place that extension.
The White House believes GOP lawmakers boxed themselves in during the pre-Christmas debate on the tax break and will be hard-pressed to back off their own assertions that it should continue through the end of 2012.
Once that debate is over, the White House says, Obama's political fate will no longer be tied to Washington."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iZ_Jql9kz_Sw-SYyykhypesEHdDg?docId=2d937a2b9f3741bb963e5092b70637be