[Huck]

Yeah, I know, it's Rolling Stone. And the article is peppered with liberal talking points here and there, but there is much in this article from last January that I think is true, as we are now seeing.

[PLD]

I though tat poor excuse for a magazine had died a long time ago..No one reads this garbage but filthy communist democrats..

[PLD]

I though that poor excuse for a magazine had died a long time ago..No one reads this garbage but filthy communist democrats..

[Salvey]

Taibbi could have substituted any one else’s name for Boehner’s and the article would still essentially ring true (eg., Harry Reid, Orrin Hatch, the entire black caucus, etc.).

[Paladin2]

It’s enough to make one want to go Galt (after getting Boehner to shaft Zer0’s re-election).

[brownsfan]

Gee, where was the Rolling Stone article on Pelosi stating what a business as usual hack she was. Drain the swamp? Please, the culture of corruption flourished under her watch. Favors for her district and her husbands business. A rich woman hiring illegals while claiming to be looking out for the little guy.

Oh, wait, Rolling Stone... part of Pravda, nevermind.

[Calusa]

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.

Ouch!! Sticks'n'stones....I think he's playing well with the hand he was dealt..so deal with that.

[struggle]

Wow, Tiabbi writing an acerbic hit piece on a Republican? I can’t BELIEVE it.

Someone might want to tell him that there is another party with people to attack....

[don-o]

Bump to read later

Reading the snips I find little to differ with

[MNJohnnie]

I think this right here is the problem our side faces.

We continually self sabotage ourselves by expecting miracles from the GOP leadership. So we put all our focus on them instead of focusing on how the 0 Democrats are blocking every real reform being presented.

Rather then continually blame the GOP leadership for doing the best they can with a weak hand, how about Conservatives finally focus on the real roadblock here?

The 0 Democrats.

If the GOP held the Senate majority CCB sails through this week leaving 0 in an untenable political position.

So instead of endlessly complaints that the GOP isn’t doing the absolutely impossible, how about we focus on the real enemies to our values?

The current leadership of the Democrat Party.

[NYpeanut]

Come on. Rolling Stone?

[Zakeet]

The article's concluding paragraph is spot on:

America is so broke, there's no longer really any money in the Treasury to give away — the job of overseeing corporate handouts that used to belong to the leaders of Congress has now moved to the Federal Reserve, which itself is so broke that it has to invent dollars out of thin air before it can give them away to influential billionaires. This leaves congressional leaders with nothing to do but their ostensible jobs — i.e., fixing the country's actual problems — and few of the current leaders have any experience with that, Boehner being a prime example. The new speaker represents an increasingly endangered class of Beltway jobholders who know how to raise money and get elected, but not much beyond that.

[Notary Sojac]

Great article. On the very short list of liberals who I respect, Tabibi ranks high.

[MNJohnnie]

You can be absolutely right on every issue but if you cannot get the voters to go along with you, your view is nothing more then a fringe irrelevance in politics.

There is no political consensus among the people to support your "Burn baby burn" dogmas.

Conservative won a battle in 2010, they did not win the war. NOW the usual suspects around here would rather start a new war with their political allies instead of concentrating on finishing off the real foes to their values in the Progressive Fascist Democrat party.

[pepperdog]

Isn't that the hippy grass smoking magazine from the 1960s? If we've not learned anything else surely we've learned there was nothing right about that period in our history.

[DoughtyOne]

This isn't intended to be a slam at you for posting this.  It just angers me how biased the Leftist media outlets are.

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.

John Boehner is the ultimate target for Rolling Stone because of one truth.  He is the figurehead of the opposition to Barack Obama.

He probably won't get it right by our standards, and will deserve criticism, but he is no more a Beltway hack than Senator Ted Kennedy or any Leftist member of the House of Representatives that has been there for decades. 

Past Klu Klux Klan leaders were just fine to be seated in the Senate of the United States by Leftist's code of conduct, but John Boehner is a beast if he doesn't agree with Obama.  And make no mistake about it, that's what this is all about.  Rolling Stone knows that.

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.

LOL, a bald faced attempt to get Republicans to turn on Boehner, so that Obama can stand unopposed.  This is an attempt to destroy Boehner.  It isn't based on his political views, but stoops to personal shots to accomplish the task.  This is a bankrupt editorial.  It can't stand without personal shots.  It can't stand just addressing the legistlation Boehner is actually lofting.

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.

And yet, when important legislation popped up with "the quintessential Democrat example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades", the Rolling Stone staff was too busy reading the Communist Party Daily to comment about their history, trying to besmirch them to defeat their efforts.  It didn't criticize them on point concerning legislative goals either.

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.

Boehner has been the Speaker of the House since January of 2009.  Whatever perpetuating he has done, would have to be based on his keeping the Congressional Democrat establishment in place.  If that establishment was so bad when he took over, why wasn't the Rolling Stone ripping it to shreds prior to Boehner becomming the Speaker?

Once again, what does any of this have to do with his party's bill and the attempt to get federal spending under control?  Well, nothing.  Throwing mud at Boehner is all this amounts to.  And that's despicable.

SNIP

And yet, when the Republicans rolled back into the control of the House this past November on the strength of a nationwide Throw-the-Bums-Out movement, it was Boehner, the prototypical bum, who somehow clambered onto the congressional throne. It's hard to imagine that in all of American political history there has been a more unlikely marriage than John Boehner and the pitchfork-wielding, incumbent-eating Tea Party, whose blood ostensibly boils at the thought of business as usual. Because John Boehner is business as usual, a man devoted almost exclusively to ensuring his own political survival by tending faithfully to the corrupt and clanking Beltway machinery.

