One only has to go to Redstate to see who won

[ProSense]

One only has to go to Redstate to see who won
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/01/1175584/-One-only-has-to-go-to-Redstate-to-see-who-won

I just said about the same thing, that Republicans leaders have been played for fools! Boehner and McConnell should have shut up and let the Dem majority lead American away from the cliff by passing or amending HR 8.

This is a spectacular failure of leadership. McConnell and Boehner have both played right into Obama's narrative that the problems in America stem from the "rich" hoarding all the money, and that the way to improve this country is to redistribute the wealth.

Voting now....57 Rs have voted yes meaning that Speaker to be Pelosi has what she needs to pass. At least it's happening quickly, sort of like election night, a crushing blow that stuns and removes all feeling.

Boehner just assured the demise of many incumbents in the next Republican primary.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Detached from reality

One of the R's who voted yes was Chris Gibson from the Hudson River Valley. His district has been pretty solid blue the last three presidential elections and he won by only six points against a relative unknown in November. It was the right vote for him; he'll be strenghtened by it.

[Freddie]

2. Just went there, came back, took a shower...

They are having heart failure. It's fun
In the middle of all the angst was an actual cogent comment about how "gerrymandering on both sides (?) must end" because all the politicians care about is being primaried rather than serving their constituents. Amazing hearing that from the other side.

[AgingAmerican]

14. A broken clock comes to mind...

n/t

[Cha]

3. They're Inconsolable! Found this on DU from freeperville..

"We are dead as a country. The Communists won and minorities and crazy liberals cheering them on."

P.S. freeps are calling him "Boner". .

h/t Kennah http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=270388

[Aristus]

5. I keep wondering when this 'communism' they keep whining about is going to happen.

I own private property, (which doesn't exists under Communism), and nobody has shown up to take it away from me.

[freshwest]

7. First, tney gotta pry your gun from your cold dead hands, and then...

And then...

And then...




Sorry, I got nothin'

[Jim Lane]

34. I forget if the step after that is imposing Sharia law or forcing everyone into same-sex marriages.

Well, everyone who isn't ordered killed by the death panels, that is.

[Aristus]

36. Well, I don't own a gun.

Do they think that makes me a Commiunist? After all, I'm not supporting the gun industry and raising their profits, etc...

[freshwest]

38. DHS sent a drone with X-ray vision and found a hammer, sycthe and pitchfork in your garage.

I'd say you outted yourself right then and there, comrade!



So we shouldn't have entrusted you with the secret plans, and we'll be over tomorrow to pick up the rest of the plot.

[robinlynne]

50. lol

[Mr. Mojo Risen]

10. Hell I haven't even got my free cell phone yet.

[calimary]

54. Welcome to DU, Mr. Mojo Risen!

Makes that Doors song start running through my brain all over again!

Glad you're here! We all have a lot of work to do to help our Dems BUILD UPON the ground we gained last November!

[HiPointDem]

18. already happened. bailed out the banks, bailed out the automakers, bailed out the airlines, etc.

[lunatica]

26. Last I heard the money has been paid back

just saying

[calimary]

53. If I remember correctly, GM did just that. With interest.

So we taxpayers made a little money on the deal.

[MindPilot]

19. Isn't Communism where government tells industry what to do?

Pretty much the exact opposite of what we have happening.

[AgingAmerican]

15. Idiots

Dumb asses. FASCISTS!!!

[bluestate10]

41. Reading the stuff at Free Republic is balm for any sad day. Who with a sane mind can read that

stuff without falling into leg slapping laughter? The post that I loved was the one that claimed that a person can grow their own food while anarchy broke out all around them and that millions of americans don't know how to cook. The same poster claimed that all people needed were guns and bullets to protect their families.

Idiots. So.............. anarchy breaks out and those idiots are out farming in some isolated places protecting it with their guns and bullets. Meanwhile, we have Drones, attack helicopters, warplanes, tanks, missiles, military robots - most of which can find them and eliminate them in about ten minutes.

[lovemydog]

43. Freepers crack me up.

One of them says that every few weeks or so.

[Cha]

44. It's SOP.. they must get it from rush, hannity, and

beck. Bunch a pink0 commies... rofl

[malz]

4. Suck it, Wingnuts!

[calimary]

55. Welcome to DU, malz!

Good to have you with us! You certainly speak for me on this one! I have a nice middle finger set aside just for them!

