Boehner reneges on a budget deal after his conservative caucus revolts.
In other breaking news, scientists report that water is wet.
Reader Interactions
88Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.
Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
We are aware of all internet traditions.
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.
This blog will pay for itself.
🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵
Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.
Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker
Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!
The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris
The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.
“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.
If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.
Mike Goetz
The story of Boehner should provoke terror and pity.
What a husk he has become.
4tehlulz
>water is wet
YOU LIE
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Once again, the AOS is pwned by his caucus. Sadly the nasty weasel next in line would be far worse. Apologies to weasels everywhere; have counsel call or write to begin settlement discussion.
Suffern ACE
Hmmmph. All this over 19 billion in cuts. Why do I get the feeling that those “cuts” include things that no one would agree to.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
The House wingnuts can’t do anything about the debt ceiling deal with the auto cuts to the military and medicare providers, nor can they change the fact they surrendered raising the debt ceiling to Obama, until after the election. Those things are now law.
The only leverage they have is threatening another government shutdown for add on cuts. That is likely not a political winner for them, especially after all their other antics recently along those lines. Bring it on, liars!!
Yutsano
This is me shocked.
What, can’t you tell?
some guy
a Republican shutdown of the government 5 weeks before the elections? a surefire winner for a Veritas-style VICTORY!
rlrr
Boehner is was you get when you let an Oompa Loompa OD on growth hormones.
El Cid
When Harry Reid is quoted as saying the Senate leadership “expect” the GOP House to uphold their deal, I’m assuming it’s the ‘moral expectation’ meaning (i.e., ‘it’s you’re responsibility and not doing so would be wrong and irresponsible’, such as ‘I expect you to return this borrowed item in perfect condition’) versus the predictive meaning (‘I would predict that you are most likely to return this borrowed item in perfect condition’).
feebog
They really are committed to all holding hands and jumping from the bridge together, no? Rachel Maddow is right, the Boner is the worst Speaker ever.
Martin
I think these guys have completely lost the plot – moreso than usual. At any other time, the President would be presidential and consolatory toward the GOP, and the GOP could count on that. But this is an election year. You don’t shut down the government in an election year, because not only does the President have the largest microphone on earth, but in an election year, he has permission to (rhetorically) go medieval on your asses. This is not a script they should be handing Obama.
They might have been able to manage the narrative in any of the last 3 years on this, but they can’t now. They can’t even remotely hope to.
Mark S.
Ugh, is the site rebuild still going on? I keep getting that Error 403 message. I don’t know if that’s related to the mobile site shit.
Mike Goetz
OT here in a big way, but has anybody else noticed that the Santorum daughter seen crying in that iconic photo from 2006 has grown into something of a cutie?
Mineshaft Gap
Off topic – those of us who come to this blog from RSS readers get the mobile version. Been happening for a while. What gives?
Roger Moore
@rlrr:
And the Republican Caucus is what you get when you let the backbenchers run the party. Or the inmates run the asylum.
liberal
@Martin:
Bully pulpit?
Cacti
This might be the moment that truly fractures the GOP. Every House member is up for election. The baggers got elected to play Loki and set things on fire just to watch them burn.
The non-baggers will be forced into a choice: 1. Break ranks with the tea-nuts, and vote with the Dems, or 2. Shut down the government and force a national default 5 weeks before an election.
This is an own-goal by the GOP. All the Dems have to do is stand pat and watch them implode (please resist your foot shooting tendencies guys!).
Cacti
This might be the moment that truly fractures the GOP. Every House member is up for election. The baggers got elected to play Loki and set things on fire just to watch them burn.
The non-baggers will be forced into a choice: 1. Break ranks with the tea-nuts, and vote with the Dems, or 2. Shut down the government and force a national default 5 weeks before an election.
This is an own-goal by the GOP. All the Dems have to do is stand pat and watch them implode (please resist your foot shooting tendencies guys!).
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Looks like the House Tea Tards are fixing to send another election year message, that reads
“Fuck You America”
“VOTE REPUBLICAN !!”
DonkeyKong
It is said THE REPUBLICANS ARE REVOLTING!!!
Jamie
well there’s a stunner. Will we see the GOP coalition shatter or a giant constitutional crisis pushing the country into a serious collapse?
Linda Featheringill
Yeah, OT but I’ll say it anyway and then fade into the background and be quiet:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/the-rights-sandra-fluke-conspiracy-theories.php
What is it about Sandra Fluke that drives the right wing stark raving mad? What’s she got? Intelligent and well spoken, yes. Lots of women are. Pleasant looking, yes. Lots of people are. Charismatic? I don’t see it. A well honed talent for making misogynist pigs completely nuts? I can see that.
