Boehner Gets Embarrassed by Reporter’s Question, Blatantly Lies About Obstruction of Immigration Reform

I think it’s safe to say that House Speaker John Boehner is as disliked by many far right conservatives as he is by most liberals. I honestly believe he’ll go down as probably the worst Speaker of the House of Representatives in United States history. Not only has he presided over one of the least productive congresses in our history, he’s often failed to even maintain control of his own party.

And even if someone disagrees with everything I just said, there’s at least one thing which is 100 percent indisputable – he’s the reason why we haven’t passed immigration reform.

That’s not a partisan statement, that’s just fact.

Over a year ago the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill which John Boehner refused to even let come up for a vote in the House. The general feeling was that if he allowed the bill to come up for a vote, it would pass, President Obama would sign it and it would become law.

Seems pretty much like how our government is supposed to work, right? Apparently not if you’re a House Republican.

Well, a reporter confronted Boehner on his blatant obstruction of a comprehensive immigration reform bill and Boehner did what he does best - lie. Boehner insisted that he “doesn’t trust” President Obama to properly enact immigration reform because of some of the issues “Obamacare” has experienced, which prompted the reporter to ask a few follow-up questions.

“Since when does Obamacare have anything to do with immigration reform?” Jorge Ramos asked.

Boehner sarcastically responded, “Me? Blocking? The issue of immigration reform is an issue I’ve talked about for 18 months.”

“The Senate passed it a year ago, and you haven’t moved on that,” Ramos continued.

“I just gave you an answer,” Boehner said. “There’s nobody more interested in fixing this problem than I am.”

“You can do it, and you really haven’t done it,” Ramos persisted.

John Boehner Showcases Republican Hypocrisy on Gas Prices in Latest Tweet

As we approach possibly the biggest travel holiday of the year, it’s hard not to notice that gas prices are at some of their lowest levels in years. While gas prices vary all across the country, here in Dallas, Texas I recently paid $2.54 per gallon at a local gas station.

In fact, oil prices are down about 21 percent from this time last year (oil prices have been fluctuating between $73-77 for the last few weeks).

I’m curious how these lower oil and gas prices will impact holiday shopping this year. Being that Americans should be saving billions collectively, I would be fairly surprised if overall holiday sales didn’t see some kind of a bump from the savings Americans have been getting at the pump.

Needless to say, lower gas prices are almost always good news for American consumers.

Well, while surfing through Twitter I couldn’t help but notice Speaker of the House John Boehner sent out a tweet bragging about this Thanksgiving’s gas prices being the lowest we’ve seen in years.

Here’s his tweet:

I couldn’t help but notice nowhere in his tweet did he thank President Obama for these lower gas prices. After all, Republicans and the conservative media are always eager to blame the president when prices are high, so it would only make sense to commend him when prices are low.

I’m kidding. We all know that’s not how any of this works with Republicans. First, a president has very little control over the price of oil as it is sold on the global market at the highest price. Second, we damn sure know Republicans aren’t going to praise President Obama for anything. Though they’ll gladly blame him for pretty much anything, including the oil and gas prices.

In fact, John Boehner did it in March of 2011, in February of 2012 and even took a jab at the president just this past summer where he included rising gas prices cause by Obama’s policies as a reason why Eric Cantor lost his primary.

Yet there Boehner was on Twitter boasting about the lowest gas prices we’ve seen during the Thanksgiving holiday in years – without a single mention of President Obama.

This is how it always works with Republicans when it comes to oil and gas prices. When prices are high, it’s Obama’s fault. When they’re low, it’s in spite of his policies and he has nothing to do with it. Which makes perfect sense – if you’re a mindless sheep who lacks the ability to think for themselves.

John Boehner Publishes Video Telling The Truth About His Job Performance

Anyone who knows me, or who has read my articles to date, probably already knows my opinion of John Boehner. If you don’t, it’s pretty easy to infer. But what the heck, I’ll just state it plainly: John Boehner is one of the most useless Speakers of the House we’ve ever had.

