From Salon:

When does scoring by the Congressional Budget Office count, and when should we just ignore those annoying numbers? If you’re John Boehner, the answer is simple: CBO data only matters when it agrees with Republican dogma, and otherwise its nonpartisan analysis cannot possibly be correct.

While there are partisans on both sides who tend to admire or despise the CBO based on its positions of the moment (and feel differently about legislative rules depending on whether they’re in the majority), the House minority leader has compiled a particularly blatant record of flip-flopping lately.

John Boehner is such a lying, scumbag asshole I don’t even know where to start. First of all, his own aid leaked a bullshit “memo” trying to claim the dems have talking points to lie about the healthcare debate:

From HP:

Democrats are charging that the GOP made up a fake messaging memo that purports to be from Democrats as a way to undermine the party’s message at the last minute. The memo was circulated to reporters — including this one — by a spokesman to House Minority Leader John Boehner. Politico reported on the memo and posted a story which the Drudge Report featured prominently.

“The memo is a fake,” said Kristie Greco, a spokesman for Majority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.). “It’s an under-handed and unethical attempt to distract from the health care debate. If opponents of health insurance reform had a credible policy alternative they wouldn’t have to resort to nefarious games.”

Beyond that, they guy is the worst kind of criminal politician this country has ever had. I remember him well during the lagging days of Clinton and the early days of Bush, always on Nightline being a prick.

Fuck you, Mr. Boehner. This healthcare proposal will make it through and you will be a dingleberry on the ass of history.

Politics john boehner

Here’s John Boehner again,, applying the same hypocrisy he’s been doing for the last two or so years since he lost his power (courtesy Washington Times):

The top House Republican said Tuesday that the liberal bills being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats make him “want to throw up” and that Mr. Obama’s first 100 days in office have shown he has “no plan for keeping America safe.”

Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said in an interview that decisions such as closing Guantanamo Bay prison and releasing classified memos on CIA interrogation techniques reflect a dangerous, “piecemeal approach” to national security.

“I’m just looking at some of these tactical moves that they’ve made, and I don’t see how they fit into a larger picture,” he said in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “They have no plan for taking on the terrorists, and they have no plan for keeping America safe. What is the overarching strategy here?”

I just have a few short words for this man, very likely making this my shortest post:

Hey Boner. Go fuck yourself, you self-centered, partisan scumbag. You spent the entire length of the Bush administration belligerently calling anyone who was liberal a traitor - in addition to voting yes on everything Bush put in front of you. You’ve got no credibility and you can starve on a deserted island for all we care. Fucking dickhead lapdog loser.

Verbal Paintball john boehner, republican loser

From CNN:

The GOP budget would repeal the entire $787 billion economic stimulus package except for an extension of unemployment insurance benefits. It also would roll back a recently passed 8 percent spending boost in the budget for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

At the same time, the federal share of Medicaid payments would be converted to block grants for the states. Medicare would be transformed for Americans younger than 55 by allowing them to choose from a series of preapproved private insurance plans, with premium payments from the federal government to insurers varying according to an individual’s age, income and health.

So the republican’s answer to our economic problems is…do nothing.

This proposal is pathetic and insulting. All it is essentially is extend unemployment benefits without any boost to the job market (because, as we know, the market knows how to regulate itself and create jobs and wealth on its own) and push the bullshit private investment plans for Medicare, an obvious attempt for the insurance lobby to muscle into the conversation.

Thanks, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Thank you for letting the American people see what treasonous assholes you really are. All you’ve done is play to your small, but rich, constituents and all the lobbyists that no longer have a voice in the Obama administration. Your budget will do nothing to help our current crisis and I’m sure you know it. You also know it has no chance of being passed, but it does give you a chance to cowardly avoid doing anything for the country that involves a decision on your part.

Go screw yourselves, traitors.

Current News, Politics john boehner, mitch mcconnell, republican budget proposal, republican lies, republican losers

Absolutely brilliant article by Scott Pasch on Care2 regarding the policies of the Republicans and how closely they parallel Hoover, even now:

Horton Hears a Hoover

Like modern Republi-can’ts today, Hoover believed that the “economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cell of the economic body—the producers and consumers themselves. Recovery can be expedited and it effects mitigated by cooperative action. That cooperation requires that every individual should sustain faith and courage that each should maintain his self-reliance.” I am sure that the emaciated men in the breadlines, the men and women beggars in the streets, and the children dependent on them, all appreciated his desire for them to be self-reliant.

Hoover’s opposition to federal relief came from “fear lest that taxation to provide that relief be levied on concentrated wealth” because then like today inequality, even before the depression, had driven the gap between rich and poor so wide that the previous years were called the “Gilded Age.” Of course today that gap is even larger. CEO’s once made 24 times their average employee, now it is over 400 times. And like today, those in the upper brackets managed to find ways to avoid paying. For example, Federal income taxes for Mr. J.P. Morgan, who encouraged workers to contribute to relief (”we must all do our bit”), amounted to zero for the years 1930, 1931 and 1932. (To be fair, I am aware that 10% of the population pays about 70% of the taxes but if they paid people more and took less than they wouldn’t get taxed so much..eh?)

There’s always a bit of revisionist history in politics, but that tact isn’t working like it used to for the 25%er party. Idiots like John Boehner can’t lie as liberally as they used to because a desperate population has become an educated one. Lets face it - when you’re starving and your only food requires the skills of a bow and arrow, you learn a bow and arrow. Today, Americans know more about economic issues, the give and take of stimulus bills and money management than they did a few months ago. It’s the fuel of survival.

