Yes and Congressman Akin voted to raise his pay 7 times while cutting veteran benefits. Seems he is just as bad.

I think you should read his voting record on the internet before tearing into me. His record is DISMAL and he hasn't bothered to show up for critical votes in the House for 10 months. Too busy campaigning. BTW - The Captain - do you make your wife/girlfriend curtsy/bow to you? You would be the kind to support someone like Todd Akin that never views rape as "legitimate". It must be the woman's fault, huh.

The purpose of a representative is to take the consensus of the constituency to the national stage as the voice of the state, not to play the parent. Otherwise, you have an autocracy or dictatorship. Last I checked we are still a democratic republic.

And as a democratic republic, our leadership is not bound to mob rule.

The leadership seems to pick and choose when it "bound by mob rule".

So am I but Todd Akin reminds me of Timothy McVeigh plus I am a breast cancer survivor so stem cell means a great deal to me. Also - someone near and dear to me was in fact a rape victim, got pregnant and if Todd had his way - she would have to carry that baby to term and either raise it or give it away. It was those comments that sent me running.

Actually the change in healthcare protects consumers from the abuses of the insurance companies. The Nazism here is the "Patriots" repeating big lies until the feeble minds belive them. As a CPA I can tell you then none of my clients ever did not go into business, or go out of business because of "Regulations". 100% did not make it because the banks did not give them loans. The story about regulations crushing small business is false. Also, those of you who make the fascist remarks are doing the bidding of the Koch brothers and Karl Rove, that kind of makes you the fascist. (of course you have to actually know what a fascist is) Finally, the thugs are the ones who came in and stopped the healthcare town hall discussions. Who sent them? Why would any American think that type of behavior is OK? Wake up!

I've asked people like "patriot" to name one tangible benefit to voting for GOP economic policy - anything that directly and specifically impacts their lives in a measureable way, and they can't. And more specifically, if lower taxes are the panacea to all our problems, how is it that we have some of the lowest, perhaps THE lowest tax rates of the past seventy years, with arguably lower levels of regulation on many fronts, yet we are sputtering our way to recovery from a very severe recession, many of the publicly funded amenities the middle class has come to rely on are threatened with budget cuts or are being held hostage to millionaires' tax breaks, and so forth? Where is the upside in more of that? I say increase the marginal rates on high earners, make capital gains rates correspond to earnings tax rates, and let's get the rich back into the mindset that their success is the result of both their own ambition and intelligence, AND a system that makes social mobility possible.

Yes, but most of the Dems only know what they are supposed to hate about the other party (just like you) & don't understand that everything you just said comes from their party & not the other. They refuse as you do to look at what they've done & not what they give you to repeat. Dividing comes from 'helping' this group or that 1 instead of everybody. The "middle-class" rhetoric they've started (& you are buying into), is just another one of those divisive mechanisms. You believe that your party is looking to help the middle-class, but to do so, you have to forget all the tax increases of the last 4 years & the ones to come with Obamacare. The government can only give, what it's already taken from the people.
Even the VP admits that they buried the middle-class. For most of the last 4 years, Barack Obama, has been President. For 2 of the last 4 years, his party controlled Congress by large majorities, as well as the 2 years that preceded those, and Biden’s party has controlled the Senate for all 6 years. In fact, both Biden & Obama sat in the Senate previously, Obama for 4 years & Biden for decades.
If the middle class has been buried, it’s been on their watch.
Median household income has declined each of the last 4 years, a decline which has accelerated during the Obama “recovery” that started in June 2009. Median household income dropped 2.6% during the Great Recession, but has dropped 4.8% in the 3 years since. How are they "helping" the middle-class again?

1) Devon, you are putting words in my mouth, and they're dumb words. They're also wrong words.

2) The problem as I see it, is that GOP tax policy is ultimately regressive. Until "job creators" start creating stable, middle class jobs, endorsing and fighting for competitive tariffs on imported goods, and stop stashing their $$ in Zurich, or Bermuda, or whatever - I have zero hesitation about forcing them to pay higher tax rates for the level of public services that will be required after the hollowing out. The rich can suck it.

Here are the benefits. The people keep their money & more of it goes to their needs, therefore they need less from the government.
Your plan: Give all of our money to the government so that they can take their cut, then dispense those needs to the people as they see fit & the more people they can get to become dependent on that government aide, the more people they can scare with the lie that "the others" want to come & take it away, when in fact, what they want is for people to be able to provide for themselves & NOT NEED government assistance.
Your turn Missourian - How does a broke government take care of all your needs? Where in the world, throughout history, has bigger government ever been anything but a bad thing for the people? When has an economy ever been better for the people when the government spends a trillion dollars per year more than it has, while the people can't afford to spend at all? When has competition ever been bad for the economy? When has it ever helped the people to make them pay for their own homes 3 times to cover their bad bet? (PS- government forced more than a trillion dollars in "bad loans", then came in & claimed to be protecting you from the "predatory lenders" THEY FORCEABLY unleashed upon you. Standard Operating Procedure)
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw
How does creating more Pauls fix anything?
Economies heal when the people spend, not when the government does.

