Tag: boehner

Shutdown Number One

jasencomstock:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday morning that he and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, have agreed on a deal to cut about $38 billion from current spending levels, but added that Republican insistence on including a policy rider blocking federal funding for Planned Parenthood, is the only stumbling block.

“We agreed on a number last night,” Reid told reporters in the Senate Press Gallery. He said he is “really upset that this government is going to shut down” because of GOP efforts to limit access to abortion.

A spokesman for Boehner has challenged Reid’s account, saying that continuing differences over spending cuts, not the abortion rider, remains the problem.

On the wager: Planned Parenthood will be the Newt Gingrich bad seat on Air Force One of this shutdown. Simple and easy to understand, and it pushes most of sensible America’s “that’s just rank insanity” button.

…you just need to be really brazen about your flip-flops. Sure, sites like ThinkProgress or Politifact with catch you, and the first few times that happens maybe you’re a little worried about what’s going to happen. But then it dawns on you: nothing is going to happen. Your base doesn’t read ThinkProgress. The media doesn’t really care and is happy to accept whatever obvious nonsense you offer up in explanation. The morning chat shows will continue to book you. It just doesn’t matter.

Kevin Drum, yesterday, on Newt’s ridiculous flip-floppery re: Libya (last week: bomb ‘em into the stone age!; this week: we can’t just go around bombing countries willy nilly!). I thought Drum was being a bit overwrought with this, but then the sad spectacle this morning of NPR doing exactly this…they presented a smorgasbord of GOP talking points about the GOP House not being “consulted” sufficiently pre-bombing.
Of course, these same GOP House members were screaming “bomb! bomb! bomb!” every day of every week leading up to bombs falling, but their opinions were apparently unheeded. As soon as the first bomb fell, though, those opinions did a 180. Now intervention was out of the question. The whole “Obama dithers too much!!!” meme: down the memory hole forever.
NPR uncritically reported this new GOP position, paying zero heed to the old GOP position (of last fucking week), larding it with a “he fools around too much running about in Latin America” and only then stamping the whole moldering package with a fig leaf in the form of a “some say” from an administration flack.
But yes, NPR is clearly a liberal hellspawn that must be destroyed if we’re ever to have any semblance of balance in reportage.

EXTRA: USA NOT BROKE, JUST RESTING

Bloomberg delivers some shocking, shocking stuff:

“The U.S. government is not broke,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “There’s no evidence that the market is treating the U.S. government like it’s broke.”

The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007. Financial products that pay off if Uncle Sam defaults aren’t attracting unusual investor demand. And tax revenue as a percentage of the economy is at a 60-year low, meaning if the government needs to raise cash and can summon the political will, it could do so.

Print out in the largest type possible and stick to the teleprompter of every Serious Person currently inhabiting the media. Likewise, Obama and his proxies need to be talking about this. A lot. So often that we can’t stand it anymore, and then a few million more times on top of that. Then you can start a serious discussion about revenue, which is the only truly serious way out of this mess. Sorry, but it is.

EXTRA: USA NOT BROKE, JUST RESTING

If it’s Jobs Friday, It’s John Boehner

Boehner, January 7th, 2011: Any signs of job growth are encouraging, but 9.4 percent unemployment and a $14 trillion debt are by no means adequate to get our economy growing. Hard work lies ahead to reduce uncertainty, start creating jobs again, and restore confidence in our economy. It isn’t new faces Americans are looking for – it’s new policies that will cut spending and grow our economy. These are the priorities of the new House majority. We have already implemented reforms to make it easier to cut spending, and cut our own budget to demonstrate our commitment to making real cuts and tough choices. Today, we will take the first steps towards repealing the job-killing health care law, so we can replace it with reforms that will lower costs and protect jobs. Our economy will ultimately recover, but it will do so because of hard work and entrepreneurship, not more wasteful Washington spending.

Boehner, February 4th, 2011: The president’s spending binge is hurting job creation, eroding confidence, draining funds away from private investment, and spreading uncertainty among job creators

Boehner, March 4th, 2011: The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1. Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.