[freshwest]

6. 'Speaker to be Pelosi' is music to my ears!

[CatWoman]

8. BWAHAHAHAHAHA

votemout2012 • an hour ago
I want know know the names of the cowards who voted for this garbage!
1 •Share ›

oldmom2 votemout2012 • 41 minutes ago
I'm shocked...one is Paul Ryan!

[momsrule]

9. could have guessed

What a loser......his tea party is overL

[malaise]

22. Delish!

[nyquil_man]

39. The only people who are "shocked" by Paul Ryan

are people who didn't start paying attention to him until 2009. He is a typical congressional seat warmer who only has a spine when he's certain it won't cost him politically.

[calimary]

56. Welcome to DU, nyquil_man!

Glad to have you join us! paul ryan is a sniveling little weasel. I find myself wondering WTF is with the voters who keep sending assholes like him back to Congress. It does not say much about them - much that's good or complimentary, that is.

[Cha]

45. That is SHOCKING!

mittLies must Love him!

[earcandle]

11. LOL

[grantcart]

12. They have been a fun read ever since election night.

[Third Doctor]

13. Damn those folks are dumb.

They are so dense that they can't realize that not doing anything about the cliff could possibly hurt themselves or loved ones too? I did not quite like the bill but I was never for doing nothing at all. All that the repugs see is a win for Obama and that means the end of the world to them.

[defacto7]

16. Well, let's hope it IS the end of their world...

I'm pretty sick of their world view of the overlords benevolently offering their scraps to us peasants philosophy.

[LeftInTX]

17. Interesting "protest" comment on Redstate

I will be writing a check to the Ashley Judd campaign for the Senate from Kentucky

[Cha]

46. ROFL!

[calimary]

57. Well, I might just do that, myself!

I'd love to see yertle mcconnell shown the door after all the shit he's flung at this country, and how much misery he's caused. All for the sake of his sick, cheapskate, selfish-as hell, penny-wise/pound-foolish, UTTERLY UN-CHRISTIAN CONservative agenda.

[caledesi]

20. Agree! nt

[Demo_Chris]

21. No one "won"

Minimal tax increases on the hyper-wealthy only really matters to the teaparty purists who view it as a symbolic loss. It is nowhere near enough to actually balance the budget, nor does it impact the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Making the tax cuts on the wealthy earning 250K and up was a huge surrender. Now, in order to collect more from these very VERY wealthy folks, we have to raise taxes. That means going on offense, it would mean fighting FOR Democratic gains rather than constantly giving ground -- and that's not going to happen.

This is a problem.

We can have any kind of society we want. Some of us would prefer that we are all in this together. We want equal rights for all, we want security for all, we want at least a modest standard of living for all, we want healthcare for all, we want education for all. We want dams and bridges that are no longer in danger of collapse.

These things are not impossible. They are not even difficult in any objective sense. But if we want it we have to pay for it. The money is there to pay for all of it, but right now that money is locked into the hands of far too few people. And few in Washigton wants to go after it. They are still operating out of the GOP Supply Side playbook. And as thye last few decades have shown, these plays accomplish one thing only: they concentrate wealth into the hands of the few, at the expense of everything else.

So this is where we are:

The Democrats refuse to renegotiate or repeal the Free Trade Agreements that have destroyed the US Workforce. So long as these are in place the jobs that created the middle class will NEVER come back. The only way we can compete with these in place is to lower our own labor costs to the level of destitute Chinese slaves, while allowing corporations to rape and pillage the environment. This means, sadly, that our nation will continue to be divited into the haves and the have-nots. Those with wealth, the owner and investor class, will continue to do just fine. The rest will find themselves over time relegated to service industry jobs -- and this includes many of those who feel smug and comfortable today.

We will be a nation of "walmart workers." We are already well down that road. I will work at McDonalds and eat Taco Bell, you will work at Pizza Hut and eat McDonalds. We'll all shop at Walmart and we'll buy products made in Wageslaveistan. We will have no benefits, no security, no future. There will be a hundred desperate people for every job, so you will damn well do whatever the bossman tells you or you might well starve. The wealth that doesn't leave the country will pour into the hands of the owners. We will live paycheck to paycheck, depending entirely on ever shrinking government programs paid for with borrowed money. Even our assets, our dams and bridges and highways and parks, built with taxpayer dollars, will be sold out from under us as states desperately try to make ends-meet.

