[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
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Speeker John Boner.
Oy veh.
The pathetic, pandering, illiterate rabble that seeks the RNC leadership:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....1010301804
The GOP has never before reached such a nadir. These are not serious people.
Boehner should take Johnny Cash’s Big River as his theme song.
“I taught the weepin’ willow how to cry, cry, cry.
And I taught the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.”
A pack of Marlboro’s and a bottle of Merlot if you please…
A newly minted congress critter/minion of the Earl and Earline Greys just doesn’t know what will happen if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/.....ng-doesnt/
Pretty simple, Congressman – default.
I have faith in the 10’s of thousands of beltway lobbyists who will try very hard to help these poor newbies see the light.
I think we all should send him a roll of Bounty paper towels. Bounty Boehner.
there’s actually very lil difference tween ‘yes we can’ Obama [corporate sycophant, spokeman/tool fer/of the ruling oligarchy, blah blah woof woof] and any of the obviously, certifiably insane rethuglicans. I didn’t find this video enlightening, amusing or very interesting. better to read the truth being spoken by Ralph, one of the very few public persons to speak for the masses, and against the injustices, and try to do something. see http://www.truthdig.com/report....._20110102/ seems a better use of one’s time…
peace
Satirically altered vid point taken, of course, but to the source material: these ads featuring surgically-enhanced celebrities standing around in black and white finishing each other’s sentences must end!
4
Unfuckingbelievable, yet these twits call themselves adults.
6 – Thank you for that link. Chris Hedges is definitely one of the best left of center writers working today.
More bad news on the economic front. But, remember kids, doing something about global warming would cost us too much money and not doing anything at all costs us nothing. Right? That must be right, big business and the Republicans would never lie to us about something like this, would they?
Meanwhile in other bad economic news the the Baltic Dry Tonnage index, which was at 11,245 in May of ’08 and at 3259 a year ago is now at 1773.
But yeah, we’re on the road to recovery…
Oops, forgot the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index
So the Republican Wing of the Big Government Party is in charge of the House. Meet the old boss, same as the new boss.
PI,
Do you honestly believe there is no meaningful difference between the two parties?
Sad to see this vid. So much promise wasted. Face it, we can put ole tanning toner up on the screen all we want saying “Hell no you can’t,” but Obama and the Democrats have done more to undercut themselves than anything any Republican has done in the last two years. When I first looked at that vid I thought someone might lead in taking a strong stand based on a foundation of strong principles. The laugh was on me. Mr. “Yes We Can” turned out to be Mr. “Yes, We Can, But Should We?” (to quote Jon Stewart).
lol….let the sniveling begin goldy…hahahaha
you think youre crying now, just wait until 2012.
“Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.” – Anonymous
Today in the news: “The first order of business for the new House majority will be passage of a new set of rules to govern the chamber. In a nod to GOP freshmen with ties to the conservative Tea Party, all new legislation will be required to include a “Constitutional Authority Statement,” specifying which section of the Constitution allows for passage of the bill.”
Oh that’s just PRECIOUS! So nice of them to do this. Say Mr. Social Conservative, would you now please point out to me as you go where the Constitution lets the Federal government tell me I can’t smoke pot but CAN drink vodka? What passage is that? Please point out where in the Constitution the Federal government gets to decide who is and isn’t married (once those people have ALREADY been legally married in one of our 50 states). I know you don’t mean to apply this retro-actively to the stuff you passed previously, but kinda wish you would.
Again, be careful what you ask for!
————— Part 2 ——————
Today in the news: “Boehner has promised House Republicans will roll back federal spending to 2008 levels, and has pledged to hold weekly votes on spending cuts. Republican leaders have refused to offer specific proposals, however, for cuts to major entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have also promised not to cut national security spending or veterans’ benefits. Together, these programs comprise the bulk of the federal budget.”
Oh that’s just PRECIOUS! You can’t or won’t cut the vast majority of the budget (and will actually INCREASE the 1/4 to 1/3 that is military spending). The answer!? MAGIC! Lots of precious precious magic!
P.S. Be very careful what you ask for, you might get it.
