the gerrymandering after the 2010 census rewards their behavior. but eventually they'll all die off, just like dick cheney and antonin scalia.

it's taking too long though

Dick Cheney will never die. They've replaced his heart with a mechanical construct that only needs charging once a year, guaranteeing that as long as Walter Reed has electricity Cheney will live, snarling benignly at friend and foe alike and loving his daughters publicly but not necessarily their wives. Undoubtedly, Scalia will qualify for the same innovative but successful replacement when his own heart finally gives out. Ah, the wonders of modern medicine.

Considering the laws they would have passed if they could have this is probably for the best.

Tea-baggers don't have to do anything. They got the Supreme Court carrying water for them now so even if they grind the legislative branch to a shuddering halt, the judicial branch will keep the reactionary agenda moving forward.

What 3 said. I think America is afraid of the harm Congress does. And considering their actions tend toward benefitting large corporations I'm not sure I disagree. A D is better than an R in office, but I wouldn't trust either one.

Anyone have a way out of this mess?

@5,

Follow California's lead and utterly crush the Republican Party.

Not that I think the Democrats are sunshine and rainbows, but they actually *govern*.

Keep on fuckin’ that chicken, KKKongriss.

Throw in that they're counting on this frustration with Congress ("a pox on both their houses") to drive up voter apathy so their votes count even more.

@ 5,

The only reason not to support the violent overthrow of the US gummit is that whatever sadistic, psychopathic, screeching, orc-like, Big Mac-sucking, teabag demons replaced it would be a bajillion times worse.

And even that prediction may be absurdly optimistic.

@10,

Your party is the fascistic one, fuckstick. Once you've been decimated, feel free to revamp yourself into something that isn't a joke. Until then, fuck off.

@6 There are a handful of great D's in office. But it's not the party, it's the system. Money wins elections, and deals are made based on that. It doesn't matter if you replace the entire system with Socialists (and good luck with that), the lobbyists will still find ways of getting their backers special deals.

I'm looking for solutions at the system level, not the number of red or blue badges in Congress.

Republicans are turning their incoherent, hateful ideology against each other in Mississippi and it's a real pleasure to watch.

@5 - I've resigned to agree with this as well. Gridlock seems to be the only form of moderation this backwards congress knows. I certainly don't know what the fix is, but I can tell you I'd like to see our electeds publicly shamed more often for seemingly commonplace shenanigans like campaigning and fundraising instead of doing their jobs, voting on bills they haven't read or don't understand, adding unrelated riders to bills, and .... oh God I've got a lot of typing energy for someone with a cold. Let's just say "etc."

I don't disagree with @6 either. CA has certainly had its political ups and downs, but it's a place where the fringes can still feel somewhat represented while the center still gets the bulk of the heavy lifting, er... lifted.

@9: We saw that in effect in Mississippi.

"Heeeeeey black people! I know we've been shitheads forever, but you should vote for me because those other guys are way, way worse."

@16 kind of like the message democratic party leaders tell the democratic base...

@12- they've only won a single presidential, i.e. national, election since 1988. Their congressional majority has a 2 million vote deficit on the Dem minority. They are gerrymandering the shit out of the entire country and are happy to do so. Im not holding my breath for their come-to-jesus moment. It came a LOOOONG time ago but instead of changing they just focused on ridding the country of free elections.

It's sad that this observation got posted on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the greatest piece of legislation in the history of the country: The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thank you, LBJ. Shame it's all being rolled back now.

Republicans - the most of them - are proof that evil masquerades as good. They will not change. To their dying breath it's a resurrection of the white male society of the 1950s. Jesus would puke His guts out if He saw how they despise the marginalized and poor!

@1 Bush's operatives who got away with murder, thanks to Obama, will be back. The same way that Cheney and co came back from Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal even though it should have been the end of their political careers, at minimum ..

@22, I think you mean "profited hugely from", not "got away with". Murder has made all of those operatives extremely wealthy men.

The sad thing is that most Americans blame Congress as a whole, not Republicans. So I hope they *don't* read that paragraph. It just makes them think, "Why bother voting when the politicians won't do their jobs?"

I want American voters to read a paragraph listing the laws Democrats would propose next to the laws Republicans would propose. That's a reason to vote.

I've always been of the opinion that if you let Islamist extremists actually run a region for a little while, as opposed to just fighting insurgencies against occupations and puppet regimes, they'll tend to cultivate hatred of themselves amongst their own people.

Similarly, I suspect as long as the reactionaries of American politics are seen as the political insurgents, they'll be looked upon more favorably then when they start putting their disastrous policies into effect.

If it weren't for the level of misery waiting to be doled out to the least fortunate among us, maybe it'd be good for America to get a little taste of what these loons have in store for us.

@12 - C'mon, sunshine, you know better than that. They've been losing elections regularly and what have they done? Gerrymandered the fuck out of half the states in the country so they could hang onto their seats, that's what they've done. And they're trying to gerrymander the ones they missed the first time around, along with gutting the Voting Rights Act by every trick they can think of. Not an ethical soul in the lot of them, sparky.

Government should be stripped down to its basic parts. Clinton said the era of big government is over, remember?

However, that's not to say it is not prudent to tax for spend for the most basic parts of government and to implement them with the utmost efficiency and comprehensiveness.

@29 Yeah well unfortunately the Republican party chose to ignore Eisenhower's warning and instead ran with the Reagan plan. i.e. Cut taxes/revenue, ramp up military spending.

G.H.W. Bush, Clinton and the Dems fixed that problem sort of.

Then under G.W. Bush the Republicans doubled down with, cut taxes/revenue even more, start two wars and place them off the books.

Republicans suck at conservative fiscal accounting.

The part that makes this almost funny to me is that a party that has been traditionally associated with extreme authoritarianism is being held hostage by a bunch of glorified anarcho-capitalists!