Election Issues

[leroyspuds 0]

I looked at the red and blue election map this morning and felt sick. Can it be true that so many people got in line yesterday to sign up to be pawns of the greedy and powerful? That so many people are that ignorant or that hateful? What have we become? If we want to consider ourselves a great nation based on our values and beliefs then we'd better take a good look in the mirror.

We hate gays.

We hate non-Christians.

We hate non-whites.

We hate poor people.

We hate our government.

We hate our environment.

We hate our schools.

We hate intellectuals.

We hate science.

We hate the truth.

We love huge corporations.

We love our guns.

We love our Xbox.

We love our 52" flat screen.

We love our cars and trucks.

We love our sports teams.

We love our movie stars and rock idols.

We love our cell phones.

We love our quarter pounders.

We love our lies.

I love my country and we could be such a force of good here and around the world. Yet we choose this. I'm sad and ashamed.

[leroyspuds 0]

Joe the Plumber joins the teabaggers in opposing Missouri's puppy mill anti-cruelty legislation.

Americans should have the right to torture and abuse animals for profit. Just another right our government wants to take away. Geez, where will it end. Gosh, they've made it so little children can't work in my coal mine, I have to give jobs to blacks and and women and let them vote, I have to serve them at my business establishment. Shucks, they're takin' all the fun out of being a white anglo saxon male Jesus lovin' racist chauvenist. If I can't abuse women, children and blacks by god I'm not giving up the right to abuse breeding dogs. Heck, I'd treat 'em just as good as my wife.

[andrea0121 28]

I'm overwhelmed this morning as well. People truly have selective short term memories.

Can't wait to see the Repubs "fix" everything. They freaking broke it, they should "fix" it. I won't be holding my breath though.

UGH, so disappointed today.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

It took bush and company eight years to bring our country and our economy to almost complete destruction.

In less than two years Obama and the democrats with no help from the republicans did the following:

-turned a loss of 700,000 job loss per month to having a positive job growth the past nine months

-in the last nine months - more private sector jobs were created than in all eight years of bush.

-passed the successful stimulus that gave a tax cut to 95% of workers and saved 400,000 jobs in my state alone.

-passed the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act so that those who are denied fair pay can sue for just compensation

-passed historic healthcare that no other president of either party was able to do. It's not perfect but it's a start. (As an aside, thousands die from lack of healthcare - real people, real death. You are 52% more likely to die of a heart attack and 49% more likely to die from a stroke if you don't have health insurance - but I guess that's okay with those so-called pro-lifers who voted for republicans to repeal healthcare.)

-passed Wall Street, financial and credit card reform.

-passed reform to the student lending programs, cutting out the middleman, and saving billions

-passed small business act to help them get loans

-the stock market went from 6000 to 11,000 points

-corporate American is sitting on 2 trillion dollars (where did that money come from in a recession?)

And more that I can't think of. And all of this is somehow a bad thing to those white, male, middle aged+ tea partiers and those who voted against the democrats.

People have voted against their own self interest and will get what they deserve, just like they did with the bush administration when the earning power of their wages went down and their homes, investments and retirement lost value. It was the decade of loss of about a trillion dollars to the middle class.

But someone made money during this time. Want to guess who that was? They are the one who bought this election.

Edited November 3, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I looked at the red and blue election map this morning and felt sick. Can it be true that so many people got in line yesterday to sign up to be pawns of the greedy and powerful? That so many people are that ignorant or that hateful? What have we become? If we want to consider ourselves a great nation based on our values and beliefs then we'd better take a good look in the mirror.

We hate gays.

We hate non-Christians.

We hate non-whites.

We hate poor people.

We hate our government.

We hate our environment.

We hate our schools.

We hate intellectuals.

We hate science.

We hate the truth.

We love huge corporations.

We love our guns.

We love our Xbox.

We love our 52" flat screen.

We love our cars and trucks.

We love our sports teams.

We love our movie stars and rock idols.

We love our cell phones.

We love our quarter pounders.

We love our lies.

