A Day of Mourning...

Well, it's official. The Obama/GOP tax deal has passed both houses of Congress and is about to be signed by President Obama this afternoon. For me, a 99er whose final week of benefits was paid out earlier this month, it's a day of mourning.

Mourning for the life we had just two years ago - a life that barely qualified as middle class, but it was enough. Mourning for the hope of finding a new job that has just grown dimmer because there is absolutely no reason to think that tax cuts which failed to produce jobs for the last 10 years (in fact, we consistently lost jobs every one of those years) will suddenly start creating them now. Mourning for the faint hope that the Democrats would stand up for the 99er's and refuse to let the deal pass without adding more weeks beyond 99 for us. And also mourning for our country, which has just seen nearly $1 trillion wasted on all the wrong things.

Two years from now, when this disasterous deal ends, we will not be better off than we are now. Everyone knows it, including the GOP. They just don't care. This has been proven, perhaps more this year than ever before. The Senate has become a virtually non-functional entity. Nothing can be done without the permission of the GOP, even though they are in the minority. And if anyone thought that was going to change after the tax deal was done, all you need to do is listen to the news for a half hour and you will see that isn't the case. They are still obstructing and objecting to everything, trying to run out the clock on the current session without allowing anything except their tax cut deal to be accomplished. Nothing else matters to them - not the welfare of their own constituents, or of the American people in general; not the economic crisis or national security - not even funding the military.

How can we call these people patriots? Doesn't a patriot put the welfare of his/her country before his/her own interests and desires? Aren't these folks bound by oath to serve and protect the Constitution and ALL of the American people, not just the special interests within their own party?

At what point does political gamesmanship turn into dereliction of duty? When can we start demanding that the GOP either do it's sworn duty or get the hell out of the way?