Thursday, February 13, 2014

"I'm getting this monkey off your back and you're not even going to clap?"

John Boehner backing away from budget fight. His thinking as stated is now the mess of Obamacare rollout can command full attention without distracting unproductive bruising fights.

And apparently tea party types are monkeys.

Monkeys on his back.

The trillions off dollars of unchecked public debt, now intergenerational, is the monkey that tea party types are concerned with, that and constitutional fidelity, so budgetary integrity and constitutional fidelity and intergenerational morality are monkeys on Republicans backs that is appeased by simply caving to Democrats.

The man has got no fight in him. And neither do the rest. Whereas their opponents fight fight fight no matter how far off the ultimate goal no matter how many other fights are already in progress. His opponents are fighting on all fronts at once, opening new fronts as Boehner caves on this one. He sees himself as winner for Republican business as usual while the rest of us see loser for Republicanism in general. Goodbye Republicans Party, I cannot add it's been nice knowing you.


Reported by Washigtonpost.com

19 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...

I checked comonocreerendios blogger search box for "monkeys" and five results came up, all of them mine. Apparently I have a thing about monkeys.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Maybe monkeys are a monkey on people back that even Boehner cant get off.

Chip Ahoy said...

Hay! You tweeted me.

Trooper York said...

Obviously he is a racist.

Off with his head!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I'm all tweet-up since one of my morning tweets has been RT over 20 times... that's my career highlight. It's downhill from now on.

bagoh20 said...

"I'm all tweet-up since one of my morning tweets has been RT over 20 times..."

It's kinda like an STD.

Rabel said...

I'll have to disagree with Chip on this one.

It's the smartest thing Boehner has done in quite a while. Continuing another fight that the Republicans couldn't win would have allowed the media to shift attention from Obama and the Democrat's current troubles.

Keep your ammo dry and pick your battles.

I do agree that Boehner will need a Cossack battalion behind the line to prevent a retreat when it's time to fight.

I've got more military analogies but I think that's about enough for now.

Icepick said...

Rabel, is there a fight the Republicans can win? Especially since the leadership has turned into a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys?

Icepick said...

Don't you Boehner with the Boehner, I guess is the lesson.

Calypso Facto said...

I'm with Rabel. If there was going to be a fight, it should have been during the budget negotiations. To pass a budget in December and then not increase the debt ceiling to support that budget in February would be pretty hard to defend. And with the Dems immolating themselves on Obamacare, I think it's best to not try to distract the gawkers from the flames.

ricpic said...

Boehner doesn't live to do battle, he lives to do deals. In fact he can barely contain his pique at those childish Tea Party Republicans who really do believe in something and therefore live to do battle with statist thugs. "Thugs? Am I, John Boehner, a thug? Is Harry Reid a thug? We're just two REALISTS working out how to slice up the pie."

I'm Full of Soup said...

Damn I just heard some snowthunder for the first time in my life!

Chip Ahoy said...

Keep your powder dry is how old people talk, people with limited energy, rational people talk like that. It flat does not work when dealing with maniacs. They must MUST make as much noise as much distress as mush mess as possible. Or they'll never get heard.

All I hear is Reps caving, reps being sane, reps being old and tired when angry persistent sustained attacks are called for. The utterly fail to drive the assault on unchecked government spending and expansion at the expense of everything else.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Chip I agree with you. If the Repus cared they could just trot out a graph everyday that shows the fed govt has spent $1 Trillion more PER YEAR EVERY YEAR SINCE BUSH LEFT OFFICE.

Or they could point the so-called Farm Bill went increase by $500 Billion [almost doubled] to $1 Trillion in only five years.

That is what I suggest they talk about f they actually cared.

edutcher said...

The problem is, what, exactly, is the hill the Whigs are willing to defend to the last man (if they have any left)?

Revenant said...

Rabel, is there a fight the Republicans can win?

They win fights all the time. The Democrats' legislative agenda has been dead in the water for three years now.

Can they win fights in the sense of "passing laws they want"? Well, no; they control half of Congress and none of the White House. Unless they discover the secret to orbital mind control lasers and zap Obama while he's out golfing, no Republican legislation is getting passed until 2017 at the earliest.

Revenant said...

If the Repus cared they could just trot out a graph everyday that shows the fed govt has spent $1 Trillion more PER YEAR EVERY YEAR SINCE BUSH LEFT OFFICE.

Well, no.

Mind you, I'd be pleased if more people understood just how much money the government borrows every year, but *knowing* that we're borrowing isn't the same as *not* borrowing.

Here's the budget, not counting interest payments:

1. Medicare and Social Security: $1.4 trillion
2. Military: $625 billion
3. Medicaid: $266 billion
4. Literally everything else the government does: $576 billion

I'll give you a freebie: let's assume we can whack all of Medicaid and three-fourths of the "everything else".

Now you only need to decide how much of the other $300 billion in cuts is coming out of the military budget, and how much is coming out of entitlements the wealthiest and most heavily-voting demographic group in the country thinks it is entitled to.

Or you could raise taxes. As in, double them.

Rabel said...

"Rabel, is there a fight the Republicans can win?"

Not without the Senate.


"The utterly fail to drive the assault on unchecked government spending and expansion at the expense of everything else."

It's too late. We have a debt which can never be honestly repaid and a financial catastrophe is already baked in.

Interest rates will eventually normalize and that debt will grow every year between now and then. When those two factors collide we will, over the course of a few years, reach a point at which we'll have to tell a lot of people to fuck off because we're not going to pay them back.

There's no prospect of the tremendous economic improvement that would be required to grow our way out and the entitlements simply aren't going away to a significant degree so anything we do with taxes and spending between now and then might delay the day a bit but is just small potatoes.

Hopefully we'll still be the leading military power, if not the single superpower we are now, because it could get ugly if people aren't a little bit afraid of us.

JAL said...

@ AJDamn I just heard some snowthunder for the first time in my life!

Weird, huh. Cool, too.