“The three issues we’ve got teed up now are corporate tax reform, then immigration reform, as well as getting new trade agreements passed.”
That's not why American voters rejected Obama.
"GOP victory seen as positive for business, but others temper expectations" by Nelson D. Schwartz and Clifford Krauss | New York Times November 06, 2014
NEW YORK — After years of gridlock in Washington, American business is gearing up for a major push on long-sought goals such as an overhaul of the corporate tax system, building the Keystone XL oil pipeline, lighter environmental and financial regulation, and winning congressional backing for trade deals with Asia and Europe. Business interests face a much more receptive audience now that Republicans are poised to control both the House and Senate next year.
Related: 86ing This Post
They passed them all, and there is nothing like a big, fat New York Times lie in the framing first paragraph, huh?
But despite plenty of public talk of more aggressive action — such as a rollback of the Affordable Care Act or the Dodd-Frank rules passed after the financial crisis — lobbyists, experts on Wall Street, and political veterans say the actual legislative agenda will be much more limited.
“There is a pent-up demand for legislative action and there was a logjam because of the campaign,” said Bill Miller, a veteran lobbyist and senior vice president at the Business Roundtable, which represents a wide cross-section of the biggest American companies.
“The three issues we’ve got teed up now are corporate tax reform, then immigration reform, as well as getting new trade agreements passed.”
So we are going to get corporate tax breaks, moro work visas for cheap foreign labor, and more globalist trade agreements. Is that what you voted for, Americans?
While many of the more conservative Republicans elected Tuesday made their opposition to the Affordable Care Act a touchstone of their campaigns, there is much less appetite on the part of business leaders for wholesale changes to the health law.
For one consideration, many insurance exchanges are finally working well and businesses have adapted to the new landscape. Even more important, added demand from the newly insured will probably increase profits in such sectors as hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices.
Never was for you, just as I said. Obummer's altruistic health law was for THEM!
“Anything regarding the Affordable Care Act is going to be a stretch,” said John Lynch, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank.
Still, after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into what was the most expensive midterm campaign in history, corporate donors and individual executives are eager to see their agenda tackled by a party that has traditionally been more sympathetic to big business.
They are both bought-and-paid for corporate whores now.
“With the Republicans controlling both houses, the corporations that have been financing their campaigns for years are going to expect to see a return on their investment,” said Robert J. Shapiro, who was a top Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration and is now chairman of Sonecon, a Washington economic and security consulting firm.
Some alternative and opposition, huh? Clinton corporatism provided for false debate and objectivity.
He foresees a big push to lower the corporate tax rate while closing some loopholes so that the package does not reduce overall revenue for the government. He also expects Congress to try to reverse, or at least slow, the regulation of greenhouse gases by the Obama administration.
But an overhaul of immigration laws is a much tougher issue because there are deep divisions within the Republican Party on how to change the system, Shapiro said, with the conservative base at odds with the desire of business to make it easier for immigrants to establish legal status in the United States.
The Republican takeover of the Senate will probably sharpen debate on a number of energy issues and pressure President Obama to finally decide whether to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built to connect Canadian oil sand fields with American refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
Election is over. He can approve that now.
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"Republican gains grow as new election results come in" by Michael D. Shear | New York Times November 06, 2014
The full magnitude of the Republican Party’s success in reshaping the national political landscape at President Obama’s expense became clearer Wednesday as the party seemed headed toward an even longer list of electoral victories in Senate and governor’s races that had been too close to call before dawn.
That's the narrative we are getting from the ma$ters on high. Pffffft!
In Alaska, although the Republican challenger Dan Sullivan held a 3.6 percentage point lead over Democratic Senator Mark Begich with all precincts reporting, thousands of absentee ballots won’t be counted until Nov. 11, and Begich has refused to concede until there is a final vote count.
If Sullivan wins and Republicans succeed in ousting Senator Mary L. Landrieu in Louisiana in a runoff election next month, Republicans would command a 54-vote majority in the Senate, a gain of nine seats and an almost complete turnaround from the current chamber, where Democrats control 55 seats.
