telling the truth.

I understand not being sure is that Joe was told was the truth, and I understand letting them overreach to draw a contrast, but it was pretty clear what they intended back after the election, some of them came out and said what they were going to do, and if some of their senior guys are confiding it directly to Biden, then what was going on in the administration that they haven't spent the last year or two pounding the drum about obstructionism?

1) Even if you knew they were going to scumbag douchebags, you have to TRY to work with them because that is what you need to do. People expect it, and even if the Rs get very little held against them for being the jerkoffs they are, you have to TRY because it is the right thing. Beyond that, it proves out who is trying to be reasonable and who is not.

2) The Ds, unlike the Rs have almost no capacity to operate as one single entity. The fact is, the middle exists on the right flank of the democratic party. From a simple numbers standpoint, in order to get anything passed, you need SOME Rs to get it done - first for the numbers to get there in the senate alone, second to give cover for the right flank of the democratic party to do the right thing. We can bemoan blue dogs all we want, but they exist, and if there are no Rs on board, you lose most of the Blue Dogs.

Fact is, HCR passed only because the Ds had the majority in the House, and by a fleas hair, ONE VOTE, it passed the senate on reconcilation. Everything else has been pretty much stoned - the jobs bill, ect ...

Nothing to do whith him, and it was the President who gave in most of the time

It is as un-American an policy as I've ever heard. People should be outraged that they put partisan politics above the good of the nation, and the Rethugs should be deeply ashamed.

They met on Inauguration night to plan out the sabotage. It is public knowledge or it should be.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html
<snip>
As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.

The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.

some (former) R senators are now talking ON RECORD. ANother quote from teh article is:

Meanwhile, former Senator George Voinovich also goes on record telling Grunwald that Republican marching orders were to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed.

“If he was for it, we had to be against it,” Voinovich tells Grunwald. And at another point, characterizing a strategy session Republicans and McConnell had held in early January of 2009, Voinovich said: “He wanted everyone to hold the fort. All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory.”

They should be locked up for treason

Let's remember all the suspects named here. Let's remember them. Let's hold this against them FOREVER. We have names. Let's make sure we remember.

Let's remember all the agony and anguish THESE PEOPLE have PERSONALLY foisted on Americans who are struggling under the bush economy that we still haven't completely climbed out from under. These people are PERSONALLY responsible for not moving our country forward and for willfully screwing its people.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html
<snip>
As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.

The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.


Copying this so it's easy to find. I have versions of this stashed in several places in my computer. This list of names and faces should be on every post office wall in America. On WANTED posters. Because they're criminals and domestic terrorists, manufacturing misery exclusively so their party can get back in power.

and photos of all the perps should be included.

Hope WiLLIARd picks Ryan - that could be fun since he was there.

They have had plenty of time to push this on every pundit show they appear on but not too much is being said about it. It's almost like they are accomplices after the fact.

Biden is preparing us for this one

...and this comes from the party that claims to be so Patriotic?

You know, there's still a sore spot with many toward Newt G for the govt shutdown...but this is a thousand times worse IMO...

Our response should be to remind the speaker that the Republicans sat in one of their "quiet rooms" even as the rest of the country enjoyed the Inaugural Festivities and while we cheered, they plotted their strategy. They knew before Obama entered the Oval Office for Day One what they would do to try to cripple him and his administration. In spite of that, he has managed to get some things done, not the least of which was to get the Affordable Care Act passed and phased in.

I think that the fact that the Republican Congressmen and women planned to kneecap the President and everything he wanted to do should be hammered home to the American voters. They never intended to co-operate with him. When they say he can't run on his record, remind them of WHY he hasn't accomplished more. And then go over the facts of what he has accomplished. I would love to see bill boards everywhere with a list of all the things Americans now have THANKS IN NO SMALL PART to Mr. Obama's health care plan. There are STILL people out there who do not realize this plan is in place and is working! I saw a post on FB the other day from a young woman calling the Affordable Care Act "Moroncare" and she indicated that she thought it would be rolled out in January of next year. They are dumb and dumber and do not realize that the roll out of the ACA began in 2010. They honestly do not know that many of our uninsured are NOW insured. That women's health care just got a big boost on August 1st. And on and on. Lots of them do NOT know this and that needs to change so that at least they can make decisions based on truth, not lies put out by Romney and his crack team of liars and shills. When Romney BRAGS that he will do away with the Affordable Care Act, the real cost of that should be highlighted every time we get the chance.

Instead of blaming Obama for our slow recovery, the voters need to be reminded (over and over if need be) of who took their oar out of the water before we even pulled away from the dock!

that the Obama campaign will pull all these issues together
as the weeks of October wind down.

Obama is a ferocious campaigner with perhaps the greatest political instincts
since FDR and when his opponent is on the ropes

he will go for the jugular.

This has been 32 years in the making, let's all get behind our local
Democratic Party office and PUSH THE ROCK TO THE TOP OF THE HILL

so we can watch Humpty-Dumpty MittWitt's Great Fall.

with three months to go, it may be too soon. I think if they had exposed this for the 2010 election, results would have been different.
Obama didn't care, he wasn't up for reelection, now he is.
This is a national shame and people should be made aware that the reason many are out of work is because the repugs want to make sure economy is bad. Same for banking and health care reform. Business not hiring and sitting on billions,and banks not lending for same reason, don't let things improve for Obama.
I've been saying this since 2009, it was so obvious, now it is coming to light people should be more than outraged at repugs and vote them ALL out. The media was asleep, purposely and partly responsible for keeping the public in the dark about the repugs putting party above country and instead of helping

Apparently, John McCain & co. were referring to some other country in 2008.

"Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ he recalls. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance."

These cowards are every bit as guilty as Mitch McConnell. They could have acted in the interests of their country and their constituents: they chose not to.

For the brain dead ..

If these Senators are required to yield to McConnell's demand for unified resistance rather than the wishes of those who elected them? No wonder Congress' approval is at 12% with those who elected them.

And why, if Biden knew this from day one, did Obama try to play footsie with them on key legislation? Both the stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act were loaded with Republican proposals and aside from the two Maine Senators on the stimulus nary a single Republican vote. Did they not believe their ears? And look at how much time was wasted on the Affordable Care Act trying to get just one Republican to come onboard and how that time was used to savage the bill with talk about pulling the plug on grandma -- a provision that was put in there by a Republican Senator from Georgia. Just sayin......

Has been used to smokescreen the fact that the Obama Administration wanted things their constituents would never support. A lot of what was blamed on obstruction was merely a way to say "we couldn't do what we should have..."

A good example was the public option. They pretended for months to fight for it, but in the end they dumped it when they had a clear option to do it.

I can't accept the idea that the Administration is in any way stupid or naive, but they pretend like they are almost as much as the Bush admin. It's such a paper thin excuse, but somehow everyone will buy that we have become the most helpless and useless nation ever when it comes to doing the right thing.

An un-American piece of shit.
A psychopathic reptile.
A malignant cancer on the American body politic.

I hope that's the approach coming

...than it is to put our country in THE RIGHT PLACE.

Our country is faced with so many challenges at this time. So many of our people are hurting - truly hurting. The Republicans in Congress had the opportunity to work with an extremely popular - and legally elected - President to take the necessary steps to put this country back on course. And let's call it what it is: it was an unlawfully elected republican pResident and his illegal administration that set this country on the disastrous course we see today. Recession, thy name is Bush*! Two illegal wars of greed, thy name is Cheney*! But no, McConnell decreed there would be no cooperation. McConnell decreed nothing would be done for the good of the country. It is far more important to McConnell and his rethuglican band of tools and fools that they attempt to render the Obama Presidency null and void -- no matter how bad it hurts this country and it's people.

McConnell = traitor to the Republic and adversary of we the people.

can become a senator and fuck the other 99.99% of the country. He should've stayed in the swamp with the rest of the turtles.

what the republicans have done to this country.

I missed it too til just now. What Republicans are implicitly proving with their actions is that, they believe that the Presidents plans would have helped this country so much that he would have been a lock in winning this year. They are saying Democrat plans work. They are saying they don't have an alternative plan that will work. They are saying they would rather have people die. Which has happened over and over again in their administrations, than have this country succeed. If this country comes back in a very visible way under a Democratic President, they know they will lose for decades.

... and that's a very important point. They knew (or at least strongly suspected) that the President's plans would work.

They know that once the country gets a taste of FAIR, COMPETENT health care for all, they would never have a chance to rule again.