Boehner

Miss Mitch, er, beamed at Tuesday's swearing in in the Old Senate Chamber"After so many years of sluggish growth, we're finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope. The uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration's long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress."-- silver-tongued "Miss Mitch" McConnell,taking over the helm of the U.S. Senate yesterdayby KenThat's right.

This morning, Boehner-- once banished from the GOP leadership for handing out bribery checks on behalf of tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House (see video above)-- was elected to his third term as Speaker of the House. "I'll never di it again," whined Boehner, when caught. "It's a bad practice; we ought to stop this." In 1923, another 3-term Republican Speaker, Frederick Gillett (R-MA), was elected Speaker for the last time.

Yeah, theze guyz wuz really gonna do a heapa cooperatin' with Ooh That Damn Obama."[Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell's conciliatory statements are encouraging, but he's about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive. We're about to get two years of intense, horrifying stupidity.

Boehner's lawsuit against Obama is turning out to be the bust most people predicted it would be. A Federal Court of Appeals threw out an almost identical lawsuit yesterday.

As I've mentioned before, Steve Israel protects his own vulnerable seat by never allowing the DCCC to challenge any Republican leaders or committee chairs, not even the ones in blue-leaning districts like Fred Upton (R-MI), John Kline (R-MN) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).

If Alexandra Petri and I are both having a spot of trouble with misbehaving words, it's in the great tradition of Saturday Night Live's perpetually angry scourge, Emily Litella (Gilda Radner), who (for example) couldn't understand what all the fuss was about "violins in schools.""The American people said they wanted change, but really what they wanted was just a little bit off the top because anything else would frighten their spouses. . .

Russian subversive Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (AKA, Ayn Rand) came to America when she was 21 and struggled to make a living as a screenwriter-- and didn't have a single success. She didn't write her profoundly anti-American drivel, The Fountainhead, until after she became a volunteer on behalf of reactionary Wendell Wilkie, running against FDR, and a seriously addicted meth head.

Jake Sherman at Politico doesn't exactly describe it as a modern day reenactment of Night Of The Long Knives, but when far right freakshow Chris Chocola was screaming about it on Twitter yesterday, he saw exactly what Boehner and his Chamber of Commerce/Big Business allies were up to in cutting off the legs of the Tea Party extremists who had given the GOP a populist patina in recent years. They would have liked to have gotten to Boehner before he got to them.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz fancies herself the female Rahm Emanuel in several, mostly dysfunctional, ways. But one has been her determination to be "the first Jewish Speaker of the House." A deal among Democratic caucus members last year seemed to have left that path open for the controversial Wasserman Schultz. But that didn't take a very different possibility into account. No, not progressive fellow Floridians Alan Grayson… Eric Cantor.

Remember reading how CPAC had once snubbed Chris Christie and had welcomed him as some kind of conservative hero this year? Well, maybe John Boehner will be caught up in a big scandal one day that will make him a hero too, but he-- unlike Mitch McConnell-- was snubbed by CPAC this year.