Random thought ..... Are republicans trying to tank the economy and make people suffer because ....
... they see it as a road back to power or are they just pissed because "that black man"
is President? Funding roads and bridges with a tax on gasoline has worked for years but
now they are against it?
<In April, Mr. Obama sent Congress a proposed transportation program that would spend $302 billion over four years, financed both by traditional gasoline taxes and the elimination of some corporate tax breaks. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, and Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, also proposed an increase in the gas tax to make up for more efficient cars and trucks that have sapped tax revenues as infrastructure needs have soared.
But Republican leaders have adamantly opposed anything that looks like a tax increase. Few Democrats have embraced Mr. Obama’s plan in an election year either.>
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/politics/house-passes-interim-fix-for-highway-trust-fund.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read
you're sworn in, you become a lame duck. And if it weren't for the fact that there's a whole four years left to govern, that wouldn't be a bad thing. However, with today's polarization, I don't see how things change until after 2020 when district lines can be redrawn. 
Keeping up our infrastructure makes money and helps people get and keep good jobs.
I 5 Washington State 2013
As a boy in a very middle class neighborhood our next door neighbor's brother
was Governor of PA, Ray Shafer. Now it was a different time but nobody bothered
him when he was visiting the neighborhood, he played with the kids, he was a nice
guy, and he was for civil rights, education, infrastructure, the environment, unions,
and the public good. He would have no home w/this current crop of republicans.
It's different now. There's actual hate, and I still blame talk radio, and Fox News for the hatred of all things "liberal". What used to be mere disagreement is now out & out hatred. If you don't believe what I believe, then I hate you. How the hell do we back away from that?
All they needed was an endless check from the Koch bros and others to support their campaigns in spite of their obvious overt actions to destroy the american people, literally.
Right now I am listening to that small town mayor in NC talking to Thom Hartmann about the hospital they closed due to lack of medicaid and the greedy for profit hospital (should be practically NO for profit hospitals in America), one woman is dead already from this, others will die.
I am one more hidden post away from being banned here, my last hidden post was where I called the ALL white anti refugee people in Murietta a name, a name they deserve, but 4 or more DU people thought I should not call them names.
W O W
You best let me and others like me call them names and maybe that way we vent our earned, righteous and thoroughly understandable anger because venting is REAL important.
It doesnt help that I am literally surrounded by idiots in my real life, who think the problem is a single mother of 4 getting $200 a month in food stamps. 
I see several things at play here...indulge me
1. Republican Hegemony
Karl Rove (aka Bush's brain) said during the Bush years that this ushered in an unending republican hegemony. The loss of control of both houses in 2006 combined with the election of a Democrat in 2008 ended that fantasy much to the chagrin of conservatives
2. Barack Obama (the anti-Bush)
Where Bush was a bumbling, incoherent anti-intellectual....Obama was an articulate, poised and intellectual. The differences between the two men in terms of style and approach could not be more different. Conservatives prefer someone who appears to be incompetent because it charms their base.
3. Barack Obama (the "outsider"
They hate him because he is a Democrat and Black with emphasis on "black". There are so many ignorant, under-educated, poor and "on the dole" conservatives that hate him for being black, pure and simple.
4. Barack Obama (President)
Based on #1-3 above they want to stop anything he is doing just to show him that an arrogant n****r cannot get his way in this country.
5. Policy
The current Republican "policy" is about one thing - serving their corporate masters. That means tax cuts for the rich, tax loopholes for the rich and powerful including corporations, satisfying the religious nuts in the house with limitations on abortion, "personhood" for fetuses, give aways of money and rights to religious organizations, etc.
They rely on the stupidity of the Republican base to not understand these policies actually keep them poor and hungry. They use Abortion, God, Gays and Guns to divert attention from what they are really doing which is enriching themselves and their corporate masters.