Healthcare costs continue to climb, unchecked, with no end in sight. Obamacare serves only to lock in guaranteed profits for insurance companies. And when no one can afford it any longer, the government will borrow and print the money to hand over to insurance company owners in your name. The insurance you get from this will be worthless, Walmart workers don't have the money for the co-pay, but human lives don't matter to the machine.

But there will be plenty of prisons. PLENTY of prisons.

That's the road we are walking. We are already well on our way. Global warming is real and so is this. Like the white wall of a tsunami on the horizon, both are coming. We cannot continue pretending that it isn't real, we have to head to high ground. But our leaders, members of the monied elite themselves, are quite happy with the direction things are headed. Their house is safe, it's built on a mountain of wealth, and the destruction won't touch them.

That's how it is. That's where we are heading. If you want change you have to insist on it.

Thanks for reading.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. In theory, a carbon tax would be the way to get some revenue and fight global warming

but the chances of that in the US in the next few years are minuscule.

However, I did a quick check to see how Australia has been doing with its carbon tax (a country in a similar situation to the US - developed, with some large distances for transport, and significant fossil fuel resources), and found this interesting snippet:

Carbon tax price impact adds up to nothing much, according to Wayne Swan's shopping list

On July 1, the day the controversial tax was introduced, the Federal Treasurer revealed amid much fanfare that the price of everyday items had not increased overnight.

Brandishing a box of Weet-Bix, which Opposition Leader Tony Abbott claimed would cost more under the tax, and a lamb roast, he asked: "Does anyone seriously think this (lamb) is going to go to $100 any time in the next month, two months, three months? Or that the price of Weet-Bix is going to double?"

The Courier-Mail yesterday repeated Mr Swan's shopping spree at his local Woolworths in Nundah to see what had changed six months on. The answer: not a lot.

The treasury had predicted a "modest impact" on prices but yesterday's bill was 30 cents cheaper than in July.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/carbon-tax-price-impact-adds-up-to-nothing-much-according-to-wayne-swans-shopping-list/story-e6freoof-1226545896592

[Demo_Chris]

29. I don't know what we can do to fight global warming, but....

I suspect taxes are not the answer. My thinking is this: in order for taxes to be an effective curb on greenhouse gas those taxes would have to be so high that people stopped prodicing those gases. This would be a disaster. A literal disaster. I don't know the solution, but I think it is going to involve some serious effort and compromise by everyone. For example, we may NEED to go with nuclear as one of the replacement energy sources.

Back to this deal...

Obama claims that his revenue increases will pull in something like 600 billion over ten years. These were, of course, very small tax increases -- but according to his math they are worth about 60 bil a year.

Our projected DEFICIT this year is 1.3 TRILLION. The projected deficit for next year is 900 bilion. Which means that this tax hike will lower that to about 840 billion -- assuming the revenue is not devoured by additional spending. The amount could have been greater, but they didn't increase taxes on all of the wealthy -- just the hyper wealthy, and that very little. Either way, these tiny little tax hikes do very little and do not address our spending problem.

Next year we will spend about 680 Billion on Defense and overseas operations, or ten times more than this tax cut brings in.

The only way to tackle this problem is to go at it head on. This means a massive cut to defense and ending the wars. It means heavy taxes on the wealthy, including cap gains, and taxes aimed at accumulated wealth. It means no sacred cows, including churches. It means breaking up these monopolies, and nationalizing industries as needed. It means LOWERING the social security retirement age while raising what it pays. It means national healthcare -- that alone would save hundreds of billions a year. Finally, we have got to get the American people back to work building things again, which means ending these so-called Free Trade Agreements. Our motto should be: If you want to sell it here, build it here. This will provide a tax base that can support our society.

Ultimately, it will require a change in how the American people view society, and the importance we place on it. Today, protecting our most wealthy takes precedence over everything. Not only in Washington, but in our hearts. This must change. We view obscenely obese people with pity and disdain, we want to help them get better. We should properly view obscenely wealthy people in the same way. We have people on this very forum talking about how a half a million a year is not that much money. That's like an obese man claiming a large pizza is only a snack.