Lemkin: So, to review, jobs numbers were up in January because of generalized excitement around forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, down in February because of “Obama’s spending binge” that somehow managed to overshadow those still forthcoming and fantastical GOP policies, and then up in March because of non-tax hikes that didn’t take place in the future. Makes perfect sense to me.

The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1. Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.

House Speaker John Boehner, taking credit for the recent and notably improved employment report.
Of course, the uncertainty engendered by the fact that the entire federal government may shut down for an indeterminate period in a couple of weeks has nothing but salutary effects on the economy as well. And, the uncertainty caused by the massive layoffs that seemingly every analysis yet performed says will inevitably result if the GOP economic agenda comes to pass, well that’s also just a massive opportunity for good ole ‘Merican know-how and will, in fact, increase jobs, pay, and consensual reproductive sex between one man and one woman across this great land of ours.

Mr. Boehner, Where Are the Jobs?

John Boehnner, March 2010: When are we going to address the number one issue on the minds of our fellow citizens? When are we going to focus on the economy and getting people back to work?
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 7, 2011: The job-killing health care law was passed over the objections of the American people, and they have continued to speak out against it, loudly and clearly. With this vote, we have begun to make Washington listen and heed the voice of the people. [So we get the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”]
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 20, 2011: [The American people] spoke about [abortion] on America Speaking Out. They spoke on this issue loudly and clearly. [So we get the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which is, no doubt, creating millions of jobs.]
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 26, 2011: …formally endorsed a bill Wednesday to revive and expand the school voucher program for the District of Columbia, calling it “a model for similar programs throughout our country.” [So we get the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, narrowly aimed (like a laser!) specifically and only at spending tax dollars on sending students outside the DC public school system. That ought to get the economy going.]

A Kind of Relief

George Packer made several excellent points last night, one of which seems to be this morning’s emerging “serious person” consensus on the Giffords shooting and the political motivations (and their sources) that all-too-clearly underlie it:

It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

Emphasis on coherent. Because it’s plain there are a number of right-wing talking points in this guy’s spew. Gold standard, government takeover, and other usual suspects have already emerged from his internet wake without the official investigation even getting started. But because the spew was most definitely a spew, and one that somewhat rarely qualified as English, well, those were just coincidental ravings of a lunatic and not something he heard repeatedly and then acted on. Just a lone nut, and both sides do it anyway.
Well, Cokie, Packer is ready for you:

…even so, the tragedy wouldn’t change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

Absolutely right. Just absolutely goddamned right. It is no coincidence that the entire week’s House agenda was instantly sidelined. Boehner and the rest knew the whole purpose of it was to create a hateful political sideshow. Sound and fury signifying nothing, but most certainly working to gin up some more fury. What’s the point of continuing with it if you can’t go before the microphone to talk about the coming tyranny? So that will just have to wait till next week. Because the Beltway media culture steadfastly refuses to learn from anything, least of all repeated, targeted domestic terror attacks. Time and time again, whether it be against the IRS, a member of Congress, government buildings, what have you, these are each dismissed as lone nuts operating on some incoherent babble and most definitely not taking marching orders from other lunatics that are routinely given the microphone on the most popular media outlets in the country. Don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that their manifesto contains extensive quotes from Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, whomever. That’s just incoherent ramblings. Both sides are equally guilty, and here’s an anonymous DailyKos comment that proves it.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing

Steven Pearlstein writes about the GOP’s latest tick: adding “job-killing” to the front of basically any Democrat-related noun. He finds just one teensy problem with the practice:

Repealing health-care reform, for instance, would inevitably lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths each year because of an inability to get medical care.

Although lack of effective regulation led directly to the deaths of 78 coal miners last year in West Virginia, Republicans continue to insist that any reform of mine safety laws is bad for miners’ employment.

Republicans also continue to oppose food safety legislation that could save the lives of hundreds of Americans killed each year by contaminated food, just as they oppose any regulation that would effectively keep assault weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals and narco-terrorists who kill thousands of innocent victims on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing