Things I hear about US politics, despite being in the UK:

Republicans are taking their ball and going home, obstructing p much anything Obama wants to do, while he for some reason continues to try to work with them. Possibly because he needs a couple of their votes to get a 2/3 majority and overcome all the blocking tactics. Meanwhile Democrat supporters are disappointed that Obama turned out not to be a magical unicorn, and wasn’t able to turn the country into a utopia overnight.

The combination of the two is that despite some real progress being made, everyone seems to have it in for the guy in charge for either doing too much or not doing enough depending on which side they’re on.

The Tea Party is a particularly loud and stupid wing of the Republican base that are against “government” (always just “government”, never “the government”­) being involved with anything. They’re supposedly a grbum roots movement of ‘real Americans’ who want to ‘take their country back’, but are mostly just whipped up by the lies Fox News has told them about how Obama is some combination of Antichrist, Communist, Socialist and Facist.

Also distinguished by phrases like “Obamacare”, as if the President will personally be touring the country to (incompetently, and at taxpayer expense) tend to the sick, and/or put a bullet through granny’s eyes when she’s judged to be too old and hence obsolete.