I'm glad Obama won the election, and that we progressives took some senate seats including crucial races by Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. And that we rid ourselves of some bad Tea Partiers like Alan West and Joe Walsh. But the Republicans don't seem to understand that they lost. John Boehner is having his puppet strings pulled by the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Sheldon Adelson, and tea partiers in the Senate and House that refuse to negotiate in good faith on fiscal cliff and debt ceiling talks. Now, Obama has held firm on his belief that taxes must be raised on the rich, and that the debt ceiling should not be part of any negotiation. It is, in fact, paying back what we have already borrowed, much of which is thanks for the Bush administration's wars and tax cuts--not Obama's "reckless spending." Please.
So the likes of Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Louis Gomert, and Eric Cantor are telling Boehner to keep saying that Obama isn't putting forth a deal that can pass both chambers of Congress. Maybe that's true, but his version of that is one in which the GOP gets everything they want and Obama, who won the election in a landslide and the popular vote by 3 million, gets nothing he wants. And if he instead manages to get his tax increases (for the rich only!), the GOP will then hold the full faith and credit of our country hostage again. Damn. What a bunch of cruel, greedy, mean-spirited douchebags. They have themselves and their rich friends and donors' interests in mind only. They don't care about this country and Americans. They just don't.
I love the fact that Ed Schultz wants Obama to tell Boehner that if they don't agree to the 39.6%, that after January 1, the rate goes up to 42%. Ed wants Obama to take a hostage the way they do, and bully them the way they bully us. I love it. I also love Washington Post's Matt Miller's article this morning about Obama needing to use a trump card of asking Boehner simply for the $6 trillion figure to raise the debt ceiling to that is in Paul Ryan's budget, the one that has already passed the House. And if they won't do that, call them out for holding the country hostage, which is what they are actually doing anyway.
Then there is good ol' Ricky Snyder of Michigan, ramming through right-to-work legislation, modeled from ALEC, with the help of an all GOP majority in the legislature and senate. Snyder had his puppet strings being pulled by Amway CEO Dick DeVos and the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson, and he's doing it so that the Republicans can gain every possible advantage by weakening unions in this country and unfairly having an edge for the 2014 and 2016 elections. It's mean-spirited, cruel, and greedy (where have I heard that before?).
Folks, I'm liberal and proud of it. But I'm also an honest person, and while I know there is some form of corruption in all politics, what these right wing extremists are doing to our country and trying to do is just pure evil and purely wrong.
So here is my message to the Tea Party: F.U. and please just go away.
