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Speaker of the House Boehner Announces Resignation
halfEvilTech writes: House Speaker John A. Boehner announced Friday morning that he will resign at the end of October. The Washington Post reports: "The resignation will end a nearly five-year reign as speaker, allowing House Republicans to approve a short-term government funding bill that will avert a shutdown of federal agencies. Boehner's hold on the speaker's gavel had grown increasingly unsteady amid threats from more than 30 Republicans that they would force a no-confidence vote in his speaker's position, which would have forced him to rely on Democratic votes in order to remain in charge. Several GOP members told The Washington Post that Boehner would step down from Congress Oct. 31."
that this will leave the insane tea partiers in charge of the asylum that is the House of Representatives. It's like the last adult is leaving the room.
Reid has already announced his departure. Too many career politicians. We need new blood.
Expected outcome: End to gridlock, new era of bipartisan cooperation, intelligent debate, and compromise.
Nobody expects that. The reason he is being pushed out, is that he is perceived by the right as compromising too much.
Don't you know? If you're a moderate, then you are like a Democrat. The Republican party is far-right extremist, and "the left" no longer exists. Even "socialist" Bernie Sanders is only about as far left as Eisenhower.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You say "gridlock" like it's a bad thing.
Every time Congress does anything, more of our rights and more of our money disappear.
They can all take a good long vacation, if you ask me.
Exactly how does a "real" Republican vote in a way that's in the best interests for all?
Real politics is one of compromise... and I haven't seen a TPR (Tea Party Republican) do that in a long time.
Too many repubs conveniently gloss over the facts with their vaunted Reagan. Someone with his record would be considered the worst kind of RINO by the repub base today. If could, I'd be +1'ing this.
That would be perfect if Congress didn't have to vote once or twice a year for the government to stay open.
Unfortunately, they seem incapable of that even.
Reagan also cut more taxes than anyone in history (dangerous facts) and Bill Clinton passed welfare reform. Morale of the story? Obama sucks, Bush sucks, and our politicians are more interested in power than people.
Oh, wait. His replacement might be worse and the House of Representatives may get even less done. Now, it'll be interesting whether Boehner has lined up a job with an existing lobbying company or will form his own company. He'll likely make many millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars per year no matter what he does.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
You say "gridlock" like it's a bad thing.
Every time Congress does anything, more of our rights and more of our money disappear.
They can all take a good long vacation, if you ask me.
You might have to join them if your job requires government funding and they force another shutdown.
I stole this Sig
and meanwhile thousands of families lose their livelihood to shutdowns and furloughs because 535 people can't work together to get anything done for the 320 million people that sent them there to do a job they refuse to do.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Reagan also cut more taxes than anyone in history (dangerous facts)
No president has ever cut taxes or raised them. That's the responsibility of Congress. The President can suggest tax policies and can veto them but ultimately it is up to Congress to actually affirm or deny them. Now admittedly the President does have substantial influence on tax policy but saying Reagan or any other president raised taxes is technically incorrect. You could correctly say that he supported a tax increase or opposed one and that would be factual.
Great. So the new guy elected Speaker either does the same out of the necessity to keep the government functional at any level, or completely destroys the Republican brand with a new completely unnecessary shutdown which only ends when he capitulates anyway.
We've seen this before, and it won't work. Boehner was right to get out now.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No compromise with evil. No compromise with death.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
President Obama took a page out of the Clinton Playbook by making the Republican agenda his own.
What are the 2016 Republican presidential candidates talking about these days? Not foreign policy, not taxes and not Obamacare.
Great. So the new guy elected Speaker either does the same out of the necessity to keep the government functional at any level, or completely destroys the Republican brand with a new completely unnecessary shutdown which only ends when he capitulates anyway.
That is the Republican brand now: get elected on a platform that consists entirely of refusing to do your fucking job. This applies to Congressmen, and all the way down to county clerks.
Give me a fucking break.
A large and increasing portion of Americans realize that their financial health is threatened by immigrants and their very existence is threatened by Muslim terrorists.
Please elaborate on exactly how "Muslim terrorists" constitute an existential threat to America. More people die if bathtub falls and choking than die in terrorist attacks.
Many smaller, less stable countries deal with far larger rates of things like suicide bombings without their societies being destroyed. Is America that fragile?
I'm with you on that. While I've never followed any Pope's activities before, his humble nature and the points he chooses to focus on have elevated my opinion of the man to nearly a point of reverence. The head of the church with a reasonable position on just about every issue he takes on? Remarkable This is a guy that I believe is truly seeking whats best for us all and sees the world as it is. Now if only more of us can follow his lead and release the entrenchment that has dominated for far too long.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Possibly, but Boehner tends to cry at the drop of a hat.
Certainly, there may have been a causal link between the pope's message and the timing of his resignation, but I'm guessing that its mostly cover so that he can resign with dignity before the imminent infighting in the Republican caucus caused him to get fired.
