While the American People may lose if we go over the cliff, both parties, in a way, win if we do go over. Republicans get budget cuts across the board and democrats get what they want with the Bush Tax Rates going bye, bye. Both sides get at least half of what they want and can claim plausible deniability on the other half. From a political/strategic standpoint, why compromise? The American People get hosed and both sides have a finger to point at the other for being ‘unwilling to meet the other half way’. With one hand, they are pointing an index finger, while they extend their middle finger to we the people with the other. Politics as usual; loyalty to the party line means more than loyalty to the common citizenry. Listen to the multiple different media sources for yourself. There will be NO compromise in DC. We’re not just going to go over this cliff, but drive over it like a fool trying to copycat an Evel Knievel stunt.

Clinton wasn’t dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Either way, its an unforgiving and indescriminate third party that seems to cry out ‘if you two can’t settle this, I WILL’. In a way, its a cop out and has an unintended (or, maybe-I’m being the skeptic here-INTENTIONAL) consequence of giving both parties MORE reason to bicker and draw their line in the sand. Both sides can hold their line, then claim plausible deniability when we drive over the cliff.

Goodness, Pax, I have never before known you to scream in all caps.

“tax those who are cause of government gone wild until they get it that we can’t keep treating the symptoms of the problem but need to get down to the root of it.”

We agree. Tax the heck out of police and prison guard unions and their members, pretty please?

The Republicans must, must, MUST take a stand against that arrogant Chicago punk who’d trash our country in an attempt to fundamentally transform it to suit his radical agenda, come hell or high water. Just put out a sensible plan that explains how it will get the economy back on track, make your best case for it to the masses without any apology, and then leave it up to Obama on whether to compromise or do something stupid — even if that means he’ll fool the people once more into believing that the Republicans are to blame should we go over this fiscal cliff that he is using to scare folks into giving him another freaking blank check and ever less accountability. The most important thing to do is to fight for our country and do the right thing regardless of what that may do their political fortunes. If the voters still want for Obama and his ilk to keep ruining this country, then so be it. They’ll have to stew in their own juices just like the rest of us — and maybe that’s just the tonic we need to get them to stop drinking the Kool Aid.

‘Historian Will Durant wrote that major historical figures are simply a catalyst at the right time and place. Change occurs because people are ready for it. Obama is not changing the direction of the country, the American public is.”

Catpaw, I was thinking the same thing but I was waiting for the right time to share those thoughts.

What makes the so-named “millennial” generation different is a number of things.

First, they are the first generation to have grown up with the presumption that you are, or should be, free to live your life as you choose. Unlike us seniors, they have comparatively little direct experience with the heavy, prurient government oppression that, when we were young, even made the words “damn” or “pregnant” in a film or TV show shocking and controversial.

There are twenty-something girls in my circle of friends and peers who are so openly brash about their sexuality that they make me sound like Gertrude Himmelfarb. Yet they are not getting pregnant; they are not getting abortions; they are not getting STDs; they are doing everything that we say responsible adults should do. Why the Republican Party’s neurotic, almost perverted fixation on other people’s pelvic regions? We’re responsible enough to handle our own lives, they say.

They want government out of our lives; ergo, they vote more Democratic.

Second, they’re losing something that we had: reasonable opportunity. And being generally less in the thrall of partisan media propaganda, they see the obvious, and it’s not the Democrats causing the problem.

They see a world ruled by concentrated money and power and inherited luck, where one’s odds in life are overwhelmingly decided by who and how wealthy your parents are; if you’re born to the losing end of the 98%, you either see a future of low-wage jobs or potential comfort at the end of a big gamble fueled by student debt.

They know that this is less a land of equal or reasonable opportunity than it has been in the last 50 years. And, contrary to popular partisan mantras about “equality of opportunity” versus “equal outcomes” (something that only the most far left Bay Area Democrats envision), I am quite confident that I can have almost every conservative here arguing against equal opportunity with all of their undying strength.

Do understand that the “equal opportunity” ideal is not well supported by the rare anecdote of the tireless underprivileged youth who managed to beat the odds and squeeze through that narrow gate of opportunity. Those “poor kid to riches” stories are, in reality, admissions that opportunity is grossly unequal and increasingly unrealistic today, or those stories wouldn’t be so remarkable as to be worth remembering and telling.

Learning that reality is not what you have believed it to be can be very disorienting. It can be frightening. It can be enraging. The natural reaction at first is to fight it and convince one’s self that, somehow, reality is still what one thought it to be. (Lashing out at the messenger comes quite reflexively, too.)

I’m seeing a great deal of all of these in the aftermath of the 2012 election.

Reality is different now. The “culture war,” I can for the first time say with confidence, is lost. Jim Daly, the current president and CEO of Focus on the Family, sees the light and has, in my opinion, a better approach for furthering his perspective. Look for that word “orthopraxy.” It is worth the read.

For that reason among others, this was indeed a pivotal election. The Republican Party top operatives were so close to being able to stack the Supreme Court to the point of literally shelving the Bill of Rights that they could taste it. But if they lost, the “culture war” would be lost, for all practical purposes, forever.

To borrow from the late Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story behind the extreme desperation that powered this year’s battery of dirty election tricks.

“The country these people “want back” never existed, except in their imaginations”.
How would you know ? Did you come of age in the 40′s ? Were you a adult in the the golden age of the 50′s. Or did you just read that somewhere ?

“Obama is not changing the direction of the country, the American public is”.
Well, not entirely true. The misguided American public is changing the direction and the spoilers like obie are maneuvering it in direction they want it to go.