As many Americans today put the finishing touches on their New Year’s Eve plans, democrats in congress are trying in vain to reason with the fools and crooks across the aisle.  President Obama has been bending over backwards to try to pacify these scumbags by offering up concessions that go against what he campaigned for during the last election, culminating with his offer to cut Social Security benefits in order to get a deal to avoid the so called fiscal cliff.  I’ve just read that Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel were up late last night negotiating.  To that, all I can say is thank you Joe, somebody needed to get President Obama away from the poker table before he folded with a hand full of aces.

President Obama re-won the White House, and democrats gained seats in both the Senate and House.  All national polls show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy as opposed to draconian spending cuts to balance the budget.  The President campaigned on letting the Bush tax cuts expire on those making over 250 thousand dollars, and said that Social Security would not be part of the negotiations over the fiscal cliff.  Going over the cliff means that everyone’s taxes will go up on January 1, and everyone knows that the republicans will be to blame.  The republicans will be the party that raised everyone’s taxes because they were not allowed to keep their tax cuts for the top two percent of the wealthiest Americans.  And despite all this leverage, Mr. Obama has turned out to be the republicans’s best ally, and the democrats’ weakest negotiator.  And the republican tea baggers in the House, led by John Boehner, are either too stupid to realize this and take a deal, or they have come to view Mr. Obama as the number one worst poker player on Capital Hill, and sense that he can be taken for everything we own if they bluff and threaten him long enough.  Thanks Vice President Biden for stepping in, but now, it’s time to walk away from the republicans that are holding this country hostage in the name of the top two percent, and let the chips fall where they may.

When all your friends who voted republican this past time around start complaining that their taxes have gone up, you remind them it is the republicans in office who flat out rejected cutting 98 percent of Americans’ taxes, because the rich 2 percent they represent didn’t get to keep their Bush tax cuts.  You remind them that these scumbags they voted for are the reason for their tax hikes, and all the new across the board spending cuts.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for cared so much for their millionaires’ and billionaires’ tax cuts, that they would rather bring down the entire country out of spite.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for demanded Social Security and Medicare cuts before raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  You can also remind them that it was the Bush tax cuts, that were supposed to expire many years ago, along with the two wars, and the Great Recession, that caused the deficit the republicans pretend to be so worried about now.

Maybe, with a new year, and new tax hikes for all, and  economically damaging spending cuts implemented, maybe, just maybe, a super majority of American voters will wake up and hold the republican party accountable.  Then, it might be possible that enough responsible republicans in office will stand up to their Tea Bagging, right wing nut jobs, and negotiate in good faith instead of hostage taking and sabotage.  Until we are willing to call their bluffs and actually fight them, the republicans will continue their scorched earth policy of hostage taking and extortion.   Maybe President Obama will finally realize that unless you stand up to a bully, you will keep getting bullied.

But hey, I’m an optimist.  Happy New Year !  Here’s how much I feel like jumping: