The political arena can be a depressing place, even during the holidays.  But two big and historical events occurred this past week, both worthy of a special thanks and toast to President Barrack Obama and Harry Reid.

The first one to be thankful for is the temporary nuclear agreement reached with Iran.  This is a huge diplomatic breakthrough and hopefully the beginning of new relations with the long estranged country, whom the United States has led economic warfare against the past several years, for the goal of bringing the Iranians to this bargaining table.  This has occurred against the backdrop of intense Israeli pressure for us to go to war with Iran, to bomb their nuclear facilities, etc.  The U.S. and Israel have been engaged for years in a covert and overt campaign to disrupt Iranian nuclear activities – whether peaceful or not – including the assassination of Iranian scientists through terrorist car bombings, as well as computer sabotage.  Crippling economic sanctions were expanded under President Obama, with the Iranian citizenry suffering of course, but collective punishment of an adversaries’s citizens has long been viewed as acceptable as long as we are the ones doing the punishing.  Now, there are a few critics, most notable Israel’s Prime Minister, the famous warmonger “Bibi” Netanyahu who would have us starve every last Iranian woman and child, and still not want peace in the end.  Now, the government of Israel is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort of our United States Senate and Congress to sabotage the negotiations of President Obama and John Kerry of the State Department by implementing new sanctions against Iran that would ruin the current, six month agreement that was just reached.  That it is acceptable for a foreign nation such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, or any other to donate money to our politicians for the specific purpose of effecting our foreign policy, and create a chasm of disagreement within our government for what is right for the United States and what the hard line warmongers in Israel and other allied, petro-rich Middle Eastern tyrannies want, is absurd to begin with.  It shouldn’t be legal, and it should be shamed and pointed out when we hear puppets like Lindsay Graham and Chuck Schumer going on tv and immediately criticizing the hard fought deal the U.S. just achieved, with our allies in Geneva.  But for now, given the long cold war climate with Iran since the Revolution, the fact that we have a temporary agreement instead of a bombing raid advocated by our “closest” ally, is something to truly be thankful for.

And thank you, Harry Reid!  Deck the halls with your new found balls, the change in senate filibuster rules for judicial and cabinet nominees is a huge start and long overdue remedy to the problem of chronic republican obstructionism.  I have long argued that the so called tradition of the filibuster should be done away with altogether, as it works against the very core principle in a democracy, that majority should rule.  Somehow, the notion of majority ruling in a democracy has been muddled to where we talk about the minority party’s rights, and separation of powers.  The balance of powers through the three branches of government was written into the Constitution.  The two party corporate system of power of our modern times was not.  Neither was the filibuster, allowing the minority in the senate to demand a super majority for anything to get done.  And we know the results of this sharing of powers between the two corporate parties that are the republican and democrats of today’s age:  very little gets done, even when the majority of voters support it, even when elections re-affirm it, and the courts validate it.

The change in senate filibuster rules only applies to the president’s cabinet nominees and judicial nominees, with life time positions such as the Supreme Court still allowing filibuster.  This should be common sense and should have been done long ago, but enough cowardly, entrenched power democrats in the senate had been opposed to rule changes, as they anticipated more undeserved terms in years to come, and not wanting to cede power should their party fall back into the minority status.  They would be content in a forever impotent senate, so long as their undeserved job with government health care, continue until retirement.  Fish Face, Kentucky Asshole Extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell, the republican minority leader in the senate, warned the democrats they would be sorry when they end up in the minority again.  This warning was particularly directed at newly elected democratic senators, since they might be so naive as to not realize they were there for themselves in what would hopefully be a long an unproductive senate career, instead of actually there to create change that they won their election on.