Oh, also, how does someone being taxed more or becoming dependent on government aide, help with social mobility? Have their been more people added to government aide, or more people exiting those government programs in the last 4 years? Social mobility is destroyed by the very people you think are "helping" you. Those are the people who vote for those who can't wait to turn them into perpetual dependents. Look at your communities, see who the people continue to vote for, you'll find that THEY are the ones keeping them there. Social mobility, give me a break. You think government aide is the road to social mobility, I believe social mobility comes from the ability to get a good paying job & gain some experience.

Devon, you are obviously stupid.

Nice explanation. But you are obviously the stupid one, that's why you resorted to name-calling just like you are programmed to do.
Giving the people (or letting them keep) more of their money, gives them freedom & keeps them from needing government assistance. Taking money from them does the exact opposite. Fact.
You say "Until "job creators" start creating stable, middle class jobs, endorsing and fighting for competitive tariffs on imported goods, and stop stashing their $$ in Zurich, or Bermuda, or whatever - I have zero hesitation about forcing them to pay higher tax rates for the level of public services that will be required after the hollowing out. The rich can suck it."
The one thing holding down those businesses & taking away that possibility are the very people you are endorsing. THEY brought about NAFTA & highest corporate tax-rate in the world. It's only smart to move your money out of the reach of theives. Don't you do that with yours?
The rich can suck it. Never have the rich oppressed the people. Governments have since the beginning of governments. The rich were the "enemy" that 1930's Germans thought owed more of their riches to the state as well. What measures are you willing to go to, to get that money for your government.
Again, to you it's always about what the government has or can spend, I'm about what the people have to spend.
The more you attack the rich, the more that will happen, over-taxing them is what created what you want to blame them for.

You know what I'm (self) programmed to do? I'm programmed to disregard idiocy, like that ^ intellectual sewage. Since you are incapable of or unwilling to wrap your your head around basic Keynesian economics, I'm not going to waste my time explaining them to you. Go to a ____ing library, check out some books that are widely accepted by economists and read up on the subject, then we can resume discussing economics. Until then, I'll keep calling you an idiot when you say things that aren't true, and which are easily disprovable with a Google search.

I don't have a party, I have cause & effect.
Erroneous. Taxes have NOT gone down the last four years. Fact.
Do you know what caused the banks to "freeze"? No, but you're trained to say Bush. In fact it was the Fair Housing Regulatory Act, Community Reinvestment Act, (Clinton) Fannie/Freddie & the worthless loans they sold to those banks.
They forced banks to make loans they knew people couldn't pay (a trillion dollars worth), Fannie/Freddie guaranteed & bought those loans, bundled them up (changed the banking laws to sell them like "commodities"), then sold them back to those banks & businesses. Bam! Fannie & Freddie makes their money (and their leader, Franklin Raines, makes off with $900+ million of those dollars - those addicted to regulations for business, blocked all attempts to regulate Fannie & Freddie), while those buyers (banks) are left with a purchased product worth nothing. People are now broke & homeless with bad credit. Then the government took YOUR money AGAIN, and bailed-out those companies they wanted to survive, and let the others go out of business.
When a $100,000 home is foreclosed on, banking laws require that the bank pull 7 (in some places 9) times that amount out of the economy. Now we are at $800,000 removed from the economy, add in interest or money that could be made through investment & you're (conservatively) around $1.2 million out of the economy per every $100,000. Millions of foreclosures result lower home values, STILL.
(Short version)

As I recall it has been the Republicans that have failed to be collaborative. Running the government is not the same as running a business. I would argue that Romney was not successful in business, and he was not a successful governor. Obama was not going to get anything done without the other party helping. They have failed to help at all and he has still stopped the free fall of the economy and gotten it moving in a positive manner despite the republican house. Based on the numbers, which show that 40% is the investments in the green companies was successful, and that is a great return on investments, what would you say if they had all hit, which would never happen no matter who was president. The other party's policies are what destroyed the US economy, and almost the worlds economy...why would we go back to the policies that almost destroyed us? do you want to finish the job? It just does't make sense. I also wonder about the personal attacks on the president...he is our president, why is that OK?

I am thankful for Obamacare and hope it does not get repealed. I am tired of paying higher prices for going to the hospital because of folks who could afford insurance, but do not buy it because they know they have to be treated. Why is that OK to you?

Lastly, leadership is not taking your daddy's money, buying a company, firing the employees, then taking their salaries and pensions and giving yourself a big bonus. That is also not capitalism.

JP: I would be interested in your analysis of this:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/14/david-stockman-mitt-romney-and-the-bain-drain.html

JP:

When you see this you have to know that the phone program is by the phone companies, not the government and nothing to do with Obama. The facts they cite on the slides are all consequences of the Bush presidency. These are facts. Fox news depends that you believe them without checking for the facts.