When Obama became president he knew he would have to deal with extremists bent upon attacking us and

[JohnWxy]

... weakening our nation. He just didn't expect them to be in the government.


After eight years of exploding national debt and a wildly inflated housing market the deregulation of the financial markets finally did us in. What followed is an economic catastrophe of a scale not seen in this country since the days of the Great Depression. President Obama said he would do whatever it took to get the economy back on it's feet. Economists across the political spectrum recognized the need for a stimulus bill to get the economy moving forward again. President Obama asked all of us to pull together to help our nation get through this crisis.

In constructing an economic stimulus bill President Obama went to considerable lengths to include the Republicans in the process - even including significant tax cuts to make them happy (though it's been demonstrated that tax cuts are not all that stimulative. Fully 2/3rds to 3/4ths of last year's tax cuts were either saved or used to pay down debt as people were hunkering down for hard times). Still, only 3 Republicans could be found to vote for the Stimulus Package. And now that the Economic Recovery Act is law some Republican governors are talking about refusing to take some of the stimulus money intended to help get the economy going again. The Republicans are so afraid the Democrats will manage to save the economy they will do anything to stop them from succeeding. Even if it means causing a protracted deep recession or possibly a depression.

You might think the Republicans, given their culpability in causing our nation's worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, would be a little contrite and actually try to help save the nation from a depression. But instead they are doing everything they can to undermine the efforts of Obama and the Democrats to fix this Deregulation Disaster (affecting not only the U.S. but all the entire world economy).

YEs, Obama knew he was going to have to deal with those who intend to further damage our country but he didn't expect to find them in our government! Republicans are showing they continue to view politics as war and that they are willing to let our economy be just another bit of collateral damage in their internecine war against the Democrats. I wonder how long it will take President Obama to realize you can't reason with zealots and political extremists. You can't expect cooperation from those who are implacable adversaries of effective, responsible government.

I just wonder what are we going to do with these Republicans, these enemies of effective government, these adversaries of the common good, these stewards of discontent. What are we to do with them?