Hope - I has it.

[rain_gryphon]

Tonight, I have hope. It's only now that I realize how heavily these last 18 months have weighed on me. It's not too late to turn America around. It's not too late to repair much, if not all, of the damage that Obama has done. America, and the civilized world, have a future in front of them again, a bright and positive future if we choose to make it so; not the dystopian future of carbon taxes, poverty, and socialized medicine that Obama and his cronies had planned for us.

As John Boehner has said, there's a lot of hard work in front of us, and little time to celebrate. I can't help feeling festive, though. If we're resolute, and if we work hard, things may yet turn out okay.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

At the risk of opening up a huge can of worms: what is so bad about ensuring that medicine is available to those who couldn't otherwise afford it?

(If I were feeling even more masochistic I'd ask about the other points, but I'm already risking enough by asking about that one.)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

In an abstract sense, nothing at all. Stripped of its real-world consequences, it's a magnificent idea.

What's wrong with it, in the broadest sense, is that the administration needs to produce some spoils for the poor and improvident, to ensure that they continue to turn out and vote Democratic. I'm expected to help pay for that. I'm tired of that. I'm angry over that. I have had enough of working and saving, and then having my money snatched away from me to buy votes. I want that to stop.

I'm far from being the only one who feels that way. We didn't have any voice when Obama was making backroom deals with the insurance and pharmaceutical indistries, nor when the Senate was negotiating the bill in secret. Tuesday we had our chance to speak.

I could go on for pages about this, but the short version is that I feel that the government treats me only as a source of revenue, with no effort being made to look out for my interests. I'm fairly typical of the midwest in this.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

It strikes me sting that you'd only have to replace some words with their (more or less) opposites and you'd have a very similar post to what many pro-Obama people were writing about the end of the Bush years not so very long ago.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

So, it is either unintentional becoming-what-you-hate, or it is insincere rubbing-their-noses-in-it.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

It strikes me sting that you'd only have to replace some words ...

Xolo considered this lot briefly, but it beat him.

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

The start of that should be "It strikes me as interesting that..."

[xolo.livejournal.com]

W was a wasteful spender, no doubt at all. He's not even remotely in Obama's league, though.

[pyesetz]

Socialism is good!  Communism is bad!  Exclamation points are pointy!  Robber barons use propaganda to enslave your soul and force you to vote against your self-interest!

As John Boehner has said, the next two years will be gridlock.  The R's ran on a campaign of preventing the D's from doing anything, which pretty much means the R's won't have any opportunities to "repair" anything, either.  And Boener's fake tan is icky.

The USA has been living beyond its means for a very long time.  In the future, Americans will be poorer, regardless of which party gets to do its grandstanding in the House.&nbp; The QE2 is basically a wealth tax.  It picks everyone's pockets, so the more you have in your pocket, the more you "pay".

There's nothing terribly wrong with a "carbon tax".  The problem is getting rid of the taxes that the carbon tax should replace.  The "temporary" World War I telephone tax overstayed its welcome by 80 years!

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Things would be *so* much better today if the last two years had been complete gridlock.

And actually there's cause to hope for progress. Obama's still making noises about keeping Obamacare. but he's already scheduling meetings with the leaders from both parties. If he'd been willing to hear any views but those of left wing of the Democrats these past 21 months, the situation wouldn't be so toxic and bitter right now.

American bonds still hold their values, and with Obama under check, there should be more confidence in the markets. The real test there will come when the new congress is seated, and we'll see then if companies are willing to stop banking their profits and using them to expand and hire instead.

This also absolutely kills any chance of America taking part in a "global warming" agreement, so that forestalls a potentially catastrophic drain on the economy right there.

Things are by no means good, but with luck there's still time.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

Have you had your head under a rock? He had the ability to pass whatever he wanted by listening only to the Democrats, and from the beginning reached out to Conservatives and said "What do you want in the bill?" And from the beginning we had nothing but a bunch of republican whiners going "We won't compromise our values!"

Nothing but take! Nothing!

And as a result we have a health care system which, instead of a single-payer, highly efficient, low cost health care ALTERNATIVE to the private companies, now just PAYS those private companies to screw Americans over at will. The ONLY good thing to come out of that compromise (yes, it was a compromise, because in the first year he could have had a fully left-wing "SOCIALIST" health care system in place without any difficulty) was that now those companies can't drop you at their fucking discretion when you get FUCKING CANCER!

Companies will never stop banking their profits, because the highly lauded Republican "No Regulation" approach has ABSOLUTELY NO incentive for them to expand and hire! Why waste money here, when China is sooo much cheaper! Obama's plans to keep businesses hiring local was struck down by a bunch of whiny bitchy republicans who went "But controlling our business is SOCIALISM!" Boo FUCKING Hoo!

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

*deep breath* I apologize for the outburst, but looking only as far as your own paycheck does not give ANY person the right to claim they understand macro-economics or what will keep this country from falling into utter failure. Today we rank back in the top 20 of civilized nations ONLY because we managed to create a positive health care system and actually get ourselves back into even a small percentage of the UN councils THAT WE FOUNDED and were kicked out of because of failure and incompetence on the other side.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

There's not a single instance of Obama, Pelosi et al making the least effort to craft bipartisan legislation in the last 21 months. Yes, Republicans were dutifully invited to submit one or two token amendments after the bills had been written by Democrats alone in backroom sessions. It's one of the more transparently cynical stunts I have seen in my entire life, and even then, the proffered amendments were bloc-voted into olivion, leaving the bill exactly as put forth by the Democratic committees to be the final product. Obama wouldn't even invite the Republican leadership to meet with him until this September, when it was becoming apparent how deeply he was in trouble.

I've been following politics for some 40 years now. I have never in my life seen the minority party abaolutely locked out from participation as have happened these past two years. It was shameful, it was Unamerican, and I most earnestly pray that every that Obama and Co "accomplished" can be swept away leaving no trace whatsoever. I doubt that it can, but it never hurts to have hope.