Perhaps the lady has a future in politics?
The Dangerman
The Orange Dude got dick rolled? Shocked!
Tone In DC
I remember 1995, with the coldblooded amphibian trying to have a pissing contest with Bill Clinton. Worked out well for Newton then, right?
I shouldn’t read too many tea leaves this far from the election, but with all this ridiculous behavior (contraception/abortion laws, religious freedumb, anti-immigrant laws) this fall could be a landslide for BHO. These wingers are using weapons grade st00pid.
rlrr
@DonkeyKong:
THE REPUBLICANS ARE REVOLTING
Yes, yes they are.
rlrr
@Tone In DC:
These wingers are using weapons grade st00pid.
It worked for them during the Bush years and 2010.
Jennifer
Home page isn’t up-to-date when I come to the site url. It shows the Sullivan piece as the most recent, with 10 comments, and no indication or link to later posts. Anyone else having this glitch?
geg6
Worst Speaker in my lifetime. Maybe worst Speaker ever. What a weakling. What ever has happened to the GOPer love for manly, manly men? Boehner is pretty much the opposite.
Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn are turning over in their graves.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@DonkeyKong: they certainly are
damn – rlrr beat me to it
Tone In DC
@rlrr:
The end effect of their WMD level of stupidity (quantum level st00pid, probably should be on one of those old Carl Sagan shows) was the election of one B. Hussein Obama. Couldn’t have happened without these woman-hating cro magnon idjits.
El Cid
@Linda Featheringill: Also, they chose her as one of their rotating roster of minor beings to turn into liberal hate focus and reputation smearing, and it turns out that this has proven painful for them.
The classic logic of the fury system of both bully & Empire is that you do not raise your head and challenge your tormentor, else they bring down their full force against you.
To do so is to inspire unending hysterics and rightwing hatred, and to convince the reactionaries that if a hate-target is being defended, it must mean that she or he is somehow crucial to the libs, thus if you take her / him down, you’ve really hurt them, and you’ve shown that it’s going to cost you if you do stand up to them.
Martin
@Linda Featheringill: Well, the GOP really needs the ‘slut’ narrative to stick. If it doesn’t, and the public comes to look at hormonal contraception as any other prescription, then they’re fucked – the religious freedom argument won’t stick. So they have to keep attacking her and tearing her down in order to try and distract people from her message.
Suffern ACE
@Linda Featheringill: Well, she’s a young ambition woman and no one likes that. Especially if you have to pay attention to what she is saying (which they don’t.) Heck, you don’t even have to be young. You just have to be a liberal woman who is given the spotlight in such a way that you have to pay attention to her. See also, Pelosi, Nancy.
Satanicpanic
If I were in his shoes I’d be getting drunk every day too.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
This simply codifies what we’ve known all along; Boehner is a figurehead, nothing more, and at that an appallingly bad one.
Cantor’s the guy to watch here, and that’s scary, as he has a real and true “anti-American” agenda.
mds
@Cacti:
In unrelated news, expect Steny Hoyer to come out with tentative support for the $19 billion in additional cuts. “Under the assumption that right-wing horseshit about the deficit is true, everything is on the table. I’ll have to look at the numbers. I won’t understand them, but I’ll look at them.”
maya
Scene: Inside Speaker of the House’s office. Boehner sitting at his desk, head dropped, tears running down both cheeks.
{Knock-knock-knock]
Boehner: “Who’s there?”
Voice outside door: “Trans-veritas sonagram.”
Boehner: “Can’t you just sing it?”
Frankensteinbeck
@liberal:
Not in the sense you mean, since it won’t much affect how those idiot representatives will vote. However, as the anti-bully-pulpit crowd have been trying to tell you all along, under normal circumstances the president’s ability to drown the US in sloganeering is limited. The press reports what they feel like. Fortunately, campaign season changes that. It won’t move the congressional Tea Jerks, but it may affect the election itself.
Personally, I’m not sure he’ll go to town on them. The ‘adult in the room’ has been working extremely well for him, keeping his approval ratings stable while everyone else’s nosedive. Sweet talk has also gotten him enormous legislative success and helped him outmaneuver these cretins in every negotiation so far. Still, they’ve handed him a shiv and the only question is where he sticks them with it.
Cermet
This is a whole lot of nothing – the thugs get the tea baggers happy for the primaries and then quitely cave in a few months well before the real election. Simple and easy.
danimal
Could this be the GOP’s…
…Waterloo? (cue Abba track and fade into picture of Jim Demint)
Srsly, they really want this fight at this time in the election cycle? Wow, such great tacticians in the GOP!