Once again, R.S. is back to trashing Boehner for his supposed vile nature.  Sorry R.S., Boehner is operating within the parameters that you never found to be despicable until a Republican became Speaker.

I may not be a big fan of Boehner, but I could spot an illogical nonsensical biased double-dealing hit-job this disgusting from outer space.

SNIP

The fact that Boehner supported TARP and No Child Left Behind and mega-handouts to the pharmaceutical industry and a range of other federal subsidies is hardly surprising, for this is what mainstream Washington politicians of both parties do — they take great buttloads of money from giant transnational companies, play golf with the CEOs of those same companies ("If someone I've gotten to know on the golf course comes into my office with a good argument," Boehner once said, "I tend to want to listen"), and deliver taxpayer money back to their buddies when the need arises, or sometimes even when the need doesn't arise.

Geez, R.S., take a breath once in a while.  I've been known to string a long sentence together myself, but this is truly a doozie.

Was Boehner Speaker of the House when Tarp, No Child Left Behind, and Medical Part D were instituted?  Oh, that's right.  He wasn't.  Did Rolling Stone object to those plans?  Oh that's right.  It didn't.

Folks, I would urge you to pay close attention to the quotation marks in that paragraph sentence.  Much is read into what Boehner actually stated, to make it much worse than it actually was.

Boehner should listen to his constituency.  I know the Left would have us believe that corporations don't deserve a voice in any debate.  We saw evidence of that, when Hillary Clinton set up study pannels to develop her Health Care plan, without including Health Care providers in the mix.  Oh yes, she was convinced she could fix health care, without hearing a single word from the experts working in that industry.  Here R.S. lays out that premise again.

In this regard, Boehner has had a lot more in common with campaign-contribution-devouring Democrats like Chris Dodd and Harry Reid than he has with the Tea Party Republican voters he now ostensibly represents.

Yeah, and who did R.S. favor in those campaigns, Chriss Dodd and Harry Reid, or their oponents?

There is room to take Boehner to task for what is not included in his bill.  It doesn't carve off the $1.6 - $1.8 trillion in deficits each year.  Instead it proposes to cut deficits roughly $4 trillion over the next ten years, as deficists are slated to increase about $16 to $18 trillion.  So we're facing an increase of the federal debt to $30 to $32 trillion dollars by 2022.  Does Rolling Stone address this, to take Boehner to task?  No.

Does it critcize him for lofting a balanced budget amendment that will never see the light of day?  No.  In fact, Rolling Stone didn't address one single tenet of the bill the House passed with Boehner's support.  It didn't address one single tenet of his beliefs related to the debt crisis.

It was nothing but a hit job.  It was designed to peal off support for Boehner and Republicans.

When you're a Leftist, it's okay to act like you agree with Conservatives as long as it furthers your "ENDS JUSTIFIES THE MEANS" goals.  In the above, R.S. acts as if it's as disgusted with past Democrats as we are.  It acts as if it's as upset with the Beltway hacks as we are.  In truth Rolling Stone has never seen a Left-wing hack it didn't like.  None the less, they try to trash the Beltway hacks and there-by Boehner.  The double sets of standards the Left have are never more appearant than when they want to take down a Republican "they think" they can tarnish by saying they are doing what Democrats always have without any critcism whatsoever.

If Rolling Stone thinks it's diatribe here is an effective hit on Boehner, it is sadly mistaken.  Instead it destroys Rolling Stone for not having the awarness to understand what the important issues of the day are.

Going back years to tarninsh a guy, when there is a critical issue at hand, is beyond childish.  It's infantile.

[Chi-townChief]

Rolling Stone = commie propaganda

[mo]

Nobody seems to correlate the rising debt ceiling with declining jobs.

The rising debt ceiling has two consequences....

more regulation ...

to occupy employees in expanding federal bureaucracies...which expand because “they have more money” and another layer of bureaucrats need their 20 year promotions... Each round of regulatory expansion is the effective equivalent of another targeted tax increase on the object of the regulation.

more taxes...

The rising debt ceiling has demands and expectations of creditors for new elements of “revenue raising” by the Feds...taxes or fees.

In this strangling environment job creation is simply NOT possible.

In fact the only logical conclusion..can be ..is that the Federal apparatus -initially an asset to the United States..by virtue of its abilities to raise an effective Navy in the late 1700’s, and early 1800’s to facilitate overseas trade on behalf of the States, has become nothing other than the States greatest liability at this point in time. In the absence of profound regulatory and taxation reform-which is not capable of coming from the same minds that created the problem..we may well be at the end of the line.

[mo]

Nobody seems to correlate the rising debt ceiling with declining jobs.

The rising debt ceiling has two consequences....

more regulation ...

to occupy employees in expanding federal bureaucracies...which expand because “they have more money” and another layer of bureaucrats need their 20 year promotions... Each round of regulatory expansion is the effective equivalent of another targeted tax increase on the object of the regulation.

more taxes...

The rising debt ceiling has demands and expectations of creditors for new elements of “revenue raising” by the Feds...taxes or fees.

In this strangling environment job creation is simply NOT possible.

In fact the only logical conclusion..can be ..is that the Federal apparatus -initially an asset to the United States..by virtue of its abilities to raise an effective Navy in the late 1700’s, and early 1800’s to facilitate overseas trade on behalf of the States, has become nothing other than the States greatest liability at this point in time. In the absence of profound regulatory and taxation reform-which is not capable of coming from the same minds that created the problem..we may well be at the end of the line.