The furriners are buying the greenback. Some of them must think things are looking up for the good old USA:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....oving.html
Well, an improving economy can only mean a couple things:
Happier people
and
sad, sad, right wing trolls.
If the dumb brick ylb thinks it’s Odumba’s economic policies making the world go round then this sucka is worse off than Puddy could have ever remembered.
@19 And you guys did better? When? 1981-82? 2001? 2007-09? Oh, and lest we forget, 1929-32?
It’s a great day in America. Stretch is in the minority again! The Pelosi Personal Gulfstream will no longer be making CO2 trails.
Boehner no doubt will use his bully pulpit to simultaneously seek tax cuts for the rich and wage class warfare against the working class.
I’m not rich, but I’m not working class, either. I’m a useless eater who made $800 in the stock market today for doing nothing and producing nothing. This Republican system of money-slurping capitalism is downright immoral but I gotta admit it’s kinda fun.
Anyhow, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich post this commentary on his blog that I’m gonna post in full because it deserves to be fully read.
The Shameful Attack On Public Employees
In 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. Eventually Memphis heard the grievances of its sanitation workers. And in subsequent years millions of public employees across the nation have benefited from the job protections they’ve earned.
But now the right is going after public employees.
Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don’t want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they’d like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.
It’s far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public’s work — sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees — to call them “faceless bureaucrats” and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican’s Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that’s too big.
Above all, Republicans don’t want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.
But the right’s argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.
They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That’s untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.
The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges — the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be — all need at least four years of college.
Compare apples to apples and and you’d see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)
Here’s another whopper. Republicans say public-sector pensions are crippling the nation. They say politicians have given in to the demands of public unions who want only to fatten their members’ retirement benefits without the public noticing. They charge that public-employee pensions obligations are out of control.
Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public sector workers to “spike” their final salaries in order to get higher annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to “double dip,” collecting more than one public pension.
But these are the exceptions. Most public employees don’t have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year. Few would call that overly generous.
And most of that $19,000 isn’t even on taxpayers’ shoulders. While they’re working, most public employees contribute a portion of their salaries into their pension plans. Taxpayers are directly responsible for only about 14 percent of public retirement benefits. Remember also that many public workers aren’t covered by Social Security, so the government isn’t contributing 6.25 of their pay into the Social Security fund as private employers would.
Yes, there’s cause for concern about unfunded pension liabilities in future years. They’re way too big. But it’s much the same in the private sector. The main reason for underfunded pensions in both public and private sectors is investment losses that occurred during the Great Recession. Before then, public pension funds had an average of 86 percent of all the assets they needed to pay future benefits — better than many private pension plans.
The solution is no less to slash public pensions than it is to slash private ones. It’s for all employers to fully fund their pension plans.
The final Republican canard is that bargaining rights for public employees have caused state deficits to explode. In fact there’s no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights — Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running giant deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do. They shouldn’t have the right to strike if striking would imperil the public, but they should at least have a voice. They often know more about whether public programs are working, or how to make them work better, than political appointees who hold their offices for only a few years.
Don’t get me wrong. When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else. And they are right now. Pay has been frozen for federal workers, and for many state workers across the country as well.
But isn’t it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don’t include the richest people in America? To the contrary, they insist the rich should sacrifice even less, enjoying even larger tax cuts that expand public-sector deficits. That means fewer public services, and even more pressure on the wages and benefits of public employees.
It’s only average workers — both in the public and the private sectors — who are being called upon to sacrifice.
This is what the current Republican attack on public-sector workers is really all about. Their version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants. They’d rather set average working people against one another — comparing one group’s modest incomes and benefits with another group’s modest incomes and benefits — than have Americans see that the top 1 percent is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying at a lower tax rate. And Republicans would rather you didn’t know they want to cut taxes on the rich even more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....05050.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This, of course, is Boehner’s agenda. He and the rest of the teaparty-fueled GOP cabal in the House want to district attention from obscenely high Wall Street bonuses and even more obscenely low taxes on billionaires by blaming America’s workers for the crappy economy that Wall Street high rollers puked onto the rest of us. And we’re supposed to pay for the collateral damage. I can’t understand why anyone with a functioning brain would vote for these Republican assholes. You have to be mentally ill to vote Republican.
