Blue Team -- Let me hear ya sing it!!!

[boutons_deux]

From the Right, Despair, Anger and Disillusion

On talk radio and in the conservative blogosphere, the bipartisan vote on Wednesday to reopen the government without defunding President Obama’s health care law was being excoriated as an abject surrender and betrayal by spineless establishment Republicans. But for glum and frustrated conservative voters on Thursday around breakfast tables in eastern Tennessee, in the shadow of a military base in Colorado Springs and on the streets of suburban Philadelphia, it was as much a surrender to reality as to Democratic demands.

Many conservatives described a dispiriting gap between conservative ideals, which they believe inspire widespread agreement, and conservative tactics, which do not.

Among commentators on the right, the reaction has been less driven by despair than by anger. In heated language on talk radio and on conservative blogs, many spoke of a winning if difficult strategy sabotaged in the end by weak-willed leadership.

This view of the shutdown, while infuriating to many on the right, has the virtue of being something fixable. On the conservative blog RedState, Erick Erickson said the capitulation was an urgent lesson in the need to replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. Tea Party members here in Tennessee agreed, saying that despite the lack of policy victories by the Republicans in Congress, the shutdown had energized the base and shown them that some conservatives, like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, were willing to stand up.

But yes, it hurt the party.

described the Tea Party as something that started out as a good idea but “morphed into this monster, this zealous monster.” He suggested that the Tea Party phenomenon might have passed its expiration date.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/18...?from=homepage

[boutons_deux]

Sharing of ideas is a powerful thing. I started writing freshman congresspersons inspired by this place. Think I am going to start writing the losers as well encouraging them to seek 3rd party avenues too.

Just because you see your actions as inconsequential doesn't mean the rest of us have to. You cannot make a difference if you don't try much less win.

your naivete is hilarious

Human-Americans are disenfranchised.

Corporate-Americans and the 1% own and operate the govt and the country for their own profit. Resistance is futile. America is ed and un able, having descended, since about the mid-1970s, to the historical average of most societies where a tiny, wealthy, powerful (ie, corrupt) minority, defended by police and military, extract wealth and rent from the 99% serfdom, intimidated wage slaves.

Write your letters, but like prayers, it may make you feel good but will have no effect. Now, if you had a check fo $10K or $100K or more in envelopes, that's a different story.

[AntiChrist]

your naivete is hilarious

Human-Americans are disenfranchised.

Corporate-Americans and the 1% own and operate the govt and the country for their own profit. Resistance is futile. America is ed and un able, having descended, since about the mid-1970s, to the historical average of most societies where a tiny, wealthy, powerful (ie, corrupt) minority, defended by police and military, extract wealth and rent from the 99% serfdom, intimidated wage slaves.

Write your letters, but like prayers, it may make you feel good but will have no effect. Now, if you had a check fo $10K or $100K or more in envelopes, that's a different story.

Yep, it's pretty hopeless. You should just end it all -- and there will be one less suffering ed and un able human-American.

[boutons_deux]

Yep, it's pretty hopeless. You should just end it all -- and there will be one less suffering ed and un able human-American.

yep, hopeless. and the VRWC/Kock/tea bagger shutdown of govt PROVES how ty hopeless it is.

And watch tiness increase in time for the next shutdown in January.

you right with assholes vote in the tea bagger regug assholes, so eat their .

[vy65]

lol writing your congressman

[FuzzyLumpkins]

lol writing your congressman

cowardly defeatism

[vy65]

You should write me a letter about my cowardice.

[vy65]

That'll show me

[boutons_deux]

Obama's winning strategy will be retested soon

It's been a constant quandary for the Obama White House: Should the president reach out to his Republican opponents or isolate them? Should he compromise to move his agenda or try to split the GOP ranks? Carrot or stick?

That debate appeared settled on Thursday when President Obama spoke in the White House State Dining Room to deliver his verdict on the just-ended government shutdown: more stick.

"To all my friends in Congress, understand that how business is done in this town has to change," Obama said as he praised "responsible Republicans" for brokering the deal but denounced "the pressure from the extremes."

He offered a blunt, almost taunting, message to his Republican opponents: "You don't like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election."
When Republicans embarked on the strategy of shutting down government programs to win concessions from Obama, many said they expected the president to fold quickly. And many Democrats feared that would be true. But the White
House set out to end the perception that it is too quick to make a deal.

