Boehner to America: drop dead

POSTED BY ORHAN

House Speaker John Boehner held his weekly press conference today and demanded Democrats outline their plan for spending cuts “to avert the fiscal cliff and help get the economy moving again”:

“…the president has warned about the dangers of going over the fiscal cliff, but his actions have not matched his public statements…despite claims that the president supports a ‘balanced’ approach, the Democrats have yet to get serious about real spending cuts…Listen, this is not a game…And this is a moment for adult leadership…the White House has to get serious…we’ve put real concessions on the line by putting revenues on the table right up front…Republicans have taken action to avert the fiscal cliff by passing legislation to stop all the tax hikes, to replace the sequester, and pave the way for tax reform and entitlement reform….But without spending cuts and entitlement reform, it’s going to be impossible to address our country’s debt crisis, and get our economy going again, and to create jobs.”

Now it may sound rather ironic to hear Boehner calling for “adult leadership”, yet he says that the Republicans did in fact make concessions; they put “revenues on the table right up front.” Why would the Democrats refuse to compromise?

The White House has a notion. According to the Administration, it’s because even though they say they put revenues on the table, the Republican leadership won’t agree to raise tax rates on the top 2 percent. And the fact that the American people elected Obama on a platform that states the rich should pay more appears to be simply irrelevant to Boehner.

Parsing the rest of what Boehner is calling for–stopping tax hikes, paving the way for tax reform and entitlement reform–is just the same old Republican dogma, tax cuts and social spending cuts. And the bill to “replace the sequester” (designed by Paul Ryan and passed in the House with zero support from Democrats) replaced fiscal cliff Defense cuts with cuts to the Food Stamp program.

So Speaker Boehner is making clear the Republicans intent to change not one iota; they intend to dig in and hold fast to their program of serving the rich and the rest of the people be damned, even if we made clear our intent through the electoral process. So much for democracy.

Also

Boehner: “it’s the only way to stop Washington from spending your money”.

Translation: “it’s the only way to stop ourselves from spending your money”

My sentiments exactly

 RJ Matson, Roll Call  via http://www.cagle.com/

Who’s the patriot?

The new Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 112th Congress of the United States of America declines invitations to  official State Dinners of the United States of America – unless George Bush invites him. Apparently. And he thinks it’s okay – or even clever. It is not.

He is the third in line to the Presidency of the United States of America and when this nation formally and most diplomatically entertains the leader of our greatest competitor, a country likely to challenge us for ‘great power’ leadership, he is supposed to be there, supporting his government. It’s his frackin’ job.

FAIL, Mr. Boehner,  big time FAIL.

A few words on that from Jena McGregor’s “On Leadership” column in today’s Washington Post.

” [This] marks the third time the Republican leader has skipped a state dinner during Obama’s administration. But [the] rationale that Boehner doesn’t believe in Washington’s pomp apparently didn’t stop him from attending a 2007 state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II during George W. Bush’s presidency. The white tie dinner for more than 100 guests included caviar, champagne and dover sole.

Some etiquette experts have looked aghast at Boehner’s decline. Politics Daily quotes Anita McBride, chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush, as saying that “you really have to be sick, dead or dying to regret a state dinner invitation.” Meanwhile, Letitia Baldridge, who was social secretary to President Kennedy, had even sharper words . . . Boehner’s decision was “short-sighted and a failing of his duty.”

[the columnist adds]  “he should deal with it for an evening. Leadership requires that people do things they don’t like all the time, whether it’s attending a fancy dinner or negotiating on thorny issues with opponents.

A leader at Boehner’s level should actually want to take every opportunity to present a unified front to other countries.”

Suppose he’s declining these invitations to sit down with foreign heads of State for an altogether and far more troubling reason – suppose he wants allies and adversaries to perceive the leader of our country as weak? If that’s the case, his rudeness does damage to the country he claims to love. China conceivably could see Boehner’s snub as evidence that the United States is a disjointed, politically unstable country.

Mr. Weeps-A-Lot

Memories. It’s January 2009 and Nancy Pelosi is being installed as Speaker of the House. She smiles a lot, brings her 14 grandchildren to the speaker’s dais, uses the large gavel that was used when passing the Civil Rights Act in ’64 and calls the 111th Congress to order.

But she is a San Francisco liberal you know. So the Limbaugh-of-the-scorn and his wanna be’s, along with the Sean-of the outrages put their machines into gear. She is to be mocked. Too smiley! What’s that stunt with the kids? She talked about a milestone for women – playing the victim again: damn those women! And she’s pushing it with that gavel!

Forward to yesterday: John Boehner becomes speaker; he stands beside Pelosi and he cries – on camera, in front of the Congress. He took his even larger gavel and called the 112th congress into action. And the right wing noise machine saw a good thing. And they moved on.

Fair and balanced. As always.

I made no provisions for this possibility

What’s a liberal to do when John Boehner (deliciously named “The Tan Man” by Ed Schultz) says something I agree with? Even more? What to do when John Boehner says something that Paul Krugman (a.k.a. the ‘shrill one’) has been saying for 18 months? A puzzlement.

Well, this is unusual

All the news reports yesterday were assuming that with the resignation of Rep Eric Massa, the ethics investigation against him would end. But right now, on CSPAN, the House is doing a full vote on a motion to proceed with an investigation. The Democrats are all voting Aye. Actually – everyone is voting Aye. I haven’t heard a Nay yet. Wonder what precipitated this?

UPDATE: This is confusing. Now they House seems to be voting on a resolution by John Boehner (of course) on whether to initiate a probe into when exactly the Dem leadership knew about Massa. By all means, let’s not focus on the offense itself. Perhaps in the next few hours, it will be clear what exactly is going on.

And this is NOT analagous to Dems going after the Republican house leadership when Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) was revealed to have been inappropriate with male pages. Massa has just arrived in the House. Foley’s violations went on over a period of years during which it was swept under the rug by his own leadership – the GOP.

Photoshopped?

Is it possible that Rep. John Boehner has such amazingly beautiful eyes? I don’t think so . . . I’ve seen him on TV hundreds of times. These are not even the man’s own eyes!

And whoever wielded the wand? Not a very good job.