Basically, this country has squandered the whole of the 21st Century so far when measuring for meaningful social and political progress.  We watched as a disputed 2000 election resulted in a SCOTUS appointment of one of our worst presidents in history, who promptly turned a balanced budget and a surplus into massive debt.  Two unfunded wars, a bogus unfunded Medicare add-on, a market crash and Great Recession followed by the end of 2008.  Along the way, Mitch McConnell decided to resort to full-scale obstruction in the Senate as a way of regaining and holding GOP power...only being significantly thwarted along the way by the Dems' passage of healthcare reform. 

Little else was accomplished as our nation treaded water in an attempts to extricate ourselves from the costly wars and speed up the Republican-impeded economic recovery.  Then the electorate sent us backwards when they elected Donald Trump and a cast of nefarious characters whose legacies and behaviors still plague us and whose additions to the SCOTUS promise more retrograde movement.  The obsolete Electoral College allowed another of the worst presidents in history to gain office.

Joe Biden's only job, according to many, was to restore sanity to the White House.  So, instead of electing somebody with an agenda for progress, the voters put in a placeholder...two more years wasted so far and a bleak outlook for two more.  Our problems as a nation have increased exponentially in the meantime, exascerbated by a pandemic that further divided us instead of uniting us.

This has to end!  Returning power to the GOP would be disastrous and would provide no solutions to those crises already upon us and those looming.  That course only throws overpriced gasoline on the national conflagration now consuming the former "Shining City on a Hill".  In truth, we have been on a steady decline with only brief plateaus of respite for the past 40 years.  We cannot continue on this path, and We, the Voters are the only ones who can save this country.

I don't expect much traffic here, since the folks who are still looking for Republican candidates to back know I'm right about that party in its present form.  Wish it were salvageable, but it isn't. Too many haven't been able to face the evidence.  Just means it's gonna take longer than it should before enough people admit nearly all Republicans in office are just too far gone to bring back into a productive political realm.  The radical evangelicals and other MAGA cult members seem to be in firm control, and their brand of "religion" is far from what Christ taught.  And, worse yet, they are indoctrinating another generation as they continue to wreak havoc in the here and now.

What a shockahhhh...

"A new Siena College poll finds that 141 presidential scholars rank Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson as the country’s top five presidents.

For the second time, scholars include Donald Trump along with Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce in the bottom five."

Dubya is still grinnin' that Trump has helped bump him up a notch or two in the all-time rankings.

Jun 22, 2022 -- 6:56PM, newinn wrote:

I don't understand, if all these polls about what Americans want are correct how come the party that is so willing to give it to them is likely to get an asskicking come Nov?

All the GOP has had to do since 2007 is obstruct what the Dems want to do with the filibuster and then blame the Dems for not getting anything done.  It's a very simple plan and it's been successful...thanks to the uninformed, the distracted, the wedge issue addicts, and the propaganda purveyors who keep enabling the Republican Party in spite of their abysmal record as politicians and policymakers.  What the majority wants, the majority rarely gets.  You'll know when they do...they hang onto it with a vengeance, like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Roe v. Wade, civil rights legislation, even a watered-down Obamacare, and the rest of the highly popular programs initiated by what you and some others here have referred to as the "far left".  The majority understandably gets frustrated when their path toward social and economic progress is blocked. And they don't always take it out on the perps.  Maybe you have noticed many Americans voicing their frustration that the Dems are too polite, too wimpy, too idealistic, not dirty enough to use the same tactics that the Republicans use.  Well, there is truth in that...and we have seen the consequences. 

Jun 23, 2022 -- 5:40AM, newinn wrote:

seems to me that if the American people were so disgusted with obstuctionists, there would be more Democrats in office. That way the Republicans couldn't obstruct.

As you should know by now, a majority isn't enough in the Senate.  It takes at least a 60 seat majority to overcome that obstruction.  And that is a level rarely obtained by either party.  FDR gained it when the GOP proved totally incompetent in dealing with the fallout from the 1929 Crash and Great Depression. The Dems had a 62 vote majority in 1975. In the most recent incarnation, the Dems had a 60 vote majority (including Independent Dem caucusers) effectively for about 21 days in 2009, if memory serves.  So, McConnell's weaponizing of the filibuster by making it, in his words, "normal Senate rules" created an effective dam against Dem legislative agendas.  In fact, McConnell openly admitted he was going to embark on that strategy in early 2007 in an interview for The Hill.

I brought that up later on a message board and was challenged to "prove" that McConnell actually more than doubled the previous record for filibusters in a session.  So, I went back over every bill and every vote for four sessions beginning in 2007 and found the answers on Congressional websites, which I posted. 

There were 54 cloture votes to end debate in 2005/2006, when Dems were in the Senate minority, but that number increased drastically when McConnell and the GOP lost control of the Senate in the 2006 elections.  The cloture numbers increased on his watch to 112 in 2007/2008 and 91 in 2009/2010. I look at actual history and sources to form my arguments.  I don't believe you have been able to disprove a thing I have posted on politics since I arrived here.  It's apparent you'd rather sit idle on your intellectually-dead azzzz and make snide remarks about my supposedly "entrenched" partisan views.  All anyone has to do is take a close look at the record of the GOP over the past 40 years to arrive at the same conclusions I do.  Try doing some research for a change.

Please expand on your earlier assertion about the different factors contributing to our present inflationary spike, including some proof that government-injected money is part of the problem.  I am not saying it isn't part of the equation, but it would be refreshing to actually see you posting something in the way of evidence to back up your statement.