Now what we need, even more importantly, is a change in the legislative filibuster, so that the majority party can at least hold votes on proposed legislation, and let a majority decide, instead of being decided by a minority party.  Democratic principles at work, with the majority in the senate and house, who were elected by a majority of voters, making the decision instead of the obstructionists that think that shutting down the government to override the majority is an acceptable way to govern.  Finally, the democrats had enough of the senate republicans denying even routine nominations by the president of non-controversial people, other than the controversy that Obama nominated them, as is his duty and right under the constitution.   Let’s hope that this newly discovered courage will show the democrats that there is a better way of governing, and will take it to the next logical and even more important step, and do away the non-democratic principle of legislative filibusters.

In the mean time, thank you President Obama, your team, and Harry Reid, and his team of democrats with spine, in giving us two huge and significant political victories right before Thanks Giving.

 

In case you haven’t already heard, more retailers are following the lead of one of America’s largest corporate employers of poverty wage earners, Walmart, in starting the beautiful, family values oriented tradition of Black Friday early this year, on Thanksgiving Day.

For all the rhetoric from right wing ass-wipes at the Fox Propaganda News Network about the “War on Christmas” which refers mostly to the language being used about the Christmas holiday – stores and it’s associates saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” I’ve yet to hear much bellyaching about the real stain on the holiday season, Black Friday.  This is not surprising, given the level of hypocrisy that forever flows from the mouths of conservative leaders and the so called Christian right, as they continue demonizing the poor, fighting to cut federal food assistance to them, fighting to not raise the minimum wage, and  fighting to keep them from affording health care.  But dammit, why can’t the working poor say “Merry Christmas,” dammit!  Especially on Black Friday, that wonderful demonstration of family values and good will towards men, peace on Earth, and of course, bargain shopping!

I remember as a kid the talk in church about how Christmas had become so materialistic, and all about the presents.  But I don’t remember as a kid the annual tradition of retail store violence, stampedes and death, all so consumers could get the best price possible, that now regularly occurs, and escalates, each year on Black Friday.  Now, more and more retailers are taking their cues from Walmart and Best Buy and beginning their Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day.  Refusing to be out greeded, the executives at K-Mart are showing they mean business and take no prisoners when it comes to being the top destroyer of an American holiday: they are opening their doors at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, and will remain open for 41 hours straight, as if they hope to eradicate the notion of family time on Turkey Day all together with a shopping binge that Santa Clause on crystal meth can’t top.  It appears a majority of all major retailers will be opening this Thanksgiving, with notable exceptions such as Costco and Home Depot.  If Orange is the New Black, then Thanksgiving is the New Black Friday, and our society and it’s most underpaid workers suffer more as we willfully participate in this corporate designed takeover of our family time holiday.

What is infuriating is that for all the complaining or moralizing we do as a society about the ever uglier, evolving, consumer, bargain hunting war-fare tradition of the holidays, enough of us still line up at the retail doors like sheep to a slaughter.  And sometimes slaughters happen.  It doesn’t take a cynic to predict that at some point over next weekend, there will be video footage from a retail store somewhere in America of shoppers fist fighting, or trampling over one another, to get the last sale item in stock.  This is accepted as part of the holidays.  If someone dies as a result of a stampede over a great price on elecronics, well, it was a low, low price.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Each person can do their part this year by refusing to go Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving.  Yes, I’m talking about boycotting Black Friday this upcoming Thursday, the day formerly known as Thanksgiving.  Surely we could all agree. or most all agree, that we can wait until Friday to hunt for the elusive “best bargain” around.  Personally, I skip that vile shopping weekend all together – I’ve yet to find a bargain that is worth the horror show of watching ugly Americans turned against Americans in a blind, consumer driven spell.

The picture posted above is from the employee area of a Walmart in Canton, Ohio.  The Walmart employees there are taking up food donations to feed their co-workers who can’t afford a good Thanksgiving meal on their Walmart wages.  Surely, this a sign of the times on corporate ruled America, where the working poor have to share their food with each other, as their minimum wage doesn’t provide the bare minimums, but their slave masters continue racking up record, multi-billion dollar profits that funnel up to the top 1 percent of the country who buy the politicians and write the labor and tax laws that subjugate the rest of us.  A Walmart spokesperson (code for paid liar and bullshit artist) is quoted in the Ohio online newspaper Cleveland.com as saying “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships.”  He alleges the food drive is by employees, for employees who face unusual hardships over the holidays, like a spouse losing a job, etc.