So I say let these conservative idiots lie like banshees. We can see them for who they are. If they want to tell us that Roosevelt’s strategies didn’t work and their new strategies aren’t exactly what Hoover offered - fine. Let the public decide. We’re smarter than you think these days, you pricks.

Verbal Paintball depression, Herbert Hoover, john boehner, Roosevelt

I work in the ad industry. I began as an Art Director, but unlike many I entered the business through the commercial production department instead of the bullpen. I was originally a Production Coordinator on commercials but yearned for more control over the creative reigns. My skills were in organizing productions and video editing, but I had also mastered PageMaker, Photoshop and many other digital programs early in the game just for survival purposes.

When I arrived as the first digital art director at a very prominent ad agency in New York back in 1994, the production department there was abuzz. The daily debate with most of the mechanical guys (these are the men and women who would cut and paste together ads and brochures with xerox type, litho images and glue) was whether computers would take over their jobs. Most were unwilling to consider it, always promoting the benefits and accuracy of doing it manually, the flexibility you had with the client and the time necessary to get it right. All good arguments, but there was one thing some of them didn’t know that I did: it was already over for them.

I would try to coax some of them into learning a few things - Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark if they could. Others were too intimidated. Within a few years, all their jobs would be transformed into computer jobs.

You see, I learned early on that there are no givens in this world and if you don’t know which way the wind is blowing, you’ll be left behind with a flat sail in an empty ocean. Beyond that, just because you think you’re right one day does not guarantee it will be true the next. Even today, as one who runs his own agency, I’ve always got my ear to wall, looking for the next tools that will appear quietly and make many dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs of today, in the political spectrum, are the Republicans. What they didn’t learn years ago was that their standard methods for doing business - disregarding reality unless it fit their expectations, governing through division and mistakening solidarity with their President as a strength - was predictably short-lived. Human beings can only stomach negativity for so long before wanting some relief. They can also only be scared for so long before becoming numb. The big mistake our current pathetic crop of Republicans make - day after day - is believing that the wind is at their back. Their aching need to obstruct and divide (which I feel is less ideology and more sour grapes) is the practice of old.

What many knew that even Karl Rove didn’t know is that no one could possibly welcome a permanent Republican majority, just as a permanent Democratic majority is fantasy. To attempt achieving one at all is a farce. Well, they attempted it - and look at where they are now.

Many of the folks I used worked with all those years ago are now either retired or computer production people. They changed with the times or packed up their T-squares. They were all good, decent people, some just short-sighted. There are also many decent Republicans, but, unfortunately, quite a few who are not (and, mark my words, you’ll see them very soon as lobbyists). They may not know it yet, but there are quite a few cardboard boxes waiting for them in their near future. Some of them may learn a few new tricks, find the religion of bipartisanship and save themselves. For those that don’t, we’ll see them in wax at the Museum of Unnatural History, debating with a neanderthal man over creationism.

Politics john boehner, Karl Rove, Obama, republican obstruction

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Maine Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins are the reason we have a stimulus bill - and thank God for them. While the National Republican Trust PAC has put them on their “hit” list for serving the country before the GOP, I suspect in the long run these three will outlast the spineless many that have become our Republican representatives.

Or, as John Ridley of Huffington Post wrote:

Oh, sure, they talk up the swellness of President Obama every chance they get. And will continue to do so as long as his approval numbers are above fifty percent. But most GOPers tend to become like children who dance hysterically in a sandbox when it comes time to play with others.

Obama will rise out of this mess a more respected man, and I believe that while most bills that pass through our government are poorly managed and not exactly what the doctor ordered, there will be some recovery from this.

But what is most disappointing is the depth to which most Republican lawmakers obviously hate their country, or are simply indifferent to it. From the ground, we’re having a bad one here. We’ve gone from the point of knowing people who were laid off to knowing family members who have been. When you have the best healthcare in the country, limos taking you everywhere, money lining your pockets from the scores of people who want your attention and influence, and a future of sitting back and profiting from those connections, sometimes for questionable lobbies, you are not always in a position to understand what is really going on in your country. At that point, it comes down to your philosophy. Democrats, at the very least, have a philosophy that favors the individuals over the corporations. Republicans favor the opposite and, when push comes to shove, that’s not the type of philosophy that will help out the bulk of us, for if we go down, there will be no audience for the corporations to sell their wares to.

And the sad irony is that today we have the “new” Republicans - who fleeced us for 6 of the last 8 years by porking up every bill they rammed through the Congress and Senate (courtesy of a Democratic minority that could barely challenge a fillibuster and a President who, at the time, was allergic to the veto pen) - and suddenly - out of nowhere - become conservatives again.

This time it’s their philosophy stepping on our necks. And they will not change. They will continue to obstruct because it’s the only way a spoiled child knows how to play. If they don’t get their way, they destroy it all for everyone else. Sure, now and again they’ll fein bipartisanship to vote for something that in the fine print isn’t going to be risky for them, but people like Boehner will never, ever be anything but immature nasty assholes who can’t for the life of them put their politics aside and TRY to help govern for the masses.

Politics Arlen Spector, George W. Bush, john boehner, Olympia Snowe, republican lies, republican majority, stimulus bill, Susan Collins