Tone In DC
@Frankensteinbeck:
Amen to that.
RareSanity
When Gil Scott-Heron said, “The revolution will not be televised”, there is no way he could have foreseen the Teatards™ affect on the GOP.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
Hey, if they reneged on the deal can we get rid of the Bush tax cuts now?
I mean, a deal’s a deal.
PeakVT
@Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity: Boehner is more than a figurehead, and less than a leader. But Cantor isn’t exactly Tom Delay. They’re 3rd-string players without a good coach to make them work together.
gene108
@liberal:
Nope. Barack Obama’s been wasting tax payer money on buying tricked out audio equipment.
Thanks, to Martin, we’re all in the know now!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
And when the gubbmint shuts down, and the checks stop going out, all the well-informed little turnips out there will certainly understand that it’s the GOP’s fault and not Obama’s.
Tone In DC
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
They figured it out in 1995 – 1996, as I recall.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Teatards running the asylum. That’s what we’ve got.
Boner is a loser. He’s going to go down in history as the most pathetic speaker, ever.
Ash Can
@rlrr: Indeed it did, but as recently as 2010 even the teabaggers were running on “Jobs, jobs, jobs, oh and the economy too.” Only after they were elected did they say, “By ‘jobs,’ of course, we meant ‘union busting and slut-shaming.'” Now they’re actually running on ZOMGLADYPARTSAAAAAAAAGH. The stoopid has definitely been ramped up (to the point where even other Republicans are noticing it).
cat
What have we done to be so lucky the tea party caucus is going to force the house GOP to break their word weeks before an election?
If they actually go through with this I can’t see how the DEM’s don’t retake the house. I’d like to think most voters still require their politicians to be able to act in a good faith after a deal as been struck.
Joey Maloney
@Jennifer: I see that intermittently, but only from my office on a Windows box. I never see it from home on my Mac. Make of that what you will.
FYI, if you click into any post, the list of recent posts in the right col will then be up-to-date.
Zifnab
@cat:
I wouldn’t call putting up with 60 years of whiney Boomer bullshit that will culminate in a political pissing contest just when we’re pulling ourselves out of the economic trenches “Lucky”. Nor would I consider the collapse of the American two-party system something to celebrate.
If you consider spending the next 4 years with every piece of legislation working its way through Congress like an overly-large kidney stone some quirk of fortune, I’m going to have to call you a masochist. Republicans are going to kill their election chances not by spouting an unpopular ideology that loses electoral support, but by hurting a lot of low income people until they are in enough pain that they revolt.
RareSanity
Off-topic, public service announcement, for those affected…
Syracuse has lost their starting center for the duration of the NCAA Tournament, make sure you update your brackets accordingly.
[link]
Peter
If they actually go through with this then they’ve either lost their minds entirely or they’ve given up on the next election. They could sort-of get away with the Debt Ceiling fight from last year (I say sort-of because they took a real hammering over it and it shifted the momentum in a big way) because it was far enough from election day that voters would mostly forget about it when the day came.
But five weeks away? That’s when they want to have that fight? Plus, if I’m remembering correctly, didn’t the debt ceiling deal allow Obama to raise it on his own? So they don’t even have much real leverage there.
It’s electoral suicide. Either they’re just making noise to appease their base, or they’re throwing the election.
Davis X. Machina
The GOP is running in the fall on the slogan “Stand back, or the ni**er gets it!”
Always worked for Clevon and Mel…
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
Because she’s someone who actually successfully fought back against Rush Limbaugh – or at least elicited sympathy from people who were willing to. In a nutshell, Rush Limbaugh tried to pick on a girl and ended up getting bitch-slapped in front of the entire school. So of course, they’re furious.
Beyond that? The conservative base runs on hate. To get them really excited about something, you have to point them at a person (Obama, Clinton, Alinsky) or an archetype (the DFH, the Welfare Queen, the Union Thug) and drive them into an undending Two Minutes Hate about him/her. (Romney fails to please them largely because he can’t do this, or doesn’t realize he has to). Sandra Fluke just happened to be their designated Emmanuel Goldstein for this issue.
Linda Featheringill
@El Cid:
Yes. I have met that system before. And you don’t have to be female to run into that mechanism.
I think that some of the backlash against Rush is from people of all kinds who have been subjected to that kind of bullying and are still angry about it. Or maybe a lot of it.
The Republic of Stupidity
@danimal:
Apparently so… along w/ the Battle of the Uterus… can’t wait to see the medals they award themselves for their great victory in this one… what, oh ever, will they be shaped like?
