2010 Election Results Are In

The election results are in, and there are one trillion web pages now up helping you find out what happened. The short story is that the Republicans cleaned up, although the Democrats maintain a one-seat majority in the Senate. The GOP now has 239 seats in the house, giving them a huge lead over the Dems' 183.

Comments

Should be good for the economy

[rwa2]

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/245/982/Divided_we_make_money:_Why_the_stock_market_wants_a_Republican_victory.html

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nomadic]

It's a big challenge for Obama - he's more "ideologically pure" than Clinton was, so we'll see if he's willing to compromise at all to get anything done for his side. If he wants to be reelected, he'll have to run to the right.

Ideologically pure? The man has offered so many concessions while in office that it's become ridiculous. He really thinks he can win over the paranoid right with his charisma, but he's just not really that charismatic.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Ok genius, tell me how these price increases aren't going to work their way through the supply chain and make the basic necessities of life cost more.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[localman]

It's a shame when people rewrite history so casually. The idea that you call the health care plan "Obamacare" when he didn't put it together and basically dropped the ball on it is completely absurd. Then, in an effort to work with Republicans the plan was whittled down to almost nothing, yet you still call it "Obamacare" and claim nobody talked to the Republicans.

Sorry, but I was paying attention, and I saw a perfectly reasonable and popular health care bill relentlessly torpedoed by the right, and that is the damaged bill we have now. Which, by the way, is still better than nothing and that will be obvious in 20 years as it is tweaked -- like every successful social policy of the past century. You know, the stuff that brought us to the top of the list of developed countries after WWII.

Your notion that this administration is the most partisan is merely a reflection of the fact that sometime since the early nineties when Newt shut down Congress, Republican leaders have simply decided "my way or the highway" on everything. Democrats under Bush were far more reasonable than the Republicans have been in decades now, which is why Bush was able to "work across the aisle".

It may be worth calling attention to the fact, which seems to slip your mind, that under Clinton's leadership we saw one of the greatest decades of growth this country has ever experienced. And under Bush we saw one of the worst. And under Obama we are slowly recovering. Doesn't any of those plain facts make you wonder about the Republican plan?

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

There's no denying that banks played a major role in the collapse, largely due to not properly ensuring that borrowers were capable of repaying the loans.

They didn't want the borrowers to repay the loans. The whole thing was a scam from day one.

The sold unpayable loans to generate more fees by forcing borrowers to refinance.

They sold the same mortgage more than once so that when it defaulted the investors would not realize that it had been pledged two, three or four times over and blame the default for their loss. (Think of the plot of The Producers)

The Republicans and Democrats both know this but neither one is willing to throw their benefactors in jail.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nbauman]

Actually, Ralph Nader said that, apart from foreign policy, the Democratic part is farther right than Richard Nixon.

I think he's right. Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was non-partisan but promoted a lot of ideas that we would consider liberal.

One Nixon/Moynihan proposal was the guaranteed annual income. We would fold the welfare system into the income tax system. If you earned over a certain amount, you would pay taxes. If you earned under a certain amount, you would get "negative taxes." It was a good idea, but to avoid negative incentives, it would have been expensive.

If the guaranteed annual income had gone through, we would have eliminated poverty. We would have had the economic distribution of Finland.

One result that affects Slashdot...

[GPLDAN]

Kiss Net Neutrality goodbye. The champion of it in the Senate is Al Franken, and he's a one term Senator for sure.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Wonko the Sane]

Punish Obama for not pushing heathcare reform

Maybe you missed the memo - the majority of the country opposes the healthcare reform that got passed. Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.

Take over at state level is more important

[Shivetya]

The House take over, while expected, is not the big news. The major push Republicans made at the state level shows the strength of the move. Actually by not winning the Senate the Republicans may have preserved the ability to take the White House in 2012. Given that there are more Democratic Senators up for election in 12 than Republicans they have a near majority on many issues.

God, Gays, and Subpoena's, are about the best way for Republicans to knock themselves out of the House control in 12, as in, lean into any of those areas too far and the voters will show them the door.

Do I expect budget miracles, nope. I expect a whole lot of gridlock, preventing new large government programs from being implemented. That will do us nicely. The government has been on a binge of spending in the last four years and needs to be reigned in. Too much of the government spending is untouchable but if the line can be held, by gridlock or vote, to where spending does not go up by more than 2% per year the economy can grow us out of the deficit spending.

However, like I read elsewhere, the good news is the Democrats lost the House, the bad news is the Republicans won it. Like Rove and a few others mention, Washington doesn't care what the country thinks and the Senate is the worst of the lot. As in, Tea Party candidates, candidates of "change", or whatnot, are in for one rude surprise. The nice thing about the Senate however is that regardless of seniority or committee assignment anyone can submit new legislation

Was is a slap in the face of Democrats. Sure it was, just like 08 was us telling Republicans, no more of this crap; let alone don't expect us to vote for rights killers like McCain. Obama and Pelosi got told, there are no Kings and Queens in America, so quit acting like one.

Did anyone notice..

[MooMooFarm]

That /. gets its United States election results from CBC/Radio Canada?

The real losers

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the real losers in all of this are us: the idiots who keep voting for Democrats and Republicans while believing the platitudes pounded into our heads: This is democracy! The people have spoken! Let freedom ring! And other rubbish.

It isn't even a secret that the politicians work for the lobbyists and not for us: the "campaign contributions" are made one day, and the very next day the vote just so happens to go the way of the contributor. What a shock!

Reform from the inside seems hopeless, because the people charged with making that reform are the very people benefitting from keeping it the way it is. The few honest politicians who get into office get twisted and corrupted so quickly that they become indistinguishable from the most self-serving of the bunch.

If we want to ever break out of this complete rape of our selves by our lords and masters, there is only one option. No it is not revolution. That too is unrealistic both motivationally and militarily. Our only hope is to create an alternative, open-source-style government and make the current system obsolete.

It is a long shot, and you can find a lot of problems with it. But do you have a better idea?

Re:The real losers

[GaryOlson]

Yes. Return the members of the House of Representatives to their home districts. The current mode of shipping Representatives to a central physical location is based on technology limitations which no longer exist. Although many would bemoan the limitations of teleconferenced debates, a geographically dispersed Congress would benefit the people.

The current concentration of government in one location -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- provides too much ease of access with minimal expense/friction for the private sector to influence government. The current atmosphere in Washington DC is too concentrated and too caustic for real representative government to survive. If the private cost of influencing government was increased with a geographically dispersed House of Representatives, the people might actually have a chance to be heard.

Leave the technical details of securing the legislative process to the NSA -- give them some real work for a change.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[jackbird]

Israel got $3 billion in total aid last year, and there is an agreement in place dating from 2007 to reduce that figure over 10 years. (In fact, the $3 billion is an uptick due to a pecial request for funds to help move military bases OUT of Gaza). NASA's budget, at 6 times that amount, is commonly cited here as a very low-cost line item, and I have to question your reasoning.

Unless you're suggesting that Israel ordered the US to invade Iraq and subsequently bolster of Iran in the region, and are attributing the cost of Iraq to Israel, in which case you might want to check your lips for crack pipe burns.