Beyond the partisan chicanery; beyond the practice of passing out bribe checks on the floor of the House right before a vote on the related bill; beyond the lies about how many jobs bills his Republican-strangled House of Representatives has pushed through; beyond the refusal to listen to the public on background checks, he’s a completely ineffective leader. Even on bills he knows have to go through, and have to go through in a form that can pass the Senate, he regularly is unable to control his so-called caucus enough to have them pass it. Since Boehner’s speakership began, the House has had a serious issue just executing basic run-of-the-mill governing stuff, including bills getting pulled at the last minute and not making sure they had enough in-party votes before opening legislation to a House vote.

Whether or not you like what Nancy Pelosi stands for, as a Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was good at her job. John Boehner is not good at his job.

Well, Mr. Boehner seems to know this deep down. He recently posted to his YouTube channel a video about the wind-up cymbal-crashing monkey that he was given by his staff a while back. In the video, he can be heard to say, “That’s what I do all day!”

Refreshing honesty there, John. And yes, it is a PERFECT representation of you at your job.

Pointless repetitive actions, such as the fifty-four attempts to repeal Obamacare entirely or cripple it in some fashion? Check. Chattering and jabbering that could be construed as speech, but ultimately has no relation to facts-based reality? Big check. Movement that makes it seem like it’s doing something, going somewhere, accomplishing something, but really just staying stuck in one place? Mega check. Activated by the behest of outside forces, and not the interests of those he represents? Extra-large check with a side of fries and a shake. One could even make comparisons between the artificial pelt of the toy monkey and the spray-tan orange decorating the epidermis of Mr. Boehner.

As amusing as this apt comparison may be, this is also a problem. Being the Speaker of the House is a constitutionally important position. As speaker, the occupier of that position is third in line to the presidency, and additionally has constitutional responsibility to conduct the business of the House. A lot of very sober responsibilities depend on the person sitting in that seat and wielding that power. The cymbal-crashing monkey occupying that seat at the moment is not equal to the task. Mr. Boehner has proven it in failed vote after failed vote, in the refusal to even bring bills his caucus doesn’t like into consideration, in the government shutdown that gained him nothing, in the budgets he has let get through that he knows will not pass and serve to only underline his party’s contempt for regular Americans. He has failed to lead, and has the gall to sue the president when he steps in and picks up the slack. We need a functional leader in the speaker’s seat, not an ineffectual whiner whose only goal seems to be to whine about how the president doesn’t listen to Congress and to dodge the issue when the ball comes back into his court.

The toy is cute, in a way, and its antics are very entertaining to the small children in the video. The Speaker’s antics, on the other hand, entertain very few people, and his failures have wide-reaching consequences for our nation as a whole. The only way we will be rid of this chattering, cymbal-crashing obstruction is if we get out, vote in November, and push him and his party out of power in the House.

Down Is Up As The White House Uses Conservatives Quoting Obama To Debunk Boehner Lawsuit

Things are not going well for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

After threatening to sue President Obama but failing to provide cause, the Speaker refused to use his brain when the President told him to please proceed. Instead of taking a moment to examine the floor littered with Republican foes who were hoisted on their own right wing conspiracy petard, Boehner pressed on.

This past weekend, the Speaker even wrote an op-ed about hislawsuit desperate attempt to woo the frothing, crazed GOP tea base, in which he also failed to mention one actual example of the President breaking the law.

His op-ed was not well received by said frothing base. It was such a fail that when White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Shultz was asked to respond to the Speaker’s op-ed, he tweeted that he should have sent reporters to read a rebuttal written by the ever-angry Erick Erickson:

I had a bunch of reporters ask me for response to Boehner op-ed this weekend. Guess I should have sent them here: http://t.co/5C3L6FFnaM
— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) July 7, 2014

When conservative Erick Erickson is calling you out and he has a point, you are pretty cooked.

Erickson’s diatribe begins thusly with a quote from his closing, “John Boehner and the House Republicans may lack the testicular fortitude to fight President Obama, but I would kindly ask that he save the taxpayers further money on a political stunt…”

Oh. Those are President Obama’s words. I am referring topolitical “stunt”, not “testicular fortitude”, of course. (However, a staunch belief in the lack of Boehner’s “testicular fortitude” could be implied by daring the bumbling Republican to sue him.)

Erickson tells Boehner and his clown posse to “man up”. Instead of running to the courts to act as “mama” to the Speaker, Erickson wants Boehner to commit political suicide for the GOP. You see, nothing else will appease the jihadist GOP base except cutting off the government. Oh, yes… It’s come to this.

