Boehner moved to tears by anecdotes, not specific incidences, during caucus meeting. Do you want to tell him to grow a pair as bad as we do? "By all accounts, House Speaker John A. Boehner has been a relentless, cold-eyed negotiator in the debt ceiling face-off with President Obama. ... But sentimental stories tend to get Mr. Boehner misty-eyed. And we now have the first official indication of what is enough to make the speaker cry when it comes to the debt ceiling issue. ... At a meeting of the House Republican freshmen and their leaders on Wednesday, there wasn't a dry eye in the room -- including the speaker's. ... Representative Martha Roby of Alabama had just finished reading an e-mail of support from a one-time Tea Party opponent, recognizing the tough choices that the new Republicans faced in the vote to raise the debt ceiling. ... Mr. Boehner, who has become well known for his occasional displays of emotion, joined others in the room by crying a bit during the closed-door session. ... "He wasn't sobbing, but he definitely teared up," said Michael Steel, the speaker's spokesman."
Andy Borowitz: "Tomorrow's John Boehner forecast: Partly angry with a 90% chance of crying."
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The Republicans keep breaking their own record for awfulness and destruction.
Last month, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar cheered environmentalists and fans of the great outdoors with his extension of a moratorium on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon for another six months. But now House Republicans are aiming to use the Interior Department appropriations bill to try to reopen the areas around the park to mining interests.
Salazar announced in June that he was extending the prohibition on mining on roughly 1 million acres of land near the canyon through the end of the year, a moratorium he put in place in 2009. [...]
The appropriations measure, from Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, would reverse Salazar's decision and again make it possible to mine near the park. It's one of dozens of anti-environmental riders tacked onto the Environment and Interior appropriations bill that the House is debating this week.
Is there a better poster child for all that's wrong with teahadism than this clown? Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.
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Kneeling for salvation expert Marcus Bachmann is in the news again, but not for praying away the gay. It seems that Marcus turned in a campaign reimbursement expense report that is, um, questionable:
According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (see page 16 of this PDF), covering the period between November 28 and December 31 of 2006, Marcus was reimbursed $6,230 for mileage.
OK, so what's the big deal?
Granted, $6,230 hardly seems like a shockingly large amount of money for a spouse to be reimbursed for campaign expenses. But considering that the IRS's standard mileage rate was 44.5 cents per mile, and that the farthest opposing corners of Minnesota's sixth district stretch about 120 miles, Marcus Bachmann would have had to have driven 14,000 miles (58 round trips) in the span of 1 month to warrant the money. This, of course, seems physically impossible and highly unlikely (especially considering the mileage was accrued after Bachmann had already won).
Whoopsie! That's a lot of trips to the Minneapolis Mineshaft, Marcus!
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Krugman is getting in touch with his inner Keith Olbermann and taking a swipe at an absent colleague.
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$9.5 trillion $3.8 trillion
Total debt is $14.3 trillion.
$1 trillion of debt comes from before Reagan (NYT doesn't make clear who created that debt).
$13.3 trillion accumulated from Reagan to Obama.
71% of the $13.3 trillion was under GOP presidents.
28% of the $13.3 trillion was under Dem presidents.
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This is the return on our $1 trillion investment. "Insurgents have carried out a gun and bomb attack in the south Afghan town of Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan province, leaving at least 22 dead, officials say. They said the violence included three suicide bombings followed by fighting in a market, adding that all eight attackers had now been killed. The dead include Ahmed Omed Khpulwak, a local BBC reporter. The Taliban say they carried out the attack, which comes amid renewed violence in Afghanistan. Nato says it is providing air support to Afghan forces in Tarin Kowt."
It is more or less redundant for us to type about "debt ceiling negotiation updates," because in plain English this just means "members of the Tea Party continue to be intransigent dicks." But the news media is still bravely trying to figure out why national financial collapse is somebody's actual political platform, so here is Andrea Mitchell incredulously asking Tea Party member Rep. Paul Broun why he refuses to vote for any of the debt bills. "When someone is overextended and broke," Broun says, "they don't continue paying for country club dues, they drop out of the country club." THAT IS A TRAGIC STORY if you are an old rich white man. And so what about the hundreds of millions of Americans who've never even seen a country club from the outside? Can those people have their economy back? READ MORE »
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