@21 Good work, putz. You combined an ad hominen with a lie in one sentence. Usually it takes you about 20 column inches to get there.
According to USA Today the average premium for family health insurance will be $25,000 within 10 years.
@24
Shit, the way we’re going in 10 years 25K will be the average yearly income for an American family.
19 – Sorry fool. Even Karl Rove believes that Obama will serve 8 years.
You got hardly any bench to speak of fool.
And Obama’s policies don’t have to “make the world go round” – just bring the U.S. to a new normal.
If that happens – sorry sucka!
@14,
Yes.
Judge Napolitano had a bit on tonight’s broadcast about how, in some European countries, government is essentially taking-over peoples’ retirement savings “for the good of the whole.” I guess the idea is to distribute from those who were careful and thrifty to those that weren’t.
No need to worry about that here in the US, though. We’ve got a retirement system that provides enough for everyone. No need for the individual to look after his or her own retirement savings. The government is gonna take care of us.
“According to USA Today the average premium for family health insurance will be $25,000 within 10 years.”
Back when interest rates were very high, Newsweek made the prediction that interest rates in the US would exceed 100%. Predicting what interest rates will be in one year is challenging enough, but trying to predict what interest rates will be doing in 10 years is a guess at best. Same goes for any other prediction: something comes along that always affects the accuracy.
Now, if we really wanted to reduce health care costs, we’d be cranking-out docs, nurses, etc. The problem with medicine is that its union, the American Medical Association, limits the number of people who get into med schools, and those that get in ain’t necessarily the cream of the crop. The only way to reduce costs is to increase supply so prices fall.
Yeah, good luck with that one…
@27 I believed that up until 2001. It’s obvious the Democratic Party, as well as the GOP, is owned by and subservient to the corporations. But beginning in 2001 and continuing to the present, Republicans have achieved a venality that hitherto was dreamed of only by the Bavarian paperhanger and his followers. For pure warmongering, domestic spying, violations of civil liberties, contempt for the Constitution, corruption, lying, demogaguery, lying, stealing, and general bastardry, you have to go to a foreign country to find anything approaching today’s Republican Party. A Latin American tinpot junta might offer an apt comparison. As disgusting and disappointing as the Democratic electeds are, they are light-years better than what passes for a Republican “party” (I think “gang” is a more descriptive word) these days. Democrats wouldn’t even be in business if Republicans weren’t the alternative.
@28 “I guess the idea is to distribute from those who were careful and thrifty to those that weren’t.”
Details please?
And just imagine, the MAJORITY of AMERICANS elected THIS CONGRESS despite YOU ALLS WISHES!
To UNDUE the massive SPENDING SPREE and OBAMAUNCARE
I have posting privileges on Seattle Jew’s blog, and I posted an article tonight that I think is worth your time to read.
http://handbill.us/
If it’s not, well, kick me tomorrow morning.
@32 That’s not correct. A putative majority in gerrymandered districts elected a Republican majority in the House of Representatives while drunk or under the influence of mind-altering drunks. House elections occur on a district-by-district basis, not nationwide, you ignorant idiot.
erratum @34 drugs not drunks
so what? its a video of Boehner taken out of context to make it looks like he is saying you cant have prosperity and harmony.
For anyone who doesnt know what the context is, Boehner was decrying corruption. He was asking if you could say the HC bill was done without dirty and backroom deals. He answered the question himself, saying “Hell no you can’t say that!”
34. Is that how Obama Got Elected? A putative majority in gerrymandered districts elected a President while drinking cool-aid or at and evening of DL or under the influence of mind-altering drunks. Presidential elections occur on a district-by-district basis, not nationwide, you ignorant idiot.
So now the dumb brick ylbasement is listening to Karl Rove?
OH MY! It has to be ylbasement’s personality quirk!
Roger Dumb Rabbit,
Your leftist progressives call you the erudite one and you didn’t see the pension fund takeover story? Your dubious dunderhead friends are talking about it there. Notice the vitriol blaming it on Republicans when we can see the Dummies United forget most of Europe is “socialist” and “progressive”.
