So THIS is what you actually voted for last Tuesday

You remember the 2014 midterm election, right? You know, the one that ended 6 says ago, or before that guy from Utah fumbled on the 1-yard-line and the polar vortex and Ted Cruz said that net neutrality is "Obamacare for the Internet" or whatever else Big Media is distracting the masses with today, now that Ebola has gone from O.J. Simpson-style coverage to getting tossed completely down the Memory Hole. Last week, even before the votes were counted, I said that this was the "Seinfeld election," a show about nothing, thanks to deceitful Republicans and cowardly Democrats, among others.

It turns out maybe the election was about something after all, just not the stuff that anyone dared talk about before Nov. 4. Now it's time for what James Brown called -- and the billionaires who sponsored Election Day 2014 would agree -- the Big Payback. All those average folks, struggling to get by, angry at the gridlock in Washington and at the guy in the Oval Office who overpromised on the hope-and-change and couldn't really deliver, may now get something they didn't even ask for.

Dirty air. And rancid water:

The GOP sees the midterm elections as a mandate to roll back rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, with Republicans citing regulatory costs they say cripple the economy and skepticism about the cause of climate change.
 
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) identified his top priority come January as "to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in."

So this includes passing legislation to block Obama's EPA from new rules that would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, one of the largest domestic contributors to climate change. Among other bills that Congress hopes to send to the White House, according to The Hill, are overturning "rules on mercury and other air toxics from power plants, limits on ground-level ozone that causes smog, mountaintop mining restrictions and the EPA's attempt to redefine its jurisdiction over streams and ponds."

Of course, you remember the sweeping debate over these proposals this fall, right? Yeah, me neither. I would have to agree with this:

Elizabeth Thompson, director of Environmental Defense Fund campaign affiliate EDF Action, said Republicans misinterpreted the message from voters.
 
"It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude that this election signals that the public is inviting any kind of congressional rollback of America's bedrock environmental protections," she said.

But that's been the GOP's M.O. for this entire lost decade. In 2010, the Republicans gained control of the House, as well as a number of statehouses across the country, promising "jobs, jobs, jobs" -- only to focus mainly on legislation that would restrict the reproductive rights of women. This time, the new Senate majority is here to make the world safe from pollution controls -- a mission that virtually no voters except maybe for some bloggers from the National Review even wanted them to do.

This is the main reason why Americans get gridlock -- because too much of the time we need gridlock. Hopefully, the 45 or 46 remaining Democratic senators will grow a spine or whatever appendages they need to filibuster and prevent these poisonous, literally, bills from ever reaching Obama's desk, and if they fail, let's hope the president remembers how to use his veto pen. The pundits say that Republicans need to show they can govern? Personally, I'd rather breathe.