I love my country and we could be such a force of good here and around the world. Yet we choose this. I'm sad and ashamed.

This is a fantastic post and sadly too true.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

To answer my own question about who has made all the money (during this recession and at other times) - let me offer the following opinion piece that I just read:

Bob Herbert: Seriously haywire

Those with clout have eroded widely shared prosperity

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in the new book, "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class."

The authors, political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the United States since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes, but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich.

Those changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well-financed and well-organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor, and thus in favor of the very wealthy. From tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance to safety net issues, government action was deliberately shaped to allow those who were already very wealthy to amass an ever-increasing share of the nation's economic benefits.

"Over the last generation," the authors write, "more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and supperrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind."

As if to underscore this theme, it was revealed last week (by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for The New York Times), that the incomes of the very highest earners in the United States, a small group of individuals hauling in more than $50 million annually (sometimes much more), increased fivefold from 2008 to 2009, even as the nation was being rocked by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Last year was a terrific year for those at the very top. Mr. Hacker and Mr. Pierson note in their book that investors and executives at the nation's 38 largest companies earned a stunning total of $140 billion -- a record. The investment firm Goldman Sachs paid its employees nearly $600,000 per person, its best year since it was founded in 1869.

Something has gone seriously haywire in the distribution of the fruits of the American economy.

This unfortunate shift away from a long period of more widely shared prosperity unfolded steadily, year after year since the late-'70s, whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the levers of power in Washington. "Winner-Take-All Politics" explores the vexing question of how this could have happened in a democracy in which -- in theory, at least -- the enormous number of voters who are not rich would serve as a check on policies that curtailed their own economic opportunities while at the same time supercharging the benefits of the runaway rich.

The answer becomes clearer when one recognizes, as the book stresses, that politics is largely about organized combat. It's a form of warfare. "It's a contest," said Mr. Pierson, "between those who are organized, who can really monitor what government is doing in a very complicated world and bring pressure effectively to bear on politicians. Voters in that kind of system are at a disadvantage when there aren't reliable, organized groups representing them that have clout and can effectively communicate to them what is going on."

The book describes an "organizational revolution" that took place over the past three decades in which big business mobilized on an enormous scale to become much more active in Washington, cultivating politicians in both parties and fighting fiercely to achieve shared political goals. This occurred at the same time that organized labor, the most effective force fighting on behalf of the middle class and other working Americans, was caught in a devastating spiral of decline.

Thus, the counterweight of labor to the ever-increasing political clout of big business was effectively lost.

"We're not arguing that globalization and technological change don't matter," said Mr. Hacker. "But they aren't by any means a sufficient explanation for this massive change in the distribution of wealth and income in the U.S. Much more important are the ways in which government has shaped the economy over this period through deregulation, through changes in industrial relations policies affecting labor unions, through corporate governance policies that have allowed CEOs to basically set their own pay, and so on."

This hyperconcentration of wealth and income, and the overwhelming political clout it has put into the hands of the monied interests, has drastically eroded the capacity of government to respond to the needs of the middle class and others of modest income.

Nothing better illustrates the enormous power that has accrued to this tiny sliver of the population than its continued ability to thrive and prosper despite the Great Recession that was largely the result of their winner-take-all policies, and that has had such a disastrous effect on so many other Americans.

So, the american voters just put the republicans in whose first order of business is to borrow money from China? to give more tax money to the rich and put us further in debt. This spending and debt increase they are okay with.

And the tea party will fight to loosen those wall street regulations that might reign in the greed on wall street whose CEO's like to play russian roulette with our money.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Ariscus: I don't have time to search, but somewhere on here I posted that the republicans started their campaign to have Obama fail (and block his agenda) before he was even sworn in and you challenged me to find that information. You said you would vote for Obama (or something like that) if I found it.

Well here it is from the New York Times:

Published: November 3, 2010

The PowerPoint slides presented to House Republicans in January 2009 seemed incongruously optimistic at a time when the very word “hope” belonged to the newly ascendant Democrats and their incoming president, Barack Obama.

