Apparently Boehner slipped something actually decent and positive into his otherwise revolting package in the hopes of somehow managing to find something to work with the Democrats in the Senate on if it manages to actually pass the House.

However, now the teabagger brigade have found out about it, and they're hopping mad:

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) has compared Pell Grants to “welfare”.

"So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century," Rehberg told Blog Talk Radio in April. "You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”

What? Helping poor people get a college education?? THE HORROR! THIS MUST BE STOPPED AT ONCE!!

You know what? I received a small Pell Grant myself back in 1988. I didn't grow up poor--I actually had a fairly nice childhood--but my father passed away a couple of weeks before I left for college* and our financial situation changed quite drastically overnight. The grant didn't amount to much--just a couple hundred bucks--but I certainly appreciated it, and it did cover the cost of, like 4-5 undergrad credit hours (this shows how long ago it was). I did well on the AP Calculus exam as well, which covered a few more; my mom and I split the rest of my college education 50/50, with my working a part-time job.

I have a college degree and have made a decent, if not fantastic, living over the past 20 years; I'd like to think that I've paid back a lot more than $200 in taxes due, in part, to having a good education which allowed me to make enough money to...pay taxes, y'know?

Sheesh.

Anyway, this development "could cost Republican votes", says the article. Not exactly a headline that Bad Day Boehner wants to read this evening, I'd say.

-----

* This has nothing to do with the diary, but I also wanted to note that I was still wearing the torn black Shiva ribbon during Welcome Week at Michigan State, when I met my randomly-assigned freshman roommate, who turned out to be a Born Again Evangelical...and a complete asshole (the two aren't always the same, but they sure were in this case).

Yes, one of the first things he asked me was about the ribbon; when I explained that a) I was Jewish and b) my father had just passed away, his response was to say, quite matter-of-factly, that "It's a shame that he's burning in Hell right now."

Needless to say, my freshman year was not a barrel of laughs.

Update: I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone for the supportive words regarding my asshole freshman roommate. As one person noted, it's been over 20 years and I still think about (and get angry about) that incident almost every day.

The good news (so to speak) is that I quickly found out that the asshole in question, who was a year ahead of me, had actually just been "born again" over the summer--it seems that duringhis frosh year prior, he had just been a "normal" asshole and had completely trashed his reputation to the point that everyone in the dorm hated his guts. So, he was "born again" over the summer in the hopes of starting over with a new personality.

Unfortunately, his new personality was the same old asshole, just Jesus Flavored® this time. He quickly re-trashed his reputation again, and everyone hated him again, just with Evangelical Goodness® this time around.

As for me, I survived the year, mostly thanks to the help of a guy named Davey across the hall, who looked, sounded and acted EXACTLY like Zonker Harris from Doonesbury (which gives you an idea of the type of help he provided...)

Update x2: Meanwhile, for whatever it's worth, Apple now has more cash reserves than the United States Federal Government.

New figures from the U.S. Treasury Department indicate that the government has a total operating cash balance of $73.768 billion, less than Apple's own war chest of $75.876 billion.

As noted by Matt Hartley of the Financial Post, the news comes even as Republican and Democrat lawmakers debate over the federal budget and debt ceiling. The government's $73 billion number actually represents the "financial headroom" that lawmakers have before reaching an arbitrary debt ceiling, according to the report.

See? All that has to happen now is for Apple to arrange for a leveraged buyout of the United States, we can change the name of the country to iMerica, and we'll be all set. Problem solved.