Boehner loses control..extreme right throw GOP off cliff.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Not if you keep going into the red you won't be...

And as soon as we default, the world as we know it ends. Australia included.
It is to no one in the worlds benefit for the USA to defult nor enter another recession (although in my oopinion, we still have not emerged from the previous one).

Personally, I am leaning toward pulling every soldier back into the borders of the USA and let the rest of the world fend for themselves. No aid, no money, no commerce. We have been able in the past, I think we can again.

[Lord Jim]

Well John, managed to hang on to his job...

I watched the installation, and as Boehner was being introduced and congratulated by Pelosi, the expression on his face made him look like a man who was receiving a Tabasco enema...or trying to hold down his lunch

He didn't look merely unhappy, he looked like he was in agony...

You'd think that rather than being re-elected to the third highest office in the land, he was listening to a judge sentencing him to death... ..this is not a happy man...

You can see the video here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138166n

It's only about 2 minutes long.

[oldr_n_wsr]

He could have removed himself from the job. I do think the constitution does not say that the Senior of the house has to be an elected (from the general public) member of the house.

[Guinevere]

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution states:

"The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers"

[oldr_n_wsr]

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution states:

"The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers"

And nothing about whether they are elected officials or not. Or was that your contention?
Just asking.

[Lord Jim]

I recalled that the Speaker was not constitutionally required to be a member of congress, and I knew that no non-member had been elected to the job in modern times, (at least the last 100 years) but I didn't know whether it had ever happened. Apparently it hasn't:

The Constitution does not require that the speaker be an elected Member of Congress, but no non-member has ever been elected to the office.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of ... sentatives

I guess technically, given the lack of specificity about the requirements of the job, the Speaker wouldn't even have to be a citizen, or meet any specific age requirement...I suppose they could select a 16 year old Honduran if they wanted to....

As for the vote this time, they weren't exactly lining up to replace Boehner...In the heady days after they retook control two years ago there was a lot of talk about Cantor challenging Boehner, but not this time. No credible candidate (like Paul Ryan, for example) even floated a trial balloon about it...

It's easy to understand why. If you look at the make up of this caucus, and juxtapose it with the likely major legislative agenda that will be unfolding, (the debt ceiling, the sequester, the budget, tax reform, immigration reform, gun legislation) it would be pretty much impossible for anyone in that job to wind up looking good. Going after the Speakership at this juncture would not be a wise career move.

[Gob]

I guess technically, given the lack of specificity about the requirements of the job, the Speaker wouldn't even have to be a citizen, or meet any specific age requirement...

I'll put in for the job then, I couldn't do any worse.

I suppose they could select a 16 year old Honduran if they wanted to....

I beginning to think Jim's going through the male menopause.

[liberty]

Not if you keep going into the red you won't be...

And as soon as we default, the world as we know it ends. Australia included.
It is to no one in the worlds benefit for the USA to defult nor enter another recession (although in my oopinion, we still have not emerged from the previous one).

Personally, I am leaning toward pulling every soldier back into the borders of the USA and let the rest of the world fend for themselves. No aid, no money, no commerce. We have been able in the past, I think we can again.

Me too, but I think it is just frustration. I think that we are at point where we will have to make some hard decisions, but the priority should be our own people. As far as the African aids program is concerned we should as the Scandinavians that are so superior to us in generosity to take over Bush’s program.

[Andrew D]

Anyone who is serious about deficit/debt reduction takes primary aim at the most bloated, most wasteful government spending: the military budget.

Anyone who is not willing to take a 50% cut in the military budget -- and let's throw overboard the fantastic falsehood that it is the "defense" budget -- is simply not serious about deficit/debt reduction. If you are not willing to reduce the portion of the budget which contributes the most to our deficit/debt problem, then deficit/debt reduction is not what you really care about.

Those who take primary aim at such programs as Social Security and Medicare are not serious about deficit/debt reduction. They are ideologically opposed to the existence of a social safety net. But their social-policy positions are overwhelmingly unpopular among Americans.

So they hide them behind supposed deficit/debt-reduction policies. Remember when Clinton and Gingrich proved that it was possible for the government to achieve a surplus while maintaining a (reduced but still existent) social safety net? What did the right-wingers do? They sabotaged the very deficit/debt-reduction policies whose outcome they pretended to desire.

Why? Because the idea that a government can provide a social safety net and remain solvent was anathema to them. So they did their best to send the US government into bankruptcy.

That way, they could pretend that maintaining a social safety net and remaining solvent were mutually exclusive. We had to wreck the social safety net -- so they said, lying through their teeth the whole time -- because we could not afford it.

We could not afford it. So said the people to whom the wild excesses of the military budget are their bread and butter.

The first question that should be asked of anyone arguing for deficit/debt reduction is "How much do you want to cut from the military budget?" If that person's answer is anything less than half of the total budget cuts which that person is advocating, that person is not at all serious about deficit/debt reduction.