You’d think they would have learned the pitfalls of trying to fight on two different fronts at the same time by now…
Martin
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m pretty sure he will. The president can’t speak out against the opposition outside of campaign season. It’s an unspoken rule – because voters can’t do shit about it, you have to deal with the assholes you’re dealt. But at the same time, we give politicians permission to make their case during election years – and because the president is running for re-election, he can make his case. He can make it not only against his direct opposition, but also against the other party more broadly.
Obama has another thing working against him that no other president has had to deal with, and that’s the proverb: “You’ve got to work twice as hard to get half as far as a black person in white America.”
That’s true to a certain degree even as president. He’s GOT to be squeaky clean. He’s got to play the rules better than any of his predecessors, because the GOP and the media are just aching for a reason to tear him down, to say he wasn’t ready, that we weren’t ready, that we should stick to old, white, rich guys. So as president, he’s had to be more deferential than Clinton or Bush could have gotten away with.
But in campaign season, I think he’s going to open up more. I think we’ve already seen some of that. I think he’s just aching to do it, but knows he couldn’t afford it before. The GOP (the Tea Party, particularly) can’t help but see him as weak. I think that instinctively they see him as the black guy that they should be able to keep in his place. I think they feel they can roll him, even in an election year, and I bet that pisses Obama off something fierce. My guess is that guys like Boehner who have been in that town long enough know that Obama is going to just wreck them over something like this because he knows the rules change. Those bazillion Tea Party freshmen don’t realize that. They never recognized that they couldn’t still campaign during the State of the Union and catcall the President. And now that they’re at least acknowledging that there’s a certain decorum here, I don’t think they realize that he can come out swinging as soon as the voters decide that campaign season is on.
RareSanity
@Zifnab:
Responsible and prudent me agrees completely with your statement.
However, irreverent me wants you to stop harshing his GOP insanity induced buzz…
Frankensteinbeck
@Martin:
You may very well be right. I’m on ‘I’m not sure’ rather than ‘I think he won’t’. All of your arguments seem very valid.
Peter
I doubt Obama will call them History’s Greatest Monsters or anything like that (as much as I’d love him to) but I don’t doubt that he’ll come out swinging a lot harder than he did last time.
cat
@Zifnab:
It was always their intent to hurt low income people, the tea party caucus are such true believers they thought they could do it in broad daylight and get away with it.
Elie
D-I-S-A-R-R-A-Y
What is 7 letter word for Republican Party 2012
Roger Moore
@Jennifer:
It’s a longstanding problem. If you use http://www.Balloon-Juice.com, you get the up-to-date web site. If you use http://Balloon-Juice.com without the www. at the front, you get a cached version. Make sure you update your links and bookmarks appropriately.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Chris:
This.
However, never forget that this is a party that thinks all women should be barefoot, pregnant and chained to the bed with just enough slack to get to the kitchen. The advent of cheap, reliable, female-controlled birth control put a stake into the heart of that goal. The Sandra Flukes of this country symbolize the women-hating underpinnings of the modern GOP.
Just like they’ve spent the last 70 years trying to undo the New Deal, they’ve spent the last 40 trying to undo women’s lib as symbolized by The Pill.
chopper
so, these choads want to shut down the government, putting millions of people temporarily out of work, in an election year when the popular incumbent president is running as a populist and people’s biggest issue is jobs?
as a gubbermint employee let me say i’ll take a week of forced time off if it means these chumps epic fail so hard it guarantees obama’s victory.
Rick Taylor
Obama has a talent for soft soft spoken genial put downs that send his opponents into paroxysms of self destructive rage. It’s far more effective than the direct approach.
Elie
There has been a complete disassociation between means and ends — the result of extreme narcissism from the me,me,me focus, combined with magical thinking (read religious constructs for problem solving)that lead to an inability to make sense or get much done except temper tantrums and chest beating..This Frankenstein is just going to have to burn up in the castle — no one is in charge who is rational
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Tone In DC:
True. But the turnips seemed a little smarter back then.
Even in 1996, the GOP as a whole paid hardly any price for the shutdown: They only lost 8 seats in the House, and kept the majority for another 10 years.
Some punishment: No wonder Boehner’s willing to renege.
Elie
Another analogy..
D’yall remember the movie, “The Fly”. In it the mad scientist comes up with a machine that can fuse two animals into another unique animal with the strengths of both (or something like that)? Of course, something goes dreadfully wrong when the scientist is playing with the thing and a fly happens to be in the chamber with him. After running the fusometer, he ends up a new being, part human, that has also integrated really unfortunate components of the fly. Inititally, he looks human but as time goes on, he not only looks like the fly but starts to “act out” on other fly personality traits, such as digesting his food by dropping corrosive mouth juices onto the victim that then liquifies and he can suck up.