"He just wasn't going to cave. The guy's been reelected, what does he need to cave for?" said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House. "The world is very different if you're never going to face voters again. You can hold strong and not be worried about it."

The budget deal Obama signed early Thursday included no significant concessions on Obamacare or government spending. Polls showed Republicans took the brunt of the blame for the debacle. The Republican Party came away from the confrontation demoralized and debilitated by the gulf between its tea party wing and its leaders.

But senior administration officials and White House allies also acknowledged that the winning strategy in this round of the budget battle may not translate into additional legislative successes. The deal only extended funds for government agencies until Jan. 15 and suspended the debt limit until Feb. 7.

The White House and Congress will almost immediately plunge into a new round of talks — and face the threat of another shutdown. In his remarks, Obama listed two other priorities for the year: immigration reform and a farm bill. Progress on all three issues still depends on whether Obama can work with Republicans and whether the party emerges from this standoff ready to compromise or more united in opposition.
Administration officials acknowledge that's an open question — one Republicans have yet to answer.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the Hill newspaper that he would not allow a repeat. "There is no education in the second kick of a mule. There will not be a government shutdown," he said. "I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is."

Still, as Obama pushed for a new spirit of cooperation, one key Republican was backing away burned.

Rep. Raul R. Labrador (R-Idaho), who played an influential role earlier this year working with lawmakers from both parties to write a bipartisan immigration bill, said he was unwilling to enter into talks over the controversial issue because of Obama's refusal to negotiate with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

"After the way the president acted over the last two or three weeks, where he would refuse to talk to the speaker of the House … they're not going to get immigration reform. It's done," Labrador said.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/17.../p2p-77835635/

Labrador's lying. Obama talked to Boner several times, AND he didn't cave to Boner.

But nobody should doubt that immigration reform will be blocked by the Repugs, handing the Latino vote to the Dems in 2014 and 2016.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You should write me a letter about my cowardice.

Show you? What? It's obvious that you only have interest in belittling me. I have made you petty. It's kinda sad really.

I have gotten quite a few responses especially from people on the state level. If I see legislation presented on issues that I find important then I will start sending checks. Done that a few times too. It's all about reciprocity. I write letters to every freshman class now. At least at the end of the day, I can say that I tried and that is enough for me.

I get that you are butthurt about me. I don't much like you either but I do feel that cynicism such as yours amounts to little more than intellectual cowardice. Youre already defeated afterall. You showed us that.

[AntiChrist]

Blue Team.

[DMX7]

Much like Queen, it will take an AIDS-riddled up the ass for you to finally go away

You've gone too far.

[AntiChrist]

[boutons_deux]

Rachel Maddow On Federal Shutdown: Republicans Got NOTHING

With the federal government standstill finally coming to an end, Rachel Maddow explained on Thursday night’s show just what exactly the Republicans got out of it: Zero!

Maddow went through the long list of Republican demands, from changing federal employee pensions to denying birth control pension, in exchange for re-opening the government, only to conclude that from that entire list, the GOP came up completely empty.

"Through this process, Republicans said they would shut down the government, or, once it was shut down, they would refuse to open the government unless they got each one of these things. Of all of these things that they demanded, they got none of them! None...these have been sixteen bad days for the country and the economy,” she said.

She added, “It may be true that nobody won, but someone definitely lost here.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-an...ter912036&t=11

[Nbadan]

Red team...

[Jacob1983]

Has anyone seen that MSNBC commercial of Rachel Maddow at the Hoover Dam? What the is up with that?

[boutons_deux]

Has anyone seen that MSNBC commercial of Rachel Maddow at the Hoover Dam? What the is up with that?

ignorant

Hoover dam and the $Ts in wealth it generated through flood/water mgmt, tourism (Lake Mead), and electricity (Las Vegas) was a GOVERNMENT PROJECT, more irrefutable proof against the spurious Repug/tea bagger claim that nothing good can come from government, that ONLY capitalism and the market are capable of providing all solutions, and esp nothing good from an VRWC-hated FDR Democratic govt.

The dam workers were treated like by the contractors, but that's how corporations roll in absence of worker protectios and unions, exploiting desperate labor during the unregulated, bankster capitalistic disaster of the Great Depression.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

[The Reckoning]

without a strong political counter to the demos, they'll settle for the status quo and not push for anything progressive to win votes.

like legalizing marijuana or tort reform.

gg murica.