John Boehner having to run home and cry to mama, i.e. let the courts act as the parent in the squabble, is chiefly a failure of House Republicans to use their “most complete and effectual weapon” against the Senate and President. 

It is Republicans in the House and Senate who orchestrated giving Barack Obama a blank check to raise the debt ceiling through March of 2015. It is Republicans in the House and Senate who were so scared of a government shutdown, that they threw Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee under the bus before the President even initiated a government shut down.

Maybe no one has noticed yet, but Erick Erickson — the extreme right wing — just used President Obama’s words to take down Republican John Boehner for failing to be extremist enough. How do you know when your party is failing? When your base meets the opposition in frothing rage, you are pretty much failing.

Oddly, this is sort of what happened for Democrats in the lead up to the disastrous 2010 elections with the far left working with the Tea Party to destroy healthcare reform because it wasn’t enough. So in Erickson’s piece, he correctly pointed out that this was a stunt designed to get out the vote, “I would kindly ask that he save the taxpayers further money on a political stunt solely designed to incite Republican voters who might otherwise stay home…”

To add insult to injury for Boehner, his stunt is not only a complete failure but Democrats raised a lot of money off of it. If this keeps up, 2014 may not look like the pundits keep saying it will.

On June 27th, I noted that the President sounded as if he were firing a warning shot to Boehner. Some people never listen.

Do Nothing Republicans Announce They Will Not Be Passing Any Legislation This Year

House Republicans have taken doing nothing to a whole new level by announcing that they won’t be passing any notable legislation this year. The Washington Post reported:

After a tumultuous week of party infighting and leadership stumbles, congressional Republicans are focused on calming their divided ranks in the months ahead, mostly by touting proposals that have wide backing within the GOP and shelving any big-ticket legislation for the rest of the year.
Comprehensive immigration reform, tax reform, tweaks to the federal health-care law — bipartisan deals on each are probably dead in the water for the rest of this Congress.

It is not surprising that Republicans are not going to do anything this year. What is surprising is that the House Republicans have given up the pretense of doing anything. There aren’t going to be anymore show votes that are labeled jobs bills, or immigration reform. Boehner and the House leadership have simply given up.
They aren’t even trying to fool the American people into believing that House Republicans are doing something for them. The ruse is over. Republicans aren’t going to do anything, but run back to their districts in a desperate bid to save their seats. At least Boehner can stop going in front of the cameras, and trying to sell his absurd excuses for doing nothing as benefiting the American people.
2014 is going to be another lost year in American politics. Republicans are calling President Obama a dictator and making claims of constitutional violations, but it is clear that the president heads up the only branch of government that is trying to move the country forward by doing something.
Republicans have given the voters no reason to reelect them this year. They have no agenda. They have done nothing but obstruct progress, and now Boehner and company have the nerve to announce that they aren’t going to go to work, but they still are expecting your votes in November.
The House will remain dysfunctional until the members who see doing nothing as their job are replaced. If We The People want a government that works, we need to elect candidates who are willing to do the job.

John Boehner: 'I See No Basis or Need' for Legislation Protecting LGBT People in the Workplace

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was asked today by the Washington Blade's Chris Johnson about whether he'll allow a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which was passed in an historic Senate vote last week.

Said Boehner:

"I am opposed to discrimination of any kind, in the workplace and any place else. But I think this legislation that I’ve dealt with as chairman of The Education & The Workforce Committee…is unnecessary and would provide a basis for frivolous lawsuits. People are already protected in the workplace. I’m opposed to continuing this. Listen, I understand people have differing opinions on this issue, and I respect those opinions. But as someone who’s worked in the employment law area for all my years in the State House and all my years here, I see no basis or no need for this legislation."

Currently, people can still be fired simply for being gay in 29 states.

I wonder if he'd be opposed to legislation that allowed people to be fired for being orange?

Teens confront John Boehner over immigration reform at breakfast

A Gay John Boehner And Miley Cyrus As A Slutty Michele Bachmann Party On SNL

Saturday Night Live featured a gay John Boehner and Miley Cyrus as a slutty Michele Bachmann last night, celebrating shutting down the federal government in a house party themed “We Can’t Stop” parody music video that can only be described as brilliant or wildly offensive — or both.