In Virginia, Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, led by nearly 17,000 votes with nearly all precincts reporting, but his Republican challenger, Ed Gillespie, a former lobbyist and Republican political adviser, has not conceded.
It’s a margin far closer than polls, pundits, and Warner’s supporters predicted.
A first-term senator, Warner left the governor’s mansion in 2006 with high approval ratings and won a Senate seat in 2008 by sweeping nearly every county in the state.
But he came crashing to earth Tuesday thanks in large part to President Obama’s sagging approval ratings.
Republican candidates for governor in Maryland, Maine, and Massachusetts also claimed overnight victories over Democratic opponents in states that by all accounts should have been bright spots for the president and his allies in an otherwise dismal election season.
Related: Baker Hooks Governorship
But someone ruined the party.
In Colorado, Governor John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, narrowly clinched a second term, fending off an unexpectedly tough challenge from a Republican congressman who accused the governor of yanking Colorado too far left on gun control, energy, and taxes.
In Connecticut, Democratic governor Dannel P. Malloy edged past Republican rival Tom Foley with 51 percent of the vote.
*********
By Wednesday afternoon, it appeared that Republicans were on the verge of picking up 15 additional seats and possibly a few more — gains that would give them their largest majority since the World War II era.
Representative Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican and the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the results were a referendum on the president’s policies but sounded a note of caution to Republicans who might be tempted to follow the same no-compromise path the party took after 2010.
“There’s a broad understanding that we have to perform,” Walden said in an interview Wednesday. “We caught the bus; we need to drive the bus responsibly. And if we do, we can build on our gains in 2016.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker who lost her gavel to Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio in 2010, issued a terse and grim statement slightly before 2 a.m.
Pelosi said it was “a difficult night for Democrats,” but her members would “continue to fight for middle-class families, who are the backbone of our democracy.”
PATHETIC!
A few moments later, a top aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada said on Twitter that he took some solace from the fact that Scott Brown, the Republican former senator from Massachusetts, lost his bid to make a comeback in neighboring New Hampshire.
The proper analogy is the seeing corn kernel in a turd.
“The fact that we got our butts kicked up and down the block only makes it *more* hilarious that Scott Brown lost,” Adam Jentleson, Reid’s spokesman, said in a post.
I admit, it was funny to see the loser Democrats on MSNBC with glum and sour faces pointing to minimum wage votes and saying we won, we won!
The Democratic losses were even larger than top White House aides had feared they might be and appeared to require a rethinking by the president of how he governs during the final two years of his second term.
The results are an immediate blow to the administration’s hopes to further broaden the president’s health care law by expanding Medicaid in additional states. Some of those states will now be controlled by Republican governors who are unlikely to agree to an expansion of the health care law.
White House aides are bracing for calls from both parties for Obama to cancel or postpone plans to announce executive actions that would reshape the nation’s immigration laws.
That's BOTH, huh?
Obama promised to unveil his plans soon after the congressional elections, and aides signaled that he was unlikely to back down from that promise.
!!!!!!!!!
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"Obama, GOP signal comity, confrontation" by Matt Viser, Noah Bierman and Jessica Meyers | Globe Staff November 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Republican wave in the midterm elections ever so briefly led to sober talk of finding common ground. But the attempt to make the newly arranged marriage work fizzled almost immediately Wednesday over immigration, an issue that could loom large in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The confrontation began when the presumptive new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, warned President Obama in a press conference not to “poison the well” by issuing an executive action on immigration. Obama responded at the White House by telling reporters he would ignore McConnell’s threat.
The showdown — along with a battle over health care — will likely set the tone for the final two years of Obama’s term as he attempts to stay relevant in the face of a resurgent Republican Party.
As the dueling postelection press conferences took place, with a triumphant McConnell in Kentucky and a somewhat somber Obama at the White House, both men initially spoke of working across the aisle.
"Obama emphasized that two-thirds of the electorate chose not to vote?" That's who he is going to represent?
***********
The Obama-McConnell relationship may be doomed
from the start. The two have almost no personal rapport; McConnell once
vowed to make Obama a one-term president, and Obama has joked about his
discomfort with the prospect of sharing a drink with McConnell.
They began Wednesday pledging cordiality....