“If the goal of the majority is to govern, what is the purpose of the minority?” one slide asked.

“The purpose of the minority,” came the answer, “is to become the majority.”

The presentation was the product of a strategy session held 11 days before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, when top Republican leaders in the House of Representatives began devising an early blueprint for what they would accomplish in Tuesday’s election: their comeback.

So, there was no spirit of working together, of helping the economy on the brink of destruction, of working to help build America. None of that. Their first order of business was to find out how to unseat Obama and the democrats.

Edited November 4, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[loserbob 11]

I was watching Larry King and Jeff Bridges was on. He was promoting a charity called "No to child hunger. org". I might have it wrong. It was about kids in this country who go hungry. I was wondering why Hannity and the rest of the crew always put Hollywood stars down. Where are all the rich republicans, oh thats right theyll decide what to do with their money, these hungry kids just want handouts!

[BJean 16]

Ariscus: I don't have time to search, but somewhere on here I posted that the republicans started their campaign to have Obama fail (and block his agenda) before he was even sworn in and you challenged me to find that information. You said you would vote for Obama (or something like that) if I found it.

Well here it is from the New York Times:

Published: November 3, 2010

The PowerPoint slides presented to House Republicans in January 2009 seemed incongruously optimistic at a time when the very word “hope” belonged to the newly ascendant Democrats and their incoming president, Barack Obama.

“If the goal of the majority is to govern, what is the purpose of the minority?” one slide asked.

“The purpose of the minority,” came the answer, “is to become the majority.”

The presentation was the product of a strategy session held 11 days before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, when top Republican leaders in the House of Representatives began devising an early blueprint for what they would accomplish in Tuesday’s election: their comeback.

So, there was no spirit of working together, of helping the economy on the brink of destruction, of working to help build America. None of that. Their first order of business was to find out how to unseat Obama and the democrats.

I listened to one of the newly elected Republicans (actually an incumbent who was re-elected) and when asked what they're going to do now... are they going to go bipartisan and actually work with the president or are they going to continue to try to bring him down and possibly even try to impeach Obama? His response? He said, now we're going to work in a truly bipartisan manner because if we don't get something done now, we will be out the door in 2012. We don't have a choice if we want to get re-elected. We have to improve the country this go 'round.

Frankly I found his honesty very refreshing -even though the truth of his comments is very depressing considering what we've put up from people like him over the past 2 years. :eek:

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I listened to one of the newly elected Republicans (actually an incumbent who was re-elected) and when asked what they're going to do now... are they going to go bipartisan and actually work with the president or are they going to continue to try to bring him down and possibly even try to impeach Obama? His response? He said, now we're going to work in a truly bipartisan manner because if we don't get something done now, we will be out the door in 2012. We don't have a choice if we want to get re-elected. We have to improve the country this go 'round.

Frankly I found his honesty very refreshing -even though the truth of his comments is very depressing considering what we've put up from people like him over the past 2 years. :eek:

I don't know who this republican was but the republican leadership - Boehner and McConnell are saying they won't compromise.

Funny how they repeatedly say they have to listen to the will of the people and repeal healthcare. Besides the fact that the majority of people don't want it repealed, maybe tweaked, but an equal number want to give it a chance or expand it - they aren't listening to the people, the majority of whom DON'T support extending the tax cut for the rich.

They continue to say they want to cut spending and reduce the deficit but they want to borrow or spend billions of dollars to give $100,000 checks to millionaires and billionaires. They said now is not the time to cut taxes (on the rich) as it will affect job growth. Really? So where are all these jobs the rich are supposed to trickle down with the 10 year tax cut they've had??? Huh? Where are they?

Also, they might say that they will find the money for the tax cut to the rich by cutting spending. Guess where that will come from? That's right - for the middle class, whether it's infrastructure, education, health, etc.. but not the military. Of course not.