Will you see this in a lamestream media story? Doubt it. The lamestream media were pushing the Europe is “socialist” and “progressive” great theme for the US to join for the last two years. Its still a slobbering love affair with Odumba!
@33
Roger – I read your post over at SJ’s place – and it was really moving.
I’m going to have my high-schooler read it – it’s his generation that needs to overcome cynicism over creating an ideal world that has been sown relentlessly by conservatives since Ronald Raygun.
@23
HAHA – yup, so true.
It’s not the size of the gavel, it’s what you do with it that matters.
Well, the republican agenda is becoming more clear. The republican liars who claimed they were against the budget deficit – but refused to name a single thing they would cut – just so they could lie, whine and complain their way into the house majority in the last election (with the help of unprecedentted money from big corporations) NOW show us their real priorities:
1. Preserving tax cuts for the very rich – and holding tax cuts for everyone else hostage until they get what they want. Tax cuts that increase the deficit.
2. Reversing the health care bill to help out their pharmaceutical buddies (see who was just hired by the new republican chair Fred Upton – a former head lobbyist for the health care industry and PhrMA) – oh, by the way, the health care bill is exempted from the budget cutting “regulations” the republicans have proposed – not because it will INCREASE the budget deficit and prevent people from accessing insurance, but because the republicans are liars and exempted the tax cuts and the health care bill because…well, they don’t like them.
Have the republicans come up with a replacement health care bill? NO
Have the republicans come up with a budget reduction plan yet? NO
Are republicans liars? The answer to this is obivious.
Anyone who supports these republicans liars is either an idiot or a dreamer.
Heh. He was saying this on the 24/7 Gospel Hour for stupids like you – Faux News.
You don’t believe him?
For shame fool!
42 – It’s just going to be two years of grandstanding. The budget and spending crap isn’t going to go far – all the voters at home, rich and poor alike want their share of the federal dollar and government services.
I don’t think people will even pay that much attention to the hearings. It’s just a ploy to slow down the administration and dig up scandals prior to the 2012 election. It’ll just be a blur of noise to most people.
Those lipton tea baggers will be the first ones to be thrown under the bus.
Is there anything more disingenuous than a “conservative Republican”?
I find it more than ironic that the cyniclown (and just about all the rest of the trolls) disappear after their heros take office.
I particulaly enjoyed the exit of the cyniclown…decrying the lack of civility in the comments (famously coming from the foremost fomenter of fanatical folderol) just exactly when the fucking clown Darrell Issa was walking back his charges of corruption in the Obama Administration…just exactly when the “tea partiers” reveal themselves to be the venalm, vile liars that they are.
Now the poor puddybitch is left to defend the insane clown posse without backup. Damn…reality sucks.
Oops, the GOP is already caught lying with their pants down – they claimed they were going to cut 100 billion from the deficit this year – now they have moved the goalposts to 50 billion.
More bad news for the lying GOP – the non-partisan congressional budget office has now come out with the latest estimates on the budget hole that would be created if republicans get rid of the health care bill and substitute their own version of wealth transfer to the insurance companies:
A whopping 230 billion in job-killing deficit money will be lost to insurance companies and their GOP lackeys.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120.....Repeal.pdf
Not to mention that there would be over 32 million more people that are uninsured and that insurance for most people would cost more – unless you are young and healthy.
Average benefits would be worse and average costs to employers would go up….sounds like the republican proposal is a job-killer and stoopid.
When you actually get republicans to put something on paper – it turns out to be much worse than they say. Republicans not only can’t govern – but they lie about what they plan to do.
After this gets disseminated, look for republicans to keep lying and keep talking about the “terrible” health care bill that they want to repeal.
Looks like their “solution” is much worse than what we have. That is what happens when the insurance companies write your bills and pay your bills…
Rabbit @ 33
Your piece is well worth the read. No matter how bleak the forecast sometimes appears, we must rouse ourselves, gird our loins, pick up our swords, and go slay the dragons that the troglodytes of the right continually uncage.
Roger @33: Well done!
I will never stop striving, but my hunch is that we’re probably going to collapse as a society — if we don’t have what amounts to a revolution first or end up in cornpone fascist oligarchy.
