Boehner is SEEING ORANGE!
It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.
“Go f[uck] yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.
Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”
Boehner repeated: “Go f[uck] yourself.”
You know…I’ll bet Joe Biden suggested Boehner do this—as a strategy to keep his speakership.
And I sure hope it works.
Footnote: Now I am concerned about speaker Boehner. The last time we heard that a powerful Republican told a powerful Democratic Senator to “go fuck yourself,” well…the poor bastard lost his heart!
Republicans don’t have hearts. At least, not ones that work. That’s why they’re against motorcycle helmet laws. Motorcycles riders are the #1 source of second-hand hearts in good condition. There’s usually nothing left of their brains, but that doesn’t matter, because you wouldn’t want theirs anyway.
For what it’s worth, Boehner voted for The Cliff Deal. Not with enthusiasm, but he has less death wish for our economy than his fellow Republicans. It took most of the Democrats to pass this thing, so the bulk of Republicans could go home and tell their constituents they “voted against taxes.”
Not Boner. Not even if you held him for me.
We now have the PERMANENT Obama tax cuts, the largest ever in the history of the United States. See what difference a day makes? Instead of raising taxes on the top 1% or so of taxpayers, we cut taxes for all but the top 1% or so of taxpayers.
#4: Yes, but you know the reasons.
(a) the Bush Great Rescession left the economy in the fragile recovery mode, so tax rate increases on the middle class were fiscally dangerous because they took consumption out of the economic system. The Clinton-era tax rates, which brought us to a balanced budget in 2000, were helped by an expanding economy led by the tech boom and trade agreements. (
b) The middle class will already get hit by the end of the temporary Payroll Tax reduction (I would have made a more gradual schedule over another two or three years or so).
(c) It’s all we could get past the current Republican House.
@5 “… tax rate increases on the middle class were fiscally dangerous because they took consumption out of the economic system.”
So, as the last dozen years have shown us, is busting middle class wages.
@6 Yup, when you throw the working class under the bus, they don’t repay debts or buy stuff.
# 7: But the powers that be still try to rig the game so that the middle class become indentured servants, no matter how little they are paid or how deep in debt they become.
Take, for example, the last series of bankruptcy reforms (I forget the year right now). They made it possible for companies to erase union contracts and pension obligations, and for CEOs and other high-ranking executives to get millions in “bonuses” for taking the company through bankruptcy. The middle-class, however, lost a major safety net when it mandated that an individual seeking bankruptcy protection first go through five years of debt repayment, or prove that they could not do so, before their debts are discharged.
By the way, remember how Republican tongues were wagging about how “rude” Virginia Sen. Webb was for not shaking Bush’s hand? Or how “immoral” Biden was for his comment to Pres. Obama before the press conference following enactment of the health care plan?
#3 Brenda: Boehner isn’t interested in potty mouthed rabbit stalkers :)
@6, @7, @8 The new game is turning the middle class into “debtcroppers”, aggregating their indebtedness into “deriviatives” that are actually bets on whether or not they’re going to be able to pay, branding them as high-quality “securities” and selling them back to the same middle-class indentured servants through their 401(k)’s. This is still based on the “supply-side economics” fantasy that claims that as long as Wall Street can keep most of the balls in the air, what Louis Rukeyser used to refer to by “meanwhile, back at the economy” doesn’t really matter.