what an enormous plunge we're about to take next year into a seemingly endless abyss

[Soylent Brice]

with the amount of damage and disruption the repukes were able to do during 2 years of the WH, senate, and congres under our control, i just can't imagine how much damage the repukes will do starting next year.

i can't help but laugh at our folly.

the repuke party was on the brink of collapse. they were self-imploding. we steamrolled in 2008, and wow, what a squandered opportunity.

just wow.


DADT being repealed will be probably, IMHO, the most significant thing to happen in the last couple of years if they can even pull that off. bush tax cuts, um, yeah, as usual the rich will get what they fucking want. Social Security cuts, fucking seriously??, a debt commission? where the fuck was that in 2001?? 2003??? health insurance reform? uh, what the fuck happened to health CARE reform??????

i voted, i donated, i've phone banked - in CINCINNATI - which is like bashing my own skull with a hammer. i'd seriously have better luck finding Hoffa then getting through to the majority of the folks around here.

i mean, all i'm asking for is a representative that's not afraid. Grayson was a great example.

he introduced a ton of shit, public option, medicare buy in, financial reforms. he fucked with the repukes and rubbed shit in their faces. he made a fucking stand and told them to go fuck themselves. and yes he got voted out, but he got voted out along with a larger majority of dems who were moderates who rolled over, didn't do a god damned thing except fight with their own party, drag their feet, and side with repukes. at least grayson made a stand, and that's all i'm asking for. make a fucking stand. i would rather see reps get voted out that at least made a stand, and tried to make a real difference. it's not like we'd be any better off, we still lost the damn house. if more reps had been like grayson they could have had the support they needed to pass what we the american people really needed.

somewhere, anywhere, at some point or another they're going to have to make a stand or it'll just be more of this cyclic bullshit.

they were never going to work with us, and if we somehow get the house back again any time soon they're not going to fucking work with us then either. not now, not ever.

this whole thing has been like a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.


to top it off this whole thing with wikileaks. imagine my surprise when i come here and actually read posts saying that what Manning did was somehow a bad thing.
what in the world could be better than exposing the corruption that is taking place worldwide? seriously?

i mean, okay, if he so unpatriotic let's round up these folks and throw'em in Leavenworth too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_whistleblowers

minus Linda Tripp who can stay in whatever hole she crawled into.


what shambles we're in. simply dumbfounding.

i hope everyone knows what to expect the next 2 yrs, because if you think you've seen obstruction now, just wait. we haven't seen anything yet.







:rant:

deep breaths, deep breaths...

[greymattermom]

1. Driehaus

Thanks from a Driehaus supporter from Kansas. Hard to explain but true.

[truedelphi]

2. Lewis Black explained this all several years back -

"So the Republicans get in and they are amazed that they did, and they don't know what to do, so they all take a big step forward and take a big crap.

Then the American people get totally disgusted. So they go and vote the Democrats in.
But the Dems are also amazed that they got in, so they just spend several years moving the crap around."

That is pretty much the entire cycle of American politics.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[littlewolf]

5. LOL thanks ... true ... but gotta laugh .....

[thunder rising]

3. Obama had as much political capital as Bush on 9/11. Bush pushed his ageda, Obama compromised it

away. What a shame. Better luck in the next life ...

[RainDog]

4. Obama is a fucking waste of opportunity. but he'll have a fine retirement

too bad the rest of the nation will be suffering for his "bipartisanship."

[truedelphi]

6. Boy does your post nail it to the wall. n/t

[FirstLight]

7. don;t worry about the cyclic bullshit

Corporate interests will continue to sell us out, and the whole affair will jsut implode...no more elections necessary

I give up too...right now i am just trying to survive in my little struggle-rific corner of impoverished unemployment hell
3 kids, single mom, $615 a month
ya, i am not happy that the guy i voted for turned out to be someone else once in office.
ya, "he's gotten a lot done,"
blehblahblah

point is - many of us only had a short list of things we THOUGHT we would have seen action on

(prosecuting Bush for war crimes was on my list)

for all the executive orders chimpy enacted, i have not seen the man i elected act as if he had any fucking POWER at all
I am pissed
deflated
demoralized
destitute
and really, really OVER it all tonight

sick of looking for work, sick of taking care of anything, screw it all...

:cry:

[lonestarnot]

8. If it wasn't so not fucking funny, it would be almost comical. Gualls my ass to have to think about

how it's all come down.

[TxVietVet]

9. Obama and the Dem stooges need to wake up.

None of those bastards are supporting or defending us.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. I've been frustrated that way since 2001, when the Dems rolled over

and voted for the Patriot Act.

Now, most of them are experienced legislators, and so they should have smelled something fishy when the Patriot Act (all 100+ pages of it) was ready to be voted on less than a month after 9/11.

As a translator, I know how much time it takes to translate 100 pages, much less write it from scratch, much less write it in leak-proof legalese.

At the time, I knew a retired attorney who had been an adviser to the Oregon legislature. I asked him if it was possible to get a complex bill written from scratch in less than a month.

He said absolutely not. The only way they could have the Patriot Act ready by October 5, 2001 was if they had it mostly written in advance.

That's right. It had to have been written in advance.

And not ONE Dem said, "Hey, wait a minute!"

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. And hardly anyone at the time or since has pointed that speed out.

First thing I asked Mr d was ..how the hell did that bill get written so fast?

It was obvious they had it ready to haul out.

Which makes a lot of things obvious.

Then TARP got passed, over the objections of most of the people in the country.

That's when I knew we were screwed.

Well, that and Off the Table Pelosi.

So comes the dawn of 2009 and I think...dare we hope?

Turns out

[bigtree]

11. we're in the shape we're in now because more people voted republican last election

. . . and the fact that Democrats never had a majority of 'Graysons' to advance a progressive agenda.

In many ways, if you give Grayson a pass for proposing things that went nowhere, you also have to allow that the President and responsible Democrats were subject to the same obstructive forces which were made even worse in the last election.

I expect our party to go into a familiar role of barely holding back the mostly conservative legislature's corporate and warmongering attempts to hijack the budget and agenda. We have the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Presidency to advantage us in that effort; albeit with the same lack of a progressive majority which would endeavor to do more than just hold the line.

I do think most of the despair around here is a result of a short-sighted perspective of our political system which has always had to manage an undulating political balance and the challenge of reconciling a profound divergence of interests and views of legislators from many diverse regions of the country.

Politics is a hard slog. We do what we can out here to advance our interests or concerns into action or law using our individual votes, our advocacy, and our activism. That's never been a guaranteed prospect and I suspect it never will be.

[BeFree]

15. But of course

Politics is hard work.

And they are working hard to screw us and the country.

Just look at the 'political system' from 2001-2006. So much stuff got done. How?

By ganging up and busting balls. Too bad it was mostly wrong, but it showed what can be done.
Figured Obama was gonna learn how to do politics in this modern era. All he had to do was look back and see how.

I guess, tho, Obama is just looking forward to when he can retire safe, sound and richer than ever.
Just like most politicians. Face it, we are so fucked it ain't funny. It's over. Peace.

[Fgiriun]

12. I sometimes wonder...

if the struggle is worth fighting. Who can we trust? And can we trust one another? Conservatives and right wing libertarians have absolutely no problem with that train of thought because as long as one of their flag bearing knights have the power they are content, regardless of their deplorable condition. At its core I believe that our fight does not rest along ideological lines as much as with the economic system itself. We must resist the growth of this inherently aberrant system and ultimately abolish it.

[mmonk]

13. At least it will primarily be the Republicans since their Democratic

compatriots took an election hit.

[nc4bo]

14. You are not alone in your rage & disgust. nt