The Republican party put three of its constituencies: Racists, Religionists and corporatists into the fusometer and the new being is “expressing itself”. Of course, just like the movie, the mutation is incompatible with balanced existence…
slag
@Elie: I-N-S-A-N-E is both more egregious and more accurate. And fewer letters.
Ben Cisco
@RareSanity: The revolution will not go better with Koch.
ericblair
@Rick Taylor:
It seems to be. Look at Sandra Fluke; same deal. It seems that this can break through to low information but sane voters. The sad fact is, most of the time most of the electorate hasn’t got any of the time or inclination or ability to actually evaluate policy, so either you go with your tribe or you just want the sides to stop fighting and compromise right down the middle regardless of the issue.
However, when you’ve got one side calmly explaining their position in a soothing tone and the other side breaking furniture and throwing scat, suddenly it’s a lot easier to side with the guy who doesn’t look like Charlie Sheen on a PCP and speedball bender.
Jay C
@Zifnab:
I disagree – or rather, think this principle needs a bit of qualification.
First, truly “low income people” don’t turn out to vote in mass numbers, and besides, a vast majority of Americans, no matter where they actually stand on the income scale, think of themselves as “middle class” – “low income” (i.e. “poor”) being a designation reserved for Those Unworthy Others: and, outside wartime or the Olympics, we don’t have a lot of intra-class solidarity in this country.
Secondly, “revolt” implies a widespread reaction against a political/social/economic system, and the impetus for such a reaction (AFA this year’s election is concerned, anyway) is a “fact not in evidence“. Most people don’t want to significantly change our “system”; they just want to profit off of it.
And anyway, “spouting unpopular ideology” seems to be just the thing that is driving current GOP unfavorability: of course, they think their crapola is popular: and when they (and their audiences) live in a closed media bubble, it will take until November to disabuse them of the notion. And even then, they will probably invent new excuses…
Peter
@Rick Taylor: That he does. It probably has something to do with the color of his skin – they just can’t stand being looked down on by a black man.
RareSanity
@Elie:
Actually, it was a transporter. It would break down matter into molecules, send them to an identical chamber, then reconstitute them. What happened was that during the first human test, using himself, a fly flew in the chamber with him. So, when he got reconstituted, there was a proverbial fly in the ointment.
However, your analogy still works. Starting with Nixon, the GOP thought they where on the road to building a permanent Republican majority, in U.S. politics (the transporter). However, just when they decided that they were going to make full use of this creation when they regained control of the House (the human test), the Teatards decided to crash the party (the fly).
The results were (in the movie), and are (in the GOP), so grotesque, that the only option was/is to destroy the creation (transporter and GOP).
I didn’t even need marijuana to come up with that…
Brachiator
Isn’t this about where some bonehead progressives blame Obama for … something, because, if only Obama had fought harder, the Republicans would have folded and would not dare to go back on a deal.
Ben Cisco
@Martin: Must Be An Ending To It All | My Ready Room
__
[…] Martin over at Balloon Juice makes some good points […]
Chris
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This is very true. I was mostly talking about why THAT woman in particular was getting so much hate, but it’s quite true that emancipated women in general scare the crap out of them just as much as emancipated poor or non-white people, and that the pill is one of the cornerstones of said emancipation.
Mike G
A scientist said it, so of course no Republican will believe this.
daveNYC
If Boehner had any balls at all, this could be an opportunity for him to try and crack down on the nutters. Spin it as manning up and keeping their word. Probably wouldn’t work since they probably don’t think they need to keep their word to one of ‘them’, plus he forced them to do it, and they’re doing it to save America, but at least it’d be a slightly more dignified option than going belly up like he’s doing.
Brachiator
@Elie:
The increasingly furious insanity of the GOP does bring to mind this dialog from the movie.
Tawny: [after Seth says it’s Tawny’s turn to teleport] I’m afraid.
Seth Brundle: Don’t be afraid.
Ronnie: No. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Rick Taylor
No, this is where they say, “we told you they’d never keep their word.” If I remember correctly, one of the arguments in favor of the deal involving raising the debt limit was at least we’re getting Republicans to long term spending agreements that will ensure we don’t have a government shutdown before the next election.
Elie
@RareSanity:
Yes, yes, yes, thats it, LOL!
Elie
@Martin:
Well said.
Gonna go get some popcorn.
Can’t wait…
rikyrah
Orange Julius not know how to do his job?
shock.
Chris Wolf
No link to the water story?