To get this out of the way…
It’s holiday happy time – so let’s get my latest political tripe complaining out of the way! And now that it’s winter, while not technically by the calendar’s mark but certainly as attested to by the temperature, and with skiing not taking prominence on my upcoming schedule, that simply means colder winds and a few day’s (and hopefully not more) worth of bad roads.
Nationally things are still the same, the deficit still lingers - and will for a while - and the Democrats have completely lost their base while hooligan right wingers have fallen further off the deep end, found rock bottom, and started to dig. President Obama continues his retreat on all fronts, which means that we liberals will eventually end up paying for the same real-estate twice. If given the chance…And that may be too much to ask in the near future.
President Obama is fading faster than Superman snorting Kryptonite. “Hope” and “Change” have turned to “gee, hope this changes.” The early victories like the needed-but-poorly-timed-and-touted Stimulus, Jobs for Main Street, the nice but hard-to-find perks of Health Care Reform, the Haiti disaster response, and the occasional upbeat economic noise have been lost in the clutter of sound surrounding the vacuum of our favored party’s ineptitude. And the vacuum has been filled quickly by the sound bites of the typical stupid, those like Beck and Palin, and blah, blah, blah. Speaker-Elect John Boehner said “the people have spoken!,” despite the fact that he got 35% less votes than he did in 2008 due to a lower turnout, to the tune of 138,000 votes in his district. Sure, the GOP won the House again, but not the Senate - not that it matters. And for those who are keeping score - President Obama still got well over 65 million votes in 2008, so the jury’s still out on John Bronzer’s national claim for the people (and it’s not like all 435 seats belong to the GOP). Besides, didn’t he just bone a lobbyist on the side? There are those GOP morals at work again!
But that’s not to say 2012 will be fun for us, either. We liberals overwhelmingly voted for change in 2008. We’d expected a backbone. What we’ve gotten back is neither.
Now the Health Care bill – at least the provision concerning mandatory coverage – has been found unconstitutional by a Federal Court which means this will end in the Conservative Supreme Court. The simple argument will be thus – the government cannot force people to buy something they do not want, and people have the right to be stupid even to the detriment of themselves and others (I’m thinking the case law doesn’t quite read this way, but you get the point). And this is a valid argument in my view – mandatory health care was not one of my sticking points, but for the system to work as proposed to help offset costs, it became a needed component. I was more in favor of a public option, but President “Captain Cave-Man” Obama let that one slide too.
You know – I’d love to play President Obama in Texas Hold ‘Em. Just before the River, I’d say “I don’t like you” to him and he’d fold, leaving all his chips on the table for me despite his having the better hand.
By New Year’s , the Obama-GOP compromise tax bill – “compromise” is now defined as bending over backwards to meet the needs of the crazies at the cost of your own base – will allow the top 2% of earners to keep their Bush Tax Cuts along with those 98% who actually felt this Great Recession. This was tantamount for the GOP, and means the rich need not worry as they will still control all of our country’s wealth. That’s worked well so far, Golden-Goose theory be damned. What I don’t get is this – most of these folks don’t pay taxes anyway- they’re too rich for that nonsense! So what exactly did they have to worry about? Did Buffy need a new guest house?
Oh well…Let’s hope there are jobs in 2012 – like taking a bricklayer opening to help pave the GOP’s way back to the White House, in gold, which they have readily available from their donors as building material. It may be difficult to find a paying role in this venture, however, since so many elected Democrats are already laying the groundwork as oblivious, unpaid volunteers. And we all know how the GOP loves cheap labor.
So much for actual issues - renewable energy policies and green innovation initiatives, limiting overseas outsourcing and working on hiking tarrifs to offset trade gaps, meaningful education reform to keep us competitve internationally and more intuitive at home, a better analysis of real-life health care options and costs in refining the watered down legislation and eliminating waste…Instead, we’ll extend tax cuts for the rich that we can’t afford, but they can, and expect this GOP-created mess of a deficit to magically pay for itself without inflation or skyrocketing interest rates (have cake, try to eat, it, too - got it). I love Republican-Whore logic.