Quote of the Day
Posted on January 2nd, 2013 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
“Go fuck yourself.”
—House Speaker John Boehner to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, after Reid accused him of running the House like a dictatorship and caring more about retaining his Speakership than passing legislation. (The latter is certainly true; the former doubtful, given that Boehner isn’t even powerful enough to tell the Tea Party People where to go.)
Thanks to Politico. And happy new year to you, too, from the GOP statesmen in Congress.
9 Responses
1/2/2024 12:27 pm
Name calling is not new and nobody was making any promises about civility. But the amazing thing to me is how many aspects of the promised Republican legislative discipline were violated by this bill and the way it passed. Did you know it has something about excise taxes on Puerto Rican rum in it? With apologies for linking to my son-in-law’s reporting in the WashPo, I cannot imagine the bill could have passed if it had been written far enough in advance for this article to have appeared before the vote was taken.
1/2/2024 2:54 pm
Harry-I agree with you an all counts except for your first sentence. I don’t mean to romanticize Congress’ past—and I don’t think I am—but there were plenty of times in American history when telling a fellow legislator, especially the Senate majority leader, to go fuck himself would have been considered an absolutely unthinkable breach of conduct. Especially when you’re just steps from the Oval Office in the White House when you do it.
1/2/2024 6:13 pm
Sounds like a PhD dissertation crying to be written. I am not defending it, but I do remember Cheney telling Leahy the same thing in the Senate chambers. The thing all this shows is what a thin veneer coats the incompetence of the Congress. It is scary to think that any junior high student government would be able to plan and execute better.
1/2/2024 6:19 pm
This bill, that bill, none of these bills means anything. Unless and until (both together) taxes are raised and a smaller Federal government is the norm (and smaller state and city governments as well), economic growth for any extended period of time will be anemic in real terms. Quality of life for Americans will deteriorate sharply during the next 10, 20, 50 years. More problematical, is that by pretending that this bill, or any other bill that has been mentioned, solves any of our dire fiscal problems, is delusional thinking. A catastrophe is coming that will make 2008-2009 look like the best of times. Whether this year or next or the year after, it will happen. A country cannot continue to spend trillions of dollars (and this year it could be close to two trillion) it doesn’t have. Money printing by the Fed cannot continue forever.
Republicans and Democrats are both to blame for this state of affairs. They never saw a tax dollar that they didn’t want to spend. We’ve been living high off the hog by using borrowed money. Just as Greece (and soon to be Italy, Spain and France) are learning that there has to be a payback for the excesses of the past 15 years, so too will we.
By the way Richard. There have been many times in American history that those in Congress have used weapons on each other (one time on the floor). Furthermore, if you read Caro’s Master of The Senate as well as the last published volume, you’ll see that LBJ used, all the time, this crude language to chastise his colleagues.
By the way, speaking of Congress, I never heard how the students and lefties on the Faculty, reacted to the gift (one of the largest ever given to Harvard) by the wife of one of the major players in this DC drama.
1/2/2024 9:18 pm
Sam,
Thanks for these comments. What are your predictions for the stock market this coming year? Time to divest from US stocks? The market was bullish today, but it could just be that people had a good time during the holidays.
1/2/2024 9:43 pm
Harry-If I recall, folks were pretty shocked by Cheney’s remark, in part because that kind of language was so unusual. While national politicians probably feel that way all the time, they generally don’t say it. Of course, Cheney was a vile man.
And Sam, I have read Master of the Senate, though not since it was published—starting the new one as soon as I finish the Manchester book—and of course LBJ was not stingy with his use of profanity, but it was often more colorful and frequently more suasive; LBJ didn’t tell people to go fuck themselves, he wrangled people into getting things done—something at which, as you implicitly point out, he was a master, while Boehner is a disaster.
Nor would I say that there have been “many times in American history” that members of Congress have used weapons against each other. You’re probably thinking of Preston Brooks’ attack on Charles Sumner in 1856, and maybe the Hamilton-Burr duel (you can’t really say they were members of Congress). Those are the famous ones; if there are a lot more, I’m unaware of it.
What gift are you referring to?
1/2/2024 10:45 pm
I can’t predict what the stock market is going to do this year. It is a fools game to do so for any short period of time (or even perhaps for a five year period). “Mr. Market” does his own thing, most often to confound the majority who believe that it is going one way or the other. To paraphrase what Mr. Morgan said… the only thing I know about market is that it is going to fluctuate.
That being said, buckle up, because the next ten years are going to be much more difficult to make any money (and even to keep up with inflation) than the last ten and those last ten weren’t very good for the vast majority of shareholders. The only two pieces of advice I can give are: to buy stock in those companies that would give you a decent return if you owned the whole company (i.e. value investing) and pay no attention to any pundits who tell you to buy this stock or that stock; don’t stretch for yield i.e. do not buy long term bonds.
By the way, if Harvard were really smart, it would be issuing 100 year bonds. My dear friend at Bowdoin, in fact, pulled off the brilliant deal of the century. Harvard should follow Barry’s lead.
1/2/2024 10:47 pm
Richard,
Senator McConnell’s wife’s gift.
1/2/2024 10:51 pm
Forgot to give the link to Bowdoin.
http://www.bowdoin.edu/president/columns/index.shtml