Speaking of collapse of society, have you all seen “The Road” I caught part of it on cable the other day. It’s bleak and haunting.
@39 What does Europe’s pension problems have to do with Washington, which has one of America’s (and the world’s) best managed public pension funds? dumbcluck
@50
Your post makes me sad. You, a clearly intelligent, insightful, eminently thoughtful person, making a post that at least formally appears to afford the idiot @39 the recognisiton of a worthy opponent. He is most manifestly not, but rather an isipid, puerile fascist-bot that will never respond in any meaningful or constructive fashion. I hope you’re not expecting anything else.
Is an economic collapse being prepared? If so, for whose benefit?
Jeff Rubin: Is There Enough Oil to Pay Our Debt?
Nope. Most doctors and nurses aren’t union. And we’ve got quite a few people coming into the country to get an M.D. degree who are staying here to practice medicine. And increasing the supply of doctor’s isn’t the answer to health care cost increases.
There are doctor shortages in rural communities, and it’s hard to find general/family practice doctors. That’s because most doctors prefer to live in urban communities like Seattle where the quality of life is better for someone with a high income. They also prefer specialties because insurance companies don’t reimburse general practice/family doctors as well as they do specialists.
A lot of the health-care cost is made up of tests, labs, etc. Sometimes this is entirely reasonable. But when your doctor’s group owns a piece of the testing lab, it’s a profit center and you have to wonder if all those tests really mean much. Does every doctor’s office within a one-mile radius need the latest and greatist lab equipment?
Finally, Japan had a simple answer to health-care costs. They made it all non-profit. Doctors and other health-care professionals enter the fiels knowing that their compensation would be regulated. I’m sure PI would argue that results in long waiting lists and sub-standard care, but in Japan that’s not the case. In my office we have a number of Japanese nationals who choose to return to Japan for most of their health care needs, and say that they have found it superior to health care here in the U.S. Oh, and everyone’s covered by their national health care plan. The same applies to Korea, also.
But they can’t say the same thing of dental care, because it’s not included in the national health-care plan or regulated as to prices, so most Japanese and Korean’s limit their dental to only the bare minimum. You can see a lot of crooked teeth there.
@21 “Stretch is in the minority again!”
Hmmm…so, what’s the difference between knocking someone because of age and/or general appearance and doing so because of the color of their skin?
@29 Your first point has a degree of merit, but your second is absurd. Face it, it takes more brains and a helluva lot more hard work to become a good doctor than for most other lines of endeavor. I suppose you’d like to see the requirements be set more like those to get an MBA. If so…well, we probably wouldn’t have to worry as much about overpopulation.
Once again rujax displays his utter stupidity. Roger Dumb Rabbit wanted to see the story. Of course the dumbest of cinder blocks proves why he’s another gutter dweller. And naturally rujax never revisits the whole thread, becuz rujax is all hatred all the time just like his cousin the dumb brick ylb.
Hatred 24x7x365.25
Thanks for playing…
And of course Lib Unscientist guesses wrong AGAIN!
It was great to see the US Constitution read for the first time in Congress. Naturally the DUMBOCRATS reacted negatively to the reading. Jerry Nadler acted like rujax here! A FOOL!
Wow under Nancy Pelosi that National Debt surely increased immensely!
Now that the keeper of the liberal orthodoxy, Ellen Weiss, was shoved out at NPR; will George Soros write another check?
Oh damn, Alan Big Moron Grayson wasn’t in Congress today when the US Constitution was read.
Oh wait, it’s a glorious day!
“Hatred 24×7×365.25”
You project too much. I hear it’s a Psych 101 thing. You might want to look into it.
Poor poor little puddybitch.
I predict he’ll only stay here a couple more months himself. His little tea-bagger brigade will embarrass even colonelsandersfavoritechicken.
Speeker of the House John Boner (sic) (R-Tanningbooth) already let Pete Sessions fuck things up. Boner at LEAST needs aides who know how Congress works don’t ya think?
The puddybitch is on a little bitty island here…and the tide’s comin’ in.
The the party pricks “left out” the stuff in the Constitution that sanctioned slavery and discrimination.
I suppose puddybitch thinks that’s just a “co-inky-dink”.