The choice of portraying the Speaker of the House as gay certainly will raise many eyebrows, and if the intention was to malign Boehner by making him gay, well, that in itself is offensive — what do you think?

I watched the video repeatedly, with the sound on and off. The images are compelling, and from an artistic and political satire standpoint, brilliant: Drugged-up, over-sexed, out-of-control Tea Party and Republican politicians partying over their “successful” government shut down is a brilliant choice — wholly representative of the hypocrisy, greed, and immoral behavior that conservatives, Republicans, the religious right, the Tea Party, the “pro-family” contingent, the Koch brothers supported PACs and activists, and the willfully ignorant radical right have exhibited in increasing “volume.”

Watch:

John Boehner 'Temper Tantrum' Shutdown Ad to Air During Sunday Football

An ad comparing House Speaker John Boehner to a crying baby who "didn't get his way" is set to air during Sunday's football match-up between the Bengals and Patriots.

Says the ad, which features a close-up of an infant: "Speaker John Boehner didn't get his way on shutting down health care reform. So, he's shut down the government and hurt the economy."

Watch it,

 

Letter Harry Reid sent to John Boehner seeking a solution to the government shutdown

John Boehner is Under Federal Investigation for Campaign Finance Violations

The FEC has announced that they are investigating Speaker of the House John Boehner for accepting dozens of illegal donations from the coal, energy, and gambling industries.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The Federal Election Commission is examining whether dozens of political action committees and individuals contributed more than the legally allowed amount to House Speaker John Boehner during last year’s election cycle.

Letters the Federal Election Committee sent Monday to Friends of John Boehner indicated that donors including coal, energy, and gambling interests, exceeded contribution limits to Boehner’s committee by more than $150,000.
Among the groups that were allegedly overgenerous to Boehner were Coalpac and Minepac, which represent the mining industry, as well as political committees representing the Exelon, Constellation and Luminant power companies, and the Ceasars and Penn National gambling enterprises.

“Although the commission may take further legal action concerning the acceptance of excessive contributions, your prompt action to refund the excessive amount will be taken into consideration,” the letters say.

Boehner’s ties with special interest groups, and his eagerness to brazenly take their money is well known, but the Speaker may have pushed things way too far in 2012. Speaker Boehner seems to have dodged an SEC investigation into his financial involvement with the companies that would benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline, but it appears that lure of Citizens United fueled conservative cash was too much for the Speaker to resist last year.

Rep. Boehner was the House’s top fundraiser last year. This was a matter of political survival. The unpopular within his own party speaker raised more than $22 million, which he used to solidify his position by buying loyalty through donations to House Republican reelection campaigns. 

Similar allegations against Boehner surfaced in June, when an FEC complaint was filed against him for accepting $2.5 million in illegal donations from the Venezuelan government run Chevron. It turns out that Boehner’s illegal activities go way beyond Keystone XL and Chevron. 

Speaker Boehner’s has been getting away with these kinds of illegal activities for decades, but the walls may finally be closing in on one of the worst Speakers in American political history.

Congressman who used to be a high school English teacher irks GOP by marking their memos with a red pen

Hoping that members of the House of Representatives will start using facts and coherent logic to advance the nation's interest is still a fool's errand, but there's one member of Congress, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), who's willing to at least pretend it's possible. Breaking out the teacher's most potent weapon, a red pen, he marked up Republican House members' letter to John Boehner forcing asking him to resist the immigration reform bill that has already passed America's slightly-less-insane upper chamber. Included in his comments are some words we haven't seen on a Congressional document in years, like "evidence," as well as an awesome invitation to "come by my office" if "you don't understand the bill."

Frankly, my favorite part is pointing out that given a proper word count, the bill is only 286 pages long. Why do I like this? Because "it's too long to read" is one of the GOP's new favorite reasons not to support things, which really does not help their anti-intellectual image. Obamacare, hate it or tolerate it, had about as many words as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, not that Congresspeople read at that grade level. Can we at least agree that Congress shouldn't sound so afraid of reading?

Congress is pretty much the least-popular thing in America, which is impressive in the land of Honey Boo-Boo and Chris Brown. If there's one kind of person who isn't afraid to do their job in the face of massive unpopularity, though, it's a high-school teacher.