Get more done? Be serious. Of course not, but then that just doesn't pertain to Republicans. It includes Democrats just as much. As for Obama being the president, it really doesn't matter who the president is or what political party they belong to.

I agree with TxPeon. Both political parties are wings of the Corporate Party whose aim is protecting the 1% and their wealth which is done, in part, through gerrymandering, voter manipulation, and sleight of hand by the corporate media. However, Obama is no defense first or last from anyone or anything. He is as useless as he is incompetent. I don't say that specifically because of his lack of experience or intellect. I say thay because the US presidency is little more than a figurehead for the puppet masters just like Congress is.

It will be more of the same.

With the results of low voter turnout, and gerrymandering, manipulating the voters, Obama is the only defense American have from the Billionaire Hacket Party. Anything they pass will only benifit the same old corrupt parasites, attacking the Middleclass

Pope Francis is my all time favorite Pope! Hands down, he rocks!

The most under-reported story might be the fact that the losing incumbent Democratic senators were actually in states with higher turnout. Democrats can't blame generally low turnout, they can only blame low Democratic-voter turnout. Those Democrats lost because the Republican Party got its people to show up in sufficient numbers.

I don't think those incumbents lost because of bad campaigning or the mid-term drop in voter attention (which seems to affect all voters pretty equally). It was just because the Republicans took the opportunity afforded by the mid-term drop to run a better ground game.

Congress should be required to take a drug test.

Just want to add my voice to the call for drug-testing ALL elected officials. Look at Toronto Mayor Rob Ford as an example of a totally out of control druggie who managed to get himself elected to head up one of the most important cities in that country.

No doubt there are many government officials right here in the USA doing the same thing. After all, they can afford the funny stuff, unlike the poor, most of whom need every penny they can get just to keep body & soul together.

Reply to #35: Chicago Matt says Visa is "smart" to be seducing all these inexperienced young people into their big-ass Debt Trap. What you call smart, I call sleazy.

The trouble with all this issue is that the so-called Conservatives have forgotten the "elephant in the room", that source of all the "welfare programs" began with a "conservative", Otto von Bismarck at the turn of the twentieth century in Germany. Somehow, in Germany there wasn't the antipathy for the "poor" that American plutocrats seems the have developed, but systems of voluntary communal "taxation" in the various regions, all this in a Germany that comprised of different governments, some more prosperous than the other. After these governments joined and became "Germany", it was obvious that people from less prosperous regions would flood the more prosperous areas where the benefits were better, as, in the old days, people would leave for California where, the "life was better".

Being Conservative, he believed in stabilty, that meant the people required a standard of living where they had the basic services enshrined in a system that provided them, and, that would not encumber the more prosperous regions with "immigrants" from poorer places. So . . . he initiated a system of healthcare, pensions, workmens compensation, and all the other services the population, a safety net where the people could go about their business knowing "if" something happened, the taxes, and regular deductions from their salaries would cover it. Yeah, and the Conservatives in the States call it "welfare". Obviously it has to be adjustted from time to time, but the idea remains the same. A population that works for a living requires a sense that they can get on with thier lives without being afraid that an illness, or an accident will not throw them into poverty.

In fact, the Godfather of Capitalism, Adam Smith had a name for this thinking--Enlightened Self Interest. It's clear that business require profts to keep on going, but the its equally true that the people at the production end require a feeling that their day to day is secure. Please God the people that run the government know how to work out a balance between the them. When they don't, you get a dystopia, as we seem to be see now. Drug tests are just a symptom of the dysfunction.

The better part of the income of the "rich" at the top of the American food chain is "unearned", and in may cases "untaxed". In contrast the rest of the population, that earns their income ends up paying taxes, that often go to subsidize the "private sector". The absurd thing about that policy is that you would think that a capitalist would not go hat in hand to the government for a hand out, but do something "creative" and use their own profits to continue and prosper. Welfare queens?! Seems that the Corporate Socialists in United States have this cockeyed notion they can live off of tax revenues they don't pay, and goverment services they get for free.

Yeah Marc, a society that devalues black human life so much that jaywalking brings a death sentence. Or playing with a toy gun in a public park, or walking through a Walmart store with a toy gun, or selling cigarettes on a public sidewalk, or getting high, or just (GASP) wearing a hoodie and walking in a "white" neighborhood. Shocking, heinous crimes!

How shallow are the lives of "Conservatives" that they have to spend every waking moment fretting that some poor individual may get something for nothing? That our whole system of laws and justice and everything that government does has to be held prisoner by their obsessive paranoid fears, that some poor schmuck might get something for nothing. Never mind that the military industrial complex can waste trillions on needless, ineffective and defective armaments. Never mind that corporate billionaires can suck-up trillions of taxpayers dollars through taxpayer funded government subsidies. How dare anyone else think that they might get something for nothing, no matter how inconsequential.

Of course the obsession for "Conservatives" is based on bigotry, wether it be bigotry against the poor or minorities. Republicans have learned that bigotry sells as proven by the success of the "Southern Strategy", which again has won them both houses of Congress.

Forget about "Welfare Queens". The Republicans are the "Malware KIngs"!

Kend, you really outdid yourself with post #6. This goes beyond clueless. Had you watched either of those links I posted in my Tent City thread a couple weeks back, you would know that many homeless people actually have JOBS; some of them even full-time jobs! But the pay is so low that they still can’t afford housing.

Excuse me but your ignorance is showing. And it is substantial.

If you think poverty is such a piece of cake, maybe you oughta try it sometime. I guarantee, it would change your tune in a heartbeat. - AIW