"This isn't some damn game!" House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, just declared, his voice rising, as he told reporters on Capitol Hill that he believes it's the Obama administration that's to blame for the four-day-old partial shutdown of the federal government.
Boehner's emotional moment came as he held up -- and then slammed down -- a copy of Friday's Wall Street Journal, where he'd read that an unnamed administration official said "we are winning ... It doesn't really matter to us" how long the shutdown lasts.
"The American people don't want their government shut down and neither do I," Boehner added. He called on the president and his aides to "sit down" and negotiate.
"All I'm asking for is to sit down and talk to each other like the American people expect us to," Boehner also said.
The White House and other Democrats, of course, say it's Boehner and his Republican colleagues who are at fault for insisting that any deal on getting the government running again include steps to either defund, delay or denude the new "Obamacare" health care initiatives.
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