Who gives a fuck about conflicting personalities?
Do you like and get along with everyone you work with? Job still gets done, right?
McConnell said he hoped to come to terms with Obama on trade agreements and tax reform. He also wants to push new energy legislation, and Keystone XL, an oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas many environmentalists oppose but many supporters say will create jobs.
Yeah, we know what is coming, and are the corporations ever happy with the Congre$$ they just bought.
One concession came quickly from the Republican side. Brushing back against the strategy some conservatives have used to extract concessions from the White House, McConnell vowed, “There will be no government shutdowns and no defaults on the national debt.”
Meaning the bankers have nothing to worry about.
McConnell’s vow is likely to face resistance from Tea Party conservatives in his own party, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who had not said whether he would support McConnell as leader. The election for majority leader is slated to take place next week.
To appease those conservatives, Republicans are developing strategies for continuing their assault on Obama’s health care law. Recognizing that attempts to repeal the law will end in a veto, leaders are planning another strategy: ripping out key parts.
The approach reflects the realities that Obama can veto legislation and that support has grown in some Republican-leaning states for expanded Medicaid benefits, a key part of the law.
The GOP may find support in its effort to repeal the law’s medical device tax, which Democrats in the Massachusetts delegation already dislike because it hurts Bay State manufacturers.
So much for all the parti$an$hip, huh?
Senator Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who easily won reelection, said Wednesday that he would only support a repeal of the tax if money could be found elsewhere to provide health care for the poor, a similar position to other Democrats, which could complicate any effort to find compromise.
Obama emphasized that there are certain “lines I am going to draw,” including maintaining the core requirement that all Americans obtain insurance.
Look, more lines being drawn by this jerk!
But he left open the possibility of changes to his signature legislative achievement.
The line just got erased!
“The law is working but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved,” he said.
UNREAL!
**********
Although Obama was on the defensive for most of his 75-minute press conference, he could take some comfort in the predicaments of his predecessors. Lackluster Democratic results of his first midterm election had prompted President Bill Clinton to declare at a press conference: “The president is relevant here.”
And during midterms in the second half of their presidencies, Clinton was about to be impeached, Ronald Reagan had to rebound from Iran-contra, and George W. Bush continued to experience poor public approval ratings but he still orchestrated the surge in Iraq and oversaw the passage of an infusion of federal money for banks.
I noted that the other day, yeah. That was the change we voted for(?) in 2006.
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I find the best place to turn for guidance these days is the Boston Globe editorial page:
"What the GOP victory means for Obama’s foreign policy | November 06, 2014
Americans in battleground states weren’t the only ones who tuned into midterm elections this year. Overseas, US allies and enemies also watched the news. For Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is trying to seal a deal with the Obama administration over Iran’s nuclear program by Nov. 24, the election raises questions about Obama’s ability to hold up his end of an agreement, if one is reached. Obama can waive sanctions toward Tehran in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, but only Congress can permanently wipe those laws off the books. So far, Congress has shown little appetite for that. Indeed, Iran sanctions have been one of the few bipartisan issues on Capitol Hill.
Yeah, aid to Israel and money for the war machine or biparti$an.
For hard-liners in Iran, the midterm results serve as a reminder that Obama and his party could be out of power in two years, putting any deal that rests solely on the White House in jeopardy. Iranians will be less likely to make concessions for a deal that could simply fall apart. But if one is struck, and wins support from Congress, it will be more durable than any agreement Obama cuts by himself.
The Republican victory in the Senate also carries serious implications
for Syria, and could lead to deeper US military intervention in the
conflict. Arizona Republican John McCain, who has called for
a no-fly zone in Syria, more vigorous airstrikes, and US troops in
Iraq, is now slated to become chair of the Armed Services Committee. Bob
Corker, the Tennessee Republican who will take over the chairmanship of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has voiced support for similar measures.
I expected more war if Republicans were elected.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no doubt celebrated the
Republican victory against Obama, who has pressed Israel over the
construction of settlements.
Hmmmmmmmmm!
The GOP victory could make the Obama
administration think twice about pressuring Israel with more public
gestures, such as withholding the automatic US veto
that protects Israel from unfriendly resolutions at the UN Security
Council. But the core of the US-Israeli relationship is unlikely to
change.