One in five American kids tonight went to bed with no food. Something like one in ten has no home -- they are living with friends or in their parents car. And here we are talking about how a half a million, or a quarter million, isn't that much. If a Walmart worker managed to save $50 dollars a month, no exceptions, it would take him...

416 YEARS

to save the $250,000 that these guys say isn't much money. To hear them tell it, that's just barely getting by. It's insane. We have got to change this. We have a hundred million people living in poverty. A hundred million people who would have to save that half a millenium just to bank what these guys call "not much."

We have got to change.

[dixiegrrrrl]

33. You are very accurate in "this is where we are"

Sadly, I do not see any policies coming out of Washington to change any aspect of what you identified.

[bluestate10]

42. It amazes me that the people that shouldn't protect the rich are the ones willing to go to the mat

for the rich. Most of the people over at Free Republic can't spell well or construct correct sentences. Yet they are willing to bleed for the rich. The rich wouldn't bother to even piss on any of them. The Constitution is always called out by the idiots at Free Republic, I doubt that many of them can read each Amendment, Sections of Amendments and Clauses of that document. Those that can read obviously don't understand or get what fore-bearers that constructed the Preamble and each Amendment intended. Ignorant assholes.

[napi21]

52. I disagree with that analysis on jobs in the USA.

Things HAVE CHANGED from when I was a ittle kid. Back when my parents teens, you didn't really even need a HS degree to get a decent job. When I got to HS age, you HAD to have your HS diploma to get a job. Few women were getting college degrees. When my kids were teens, you also needed, at minimum, some tech school training or college. NOW,you must get some specialized training, and a college degfree is much better.

I don't believe all people WANT to go to college, and some don't have the aptitude, and that's fine, but they MUST all recognize that there are thousands opf training classes out there. I just received a brochure from our local college detailing over 120 different training programs in lots of different fields. Pharmacy assistant, medical transcriptionist, many computer thech courses, all the way to realestate training where you get your license at the end of the course. There's a technical school where you can get training in plumbing, contractor training, and many many other fields.

All the courses do cost something, but most are under $1,000, and less than 6 months long. It's no longer realistic to believe all you have to do is get through HS and you'll be fine. The jobs that qualified you for are gone, and won't be back.

[calimary]

58. Your last line was absolutely PRIMO, Demo_Chris!

"If you want change, you have to insist on it."

That is so true!

If they think you don't care, THEY WON'T EITHER!!!!!

[Bonobo]

24. Logical error = thinking that "their" loss is "OUR" win.

In reality "they" are not the "they" we think they are.

And some of "us" are actually "them".

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. If the OP is for it then it mut be a victory for progressivism

One only has to look at the OP to know who won...

[madrchsod]

25. freepers are`t happy either.....

[freshwest]

35. DIRTY LAUNDRY!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

28. The govt must have done something good

... if the whining on the right is as whiny as the whining on the left.

[chazunit]

48. Exactly!

good insight and sense!

[calimary]

59. Welcome to DU, chazunit!

Glad you're with us!

I can't help it - by now I view everything as "if they're upset about it, it must be a VERY GOOD thing for the rest of us!" Good litmus test. If the bad guys hate it, then that makes it automatically worth supporting.

[SidDithers]

30. 'Course, they're probably saying the same thing about DU...

there's lots of moaning and groaning being posted here too.

Sid

[Odin2005]

31. I enjoy their tears. I think I will make a drink out of them!

[MoonRiver]

32. Sounds just like what I heard from Morning Jerk this morning.

[Scurrilous]

37. Love it!

K & R

[Vinnie From Indy]

40. It is complete nonsense to believe that "we won" based on the reactions

of the most idiotic, insane and extreme right wingers on red state. These folks reactions are, in fact, almost always comletely out of step with reality. Why should we rejoice over crazy people being crazy?

[BumRushDaShow]

47. "Why should we rejoice over crazy people being crazy?"

Because many of this sort of ilk were elected into Congress in 2010 and even re-elected in 2012. These nuts voted for and stand in solidarity with the loons who helped destroy the U.S. credit rating and even today, refuse to actually consider governing.

[Politicub]

49. Mmmmm... their tears are so delicious

[patrice]

51. AND!!! It cost them $900. BILLION dollars all totaled for 2012!! WOWSER!!!