He did suggest that he was planning on resigning until Eric Cantor got beaten. I can believe that because Cantor's loss was a big upset and it was likely that Cantor would have been an immediate front runner for the Speaker job. Boehner could certainly have decided to ride it out after that in the interests of continuity. I'm just not sure that it ended up helping, but it may have given him some more time to get someone else lined up who isn't a Tea Partier.
Gotta call Poe's Law on this one...
Wow, that's very witty, libfag. Right up there with "Faux News."
Whether you agree with the OP or not, "Teatards" is incredibly more clever than "libfag". If you goal was to make the OP look better by comparison, mission accomplished.
Oh, and these days "Faux News" is more of a description than an insult.
I wish the people who wave the constitution would occasionally read the damn thing
The same goes for the Bible, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
I'm with you. Pope Francis is an incredible man who has demonstrated an ability to change the world with the influence of his words. I think it was a crisis of confidence.
I'm an Atheist btw. Considering calling myself Catholic though as a result of this Pope.
Calling yourself Catholic for that reason is kinda crazy...
I agree that Pope Francis is an incredible man. I'm not amazed that there exist a few christians like him who read the gospels, rather than just the old testament and Paul. But I am truly astounded that the cardinals selected him.
Obamacare would have done much to reduce the need for Planned Parenthood's rural healthcare services had states actually expanded Medicaid as the law required. Because so many states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors offices refused to support the medicaid expansion planned parenthood's services are still needed by many poor women.
Your argument is without merit until the medicaid expansion is fulfilled.
A large and increasing portion of Americans realize that their financial health is threatened by immigrants and their very existence is threatened by Muslim terrorists. They also realize that Democrats are encouraging these dangerous things. Tea Partiers, Republicans generally, and anyone not suicidal or delusional will vote for the most pro-America, pro-freedom candidate they can find.
A large and increasing portion of Americans realize that their financial health is hardly threatened by fruit & vegetable pickers and that their very existence is scarcely threatened by terrorists of any ilk. They also realize that fear-mongering Republicans are encouraging these calculated lies. Your day of reckoning is rapidly approaching.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Boehner is a devout Catholic. Boehner invited the Pope to speak before Congress. During the Pope's address to the Congress, an address that specifically rebuked many Republican stances* Boehner has supported, Boehner was visibly crying.
Boehner has invited THREE Popes to speak before Congress. It is something he has hoped to facilitate for many years. He finally succeeded, and I suspect that was a greater source of his emotion than any sort of crisis of conscience you may imagine.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
President Obama took a page out of the Clinton Playbook by making the Republican agenda his own.
Sorry but what did Obama do to accomplish that? Was the capture not based on an ongoing operation started during the bush administration? I think the credit should go to the CIA analysis and Seal team 6 and not the sitting president.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Being a moderate would require being to the left of most elected Democrats. If you'd said he was a mean politician, however, it would be hard to argue.
(Possibly median, but it seems to me to be closer to the mean. And by politician I'm only considering elected legislators in the Federal Government.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, while you can get by without meat and poultry inspections for a little bit, and without water quality monitoring for awhile, or game and fisheries monitoring for awhile, or atmospheric tracking and monitoring for awhile, or auditing financial institutions for legal compliance, there would be a time afterwards when stuff like that would become meaningful again. None of that stuff showed up in the government basket out of thin air. It's nice to think that it can all be burned down and nobody would care, but the truth of it is that there are things the government does (most of what it does, actually) which private industry does not or cannot do reliably or without undue influence. Yep, there's also a lot of paperwork and inefficiency, too.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The Constitution hasn't been enforced in a long time.
As originally written? Damn good thing, too. Slaves counting three fifths of a person, no women's suffrage, no birthright citizenship, appointed Senators, poll taxes: the original constitution was a fucking shambles, and took quite a few amendments to get functioning properly as the foundation for a modern government.
I'm not a fan of Boehner at all, but you're just full of shit.
He was the one of the few knowing that compromise had to happen. His party hates him because they don't think he's right wing _enough_.
Which goes to show you how fucked the republican party really is.
No one should ever negotiate on the debt ceiling. The time to talk about spending too much is when you want to open the wallet and buy things. It's a bit late to for that discussion when your new TV is sitting in the living room and you're wondering if you want to bother paying the credit card bill for it that just arrived.
Because contraceptives have other uses than just preventing pregnancy. For example, oral contraceptives lower women's ovarian cancer risk, clears up acne, lighter menstruation, reduction in PMS symptoms, relief from endometriosis, and relief from polycystic ovarian syndrome.
They also serve as a pretty effective form of birth control. But when a woman is advised by her doctor to use oral contraceptives for any of the above conditions (or anything else), and reasonably wants them to be covered by her insurance, she gets Rush Limbaugh calling her a slut. Personally, I think if we can manage to cover boner pills with medical insurance, we can probably cover birth control pills also, regardless of the reason a woman wants to take them.
this was their idea of negotiation: give us everything we want, and fuck you.
not playing by those rules is not refusing to negotiate.
and linking to the Washington Times only lowers your apparent IQ.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.