Like I said, this election changed nothing except what letters are sitting in what chairs when the mu$ic stopped.
Support for Israel has long been a bipartisan policy. Despite
the personal bad chemistry between Netanyahu and Obama, US-Israeli
military cooperation is stronger now than ever before. Iron Dome, the
air defense system that intercepts rockets from Gaza, is a truly joint
venture. Recently, Israel awarded Raytheon the contract to produce vital components for it.
Thus all the tension is nothing but a shit-show fooley.
The GOP victory could actually make life
easier for Obama in some areas. For instance, Republicans are far more
supportive of granting Obama fast-track “trade promotion authority” that
gives the administration the power to negotiate two huge free trade
agreements: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes 11 countries
from Japan to Peru, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership, which includes the European Union and the United States. So
far, the biggest obstacle Obama has faced has come from liberals in his
own party, especially Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. That’s one roadblock that just disappeared.
Yeah, great.
Nearly
all presidents suffer losses in midterm elections, but they still find
ways to make their mark on foreign policy in their final years in
office.
Already has. His war on ISIS will be handed off to the next person.
--more--"
I normally do not post letters to the editor, but here are a couple that caught my eye:
"The hope of 2008 faded all too quickly | November 06, 2014
The Democrats have reaped what they have sown. Elected in 2008 to correct the miserable Bush administration’s mistakes, Barack Obama proceeded to double down on them by bailing out the banks and keeping the Bush tax gift to the wealthy in place. Untold thousands of people who lost their homes and pensions had to sit by and watch the very people who benefited from their miseries get rewarded with six- and seven-figure bonuses.
President Obama removed the “public option” from the health care debate, easing the fears of the insurance industry and ensuring their huge profits off health insurance.
Obama conducted drone warfare instead of “boots on the ground,” but the results were the same unease with American foreign policy. An estimated 22 veterans a day are committing suicide, and we read that in some VA medical centers a veteran has to wait months for an appointment.
The gap between rich and poor continues to grow. The Citizens United decision allowed corporate billions to flow into elections, and the GOP stepped up their attack on labor unions. The Obama team had no answer to these attacks, as it had already shown, by continuing Bush education policies and attacking teachers unions, that this administration was hardly a union champion....
Barry Brodsky
Swampscott
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"With a system so broken, there’s nothing and nobody to vote for | November 06, 2014
I went to the polls Tuesday and performed my civic duty, as I’ve been doing for the past four decades. It occurred to me, as I scanned the ballot and read the referendum questions, that for the past 30 years I’ve been voting against people and against things. How sad is that?
But unfortunately, that’s what happens when you have a corrupt and broken political system, and two morally bankrupt parties.
Stephen Thompson
Yarmouth Port
--more--"
Can argue with that.
"Inhofe likely to make sharp turn in direction of Senate’s environment committee" by Tom Hamburger | Washington Post November 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — Senator James M. Inhofe, who once compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo, is likely to lead the Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans take control of the Senate next year.
The Oklahoma Republican appears set to replace chairwoman Barbara Boxer of California, an avowed environmentalist, producing one of the starkest post-election changes in the Capitol. Assignments will be made when Senate party caucuses meet.
That is one good change coming from the election.
Inhofe, who has served in the Senate for two decades, chaired the committee from 2003 to 2008. The former US representative and Tulsa mayor criticized federal bureaucrats, particularly those at the EPA who he said threatened the energy industry in his home state.
In his 2012 book, ‘‘The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,’’ Inhofe describes himself as a lonely crusader against an environmental-liberal conspiracy. ‘‘First I stood alone in saying that anthropogenic [manmade] catastrophic global warming is a hoax,’’ he wrote.
He's right, and that is why he is attacked.
Shortly after becoming committee chairman in 2003, Inhofe took issue with the theory that increasing carbon dioxide emissions causes catastrophic disasters. ‘‘Actually,’’ he said, ‘‘global warming can be beneficial to mankind,’’ helping improve the environment and the economy.
That's true, too. Longer growing seasons mean more food, as proven throughout history.
The book lays out his belief that the EPA needed to be constrained.
