Quote of the day--on Speaker of the House John Boehner

John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich. The biographer who somewhere down the line tackles the question of Boehner's legacy will do well to simply throw out any references to party affiliation, because the thing that has made Boehner who he is — the thing that has finally lifted him to the apex of legislative power in America — has almost nothing to do with his being a Republican.


The Democrats have plenty of creatures like Boehner. But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype — the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades. In sports, we talk about athletes who are the "total package," and that term comes close to describing Boehner's talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done.


--Matt Taibbi from his article "The Crying Shame of John Boehner", Rolling Stone Magazine


Link:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner-20110105?page=1

Bill Maher on the Tea Party and Founding Fathers

New Rule:

Now that they've finished reading the Constitution out loud, 'teabaggers' must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs.  I'm talking, of course, about the 'Founding Fathers', who, the 'teabaggers' believe, are just like them.  

But aren't.

One is a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth and think of blacks as three-fifths of a person.

And the others are the 'Founding Fathers.'

Now, I want you 'teabaggers' out there to understand one thing:  while you idolize the 'Founding Fathers' and dress up like them and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the 'Founding Fathers' would have hated your guts.

And what's more, you would have hated them.

They were everything you despise.  

They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and though the Bible was mostly bullshit.  And yet, there is a popular painting in wing-nut America.  Yes, that's Jesus with the 'Founding Fathers' behind him, presenting the Constitution to America.  Either that or it's a settlement offer for that boy  after he sued the Rectory.

Super-religious guy Glenn Beck likes to play dress up as Thomas Paine.  

Thomas Paine, an atheist who said churches were human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind. 

John Adams.

Adams said this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.  Which is not to say the Founders didn't have a moral code.  Of course they did.  They just didn't get it from the Bible.  Well, except for the part that it's cool to own slaves.  It's in there, folks.  I didn't make it up.

The Founders disagreed amongst themselves about that and most issues.  But the one thing they never argued about was that political power must stay in the hands of the smartest people and out of the hands of the dumbest loudmouths slowing down the checkout line at Home Depot.  And yet Sarah Palin once said of Obama, "We need a Commander in Chief, not a professor of law standing at a lectern!"

How gay is that?

I hate to break it to you, but Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer;  Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional lawyer;  James Madison, lawyer;  John Adams, Constitutional lawyer.  They were not the "common man" of the day.

Ben Franklin studied scientific phenomena like lightning and the Aurora Borealis.  And were he alive today, he could probably explain to Bill O'Reilly why the tides go in and out.  James Madison was fluent in Greek and Latin and could translate Virgil and Cicero.  John Boehner can't translate Fareed Zakariah.  And Thomas Jefferson was an astronomer and a physicist who founded the University of Virginia, played the violin and spoke six languages.

Or, as Palin would say, "All of them."

Link:  http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/index.html

http://politicalhumor.about.com/b/2011/01/18/bill-maher-to-tea-party-the-founding-fathers-would-have-hated-your-guts.htm

But they don't see the problem...

More same-old, same-old government, this time from the incoming Republicans:

With Republican leaders anxious to set an austere tone for their ascendance into the House majority this week, the lavish fundraiser scheduled for Tuesday night at a trendy Washington hotel to benefit a dozen GOP freshmen is not exactly the populist image leaders are anxious to project.

And here is the real problem:  

House Speaker-elect John Boehner, whose name was featured on the invitation, is nonetheless skipping the event at the W Hotel, where lobbyists, political action committee managers and others paying the $2,500 ticket price will be treated to a performance by country music star LeAnn Rimes (a $50,000 package includes a block of eight tickets and a “VIP suite” at the W). 

A $2500.00 ticket.  To get in.  Paid for by corporations.  Through their lobbyists.  So they can have access to our legislators.

And the Republicans are promising to change something in Washington?

I'll repeat:  We need true campaign finance reform so it will be strictly illegal for corporations to give money of any sort, like this, above, or to campaigns or whatever, through their lobbyists to legislators of any stripe.

That and we need to make the campaigns 3 or 6 months long, by law, like the British did long ago.

We need to get the corporate money out of government, folks.  We all know this.  Let's do something about it.

Link to original post:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20110104/pl_politico/46999