Additionally, I am sick of these republicans bashing the government. They talk about Washington being broke yet they, themselves are career politicians (many of the "newly" elected freshmen congressmen have a long prior history in the government). So here's what I say to them: If you hate the government - DON'T RUN FOR IT. Quit expecting us taxpayers to pay your salary and healthcare while you try to take our healthcare from us if you hate the government so much. :thumbup:

Edited November 6, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[MyOwnLife 0]

Amen, leroyspuds

[loserbob 11]

I listened to one of the newly elected Republicans (actually an incumbent who was re-elected) and when asked what they're going to do now... are they going to go bipartisan and actually work with the president or are they going to continue to try to bring him down and possibly even try to impeach Obama? His response? He said, now we're going to work in a truly bipartisan manner because if we don't get something done now, we will be out the door in 2012. We don't have a choice if we want to get re-elected. We have to improve the country this go 'round.

Frankly I found his honesty very refreshing -even though the truth of his comments is very depressing considering what we've put up from people like him over the past 2 years. :eek:

After the reps won the first thing McConnel said was, His job is to see that Obama is a 1 term pres. Trust me nothing has changed with the party of no!!!!

[leroyspuds 0]

LBob, we saw the same thing when Clinton was the president. Whenever the repubs are not in control they throw a tantrum like a bunch of spoiled brats. They refuse to do their jobs and cooperate to better our nation and its people. How much more unpatriotic can they be?

We may have once been a great nation, but so long as this kind of devisiveness and pandoring to extremistist government haters and religious fanatics is the republican game plan, we're sure to go down the tubes. Civilized nations must be laughing at the ignorant Americans.

[BJean 16]

leroys, that's surely the truth.

Cleos, we shouldn't be surprised at the election outcome. The one thing that Republicans are good at is winning elections even when it makes no sense that they should. They have (since I've been voting) willing to do and say anything to run down their opponents, even put out lies and swear they're the truth. It's ironic that the party that talks about religion and being Christian and wanting a theocracy, religion taught in schools, In God We Trust on our money, etc., when they've proven that it is the party of the most dishonest, dirty dealing politicians in the country.

It's been this way since I can remember. I'm sure you were around when all the Nixon stuff went down. After that expose, they became even sneakier and even more dirty. It shouldn't work for them, year after year like it does. But voters want to elect someone who they think really will do the things that the Republicans talk about.

The Democrats just come out with what they think is best for the country and they actually tell Americans what they plan to do. They think that voters are smart enough to understand - and some are. But mostly, Americans want something for nothing. They think that they can get what they need from the government without having to pay for it. They think that the schools are good enough, that medicare and social security should pay for themselves and they latch onto the idea of a government that is just taxing them way too much.

And so it goes. It's depressing and even worse, it may get much worse. One way it could get drastically worse is if people keep jumping on the tea party bandwagon and actually allow Sarah Palin to become a serious candidate again. People laugh at the thought, but afterall, she was the actual vice presidential candidate 2 years ago. And the Republicans have shown what they're capable of in an election. They will stop at nothing to be in power.

[KartMan 58]

I was wondering today why so many people voted against their own interest in this election? Exit polls show that working class whites, women, Hispanics in Texas and even gay men voted in way larger than normal numbers for Republicans than in the recent past. WTF people? Don’t you realize that that the Republicans have never and never will have your interests on their platform? The only thing that some people have sited is that they voted their pocket books rather than their core values – give me a break. Besides that being totally preposterous (the Republicans will not improve your pocketbooks my friends), it is incredibly shortsighted and utterly selfish.

To be honest, I didn’t vote in my own best interest either. I am a heterosexual, white male, veteran and upper income – yet I voted Democrat. Now don’t get me wrong, I am very upset that the Democrats have not gone far enough with issues that I care about (getting us out of these stupid wars, Public Option with Health Care, Gay rights, Global Warming, ending the Bush Tax Breaks, etc.) but at least they are heading somewhat in the right direction. The Republicans and their whacko friends in the Tea Party are a recipe for disaster for the groups listed above and frankly for the country. I can only hope that they shoot themselves in the foot before 2012 so they don’t set us back 100 more years (this election set us back at least 30).

Sometimes I am not so proud to be an American…