--more--"
Environment is really bad for Democrats.
"The national Democratic Party has fully embraced and even defined itself in terms of cultural liberalism. Generational and demographic change are likely to push the Democrats further in this direction, because younger and minority voters are strongly liberal on cultural issues.
No wonder they are losing elections.
Those voters have helped the Democrats win the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. But without a broader base of support that lets Democrats win more votes in the South, it will be very hard for them to win back the House, and it may even be hard for them to win back the Senate."
Looks like they did it to themselves.
"In South, Democrats have a problem" by Nate Cohn | New York Times November 06, 2014
For decades, Southern Democrats could count on winning local and statewide offices, even though the voters in their states would often withhold support for the Democrat in presidential races.
No longer.
Despite efforts to distance themselves from President Obama, none of the Democratic Senate candidates in the South outdid his or her 2012 results on Tuesday. Democrats lost Senate races, sometimes by wide margins, in Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and North Carolina, most of which were thought to be competitive for much of the year. They nearly lost in Virginia, where they were thought to be heavy favorites.
The inability of Southern Democrats to run well ahead of a deeply unpopular Obama raises questions about how an increasingly urban and culturally liberal national Democratic Party can compete in the staunchly conservative South.
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
It raises serious doubts about whether a future Democratic presidential candidate, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, can count on faring better among Southern white voters than Obama, as many political analysts have assumed she might.
The Democrats running in the South this election season were not weak candidates. They had distinguished surnames, the benefits of incumbency, the occasional conservative position, and in some cases flawed opponents. They were often running in the states where Southern Democrats had the best records of outperforming the national party. Black turnout was not low, either, nearly reaching the same proportion of the electorate in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia as in 2012.
Uh-oh. And they still lost?
Yet none of them — not Mary Landrieu, Alison Lundergan Grimes, Michelle Nunn, Kay Hagan, Mark Pryor, or Mark Warner — was able to run Tuesday more than a few points ahead of Obama’s historically poor performance among Southern white voters in 2012, based on county-level results and exit polls. There were some predominantly white counties in every state where the Senate candidates ran behind Obama.
Perhaps most symbolic of the Democratic struggle was Nunn in Georgia. She was the strongest Democratic Senate nominee of the cycle by some accounts: a prodigious fund-raiser and the daughter of a popular former senator. She had never run for office and thus had no record for which she could be easily attacked. And her opponent, David Perdue, was a corporate executive who once said he was proud of his record of outsourcing.
Yet Nunn was defeated by nearly 8 percentage points — the same margin by which Obama lost to Mitt Romney in the state two years ago. She may have fared somewhat better than Obama among white voters, but not by much. She ran no better than Obama — or even behind him — in many of the state’s whitest counties.
Then this election was, in fact, a total repudiation of that piece of shit in the White House.
In Arkansas, Mark Pryor, a two-term Senate incumbent whose father was also a senator, won just 39.5 percent of the vote — less than three points better than Obama. Arkansas was perhaps the Southern state that held on to its Democratic tradition the longest after the 1960s, but it is hard to detect any tradition left today. The state also voted overwhelmingly for a Republican governor.
Despite all the Bill Clinton campaigning there?
There was no winner in Louisiana, where Senator Mary Landrieu and the Republican Bill Cassidy will go to a runoff. But Landrieu, who is widely expected to lose the runoff, ran less than two points ahead of Obama.
The national Democratic Party has fully embraced and even defined itself in terms of cultural liberalism. Generational and demographic change are likely to push the Democrats further in this direction, because younger and minority voters are strongly liberal on cultural issues.
Those voters have helped the Democrats win the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. But without a broader base of support that lets Democrats win more votes in the South, it will be very hard for them to win back the House, and it may even be hard for them to win back the Senate.
Better not tell that to a few people I know.
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NEXT DAY UPDATES:
E-mail exchanges after Election 2014
Immigrants eager for presidential action on citizenship
Obama just fulfilling his duties and pushing along the North American Union and New World Order with his blanket amnesty, the goddamned bastard.
Boehner warns Obama on immigration
A Kennedy in Washington
They elected a rapist who lives in the Watergate?
