I'm amazed that people here are still banging away on that Democrat/Republican red-herring false dichotomy.

Both parties and their elected officials, including Saint Obama, are nothing but shills for the same interest: the super-rich uber-capitalists who have controlled the US economy for over a century. These few people have decided to slam shut the window that opened after WWII and allowed a substantial number of the underclass to ascend to a relatively wealthy middle class status.

Their intent is to starve out the middle class (with whom they don't want to share their profits anymore) by running up such huge federal deficits that severe frugality measures "must" be put in place ("new spending to be offset with cuts elsewhere") - read: cuts in social spending, welfare, education, health and Social Security.

Their intent is to return this country to a feudal state: masses of the poor, controlled by a very few overlords. It's in their interest to keep us fighting about the relative merits of the Republican vs the Democratic Parties because --

-- it keeps us distracted from what's really going on.