Anyone foolish enough to think that the decision makers up the food chain in corporate Walmart, the profit creators, or as they would have us call them, the “job creators” actually give even a remote shit about the welfare of it’s employees, should look towards Walmart’s response to the trampling death of a security guard at one of its stores in Long Island, Black Friday, 2008.  Just before the scheduled opening at 5.a.m., the heard of shoppers broke the doors and trampled to death a security guard, and injured others.  In a show of compassion for it’s employees and the community that were witness to this absurd celebration of Black Friday, Walmart re-opened the store the very same day, by 1 p.m.  Apparently, the blood was mopped up good enough to allow the show to go on.  I have included the New York Times link to that historical day for your convenience here, as I  don’t think the incident got enough coverage, and the fact that Walmart so callously re-opened the store hours later is rarely mentioned, if ever, in Fox’s “news” about the War on Christmas.  I would encourage you to read the story and shared the link on social media to remind people how caring these poverty wage employers are about their fellow man and country:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Judas is said to have betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  Today we are betraying each other and our society for a great price on a flat screen television.  But as long as we say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” I guess that makes it alright.

I’m going to boycott all retail stores on Thanksgiving, and hope all of you will do the same.  I want to also acknowledge and thank all people who have to work on the holidays.  Many are necessary, and we give our thanks and appreciation to them: hospitals, fireman, policeman, and gas station workers who make travel possible, etc.  But we need not participate in the “need” that retail giants use as an excuse to destroy Thanksgiving by lining up at their Temple of Consumerism this Thursday. Personally, I pledge to call any friend, family member or acquaintance who goes shopping this Thanksgiving, a “brainwashed asshole.”  Those words.  I’m going to say, “you did what Thanksgiving?  You went shopping for Christmas presents on Thanksgiving because of the great sale?  You are a brainwashed asshole.”

And then I’ll say, “but no hard feelings, merry Christmas!”

 

My keyboard had barely cooled from my last blog two days ago complaining about Bill Clinton saying President Obama should cave into republicans in their relentless attack on affordable health care for all Americans, when the president went on tv and did just that.  Yesterday, President Obama pissed away all the political capital that he had gained in showing some spine by standing up against the republican party’s government shutdown, and not paying a ransom in the form of weakening Obama Care.  Mr. Obama stood before the cameras and offered more apologies for the screw-up of the federal exchange website, and then apologies for people who are losing their junk insurance after he had said during the campaign that if you were happy with your insurance you could keep it.  And then, he offered an enormous capitulation to republicans and right wing critics and declared that he was changing the rules and allowing holders of cancelled insurance policies (policies that don’t meet the new federal minimum standards, mind you . .i.e. junk insurance) to keep their policies for another year.  So, these lucky folks who the media and republicans have tried to portray as “happy” with their insurance policy, may continue paying for a policy that is worthless should they become seriously ill or have a medical emergency.

The house republicans today passed legislation with the help of 39 turn coat, coward democrats voting with the republicans, that would expand President Obama’s one year extension of current policy holders of junk insurance to allow the insurance companies to sell NEW policies of junk insurance that don’t meet the new minimum standards of the Affordable Care Act.  Another tactic that would completely undermine and sabotage Obama Care, although Mr. Obama has issued a veto threat of this legislation.  But with his tough one day, wimp the next day pattern, how sure can we be?  At least the bill’s chances of passing in the Senate as of right now seem remote.  But this act of the House of Clowns just shows the transparent motives and goals of the republican party, which is to continue to use any means necessary, from the government shutdown, to exploiting the weakness and screw-up of the Obama Care roll out, to destroy the chance of the Affordable Care Act succeeding.  They want to desperately return the rule writing to the thieving health insurance companies to allow to them to continue to control our health care delivery system and enrich themselves while millions go uninsured and suffer and die.

As I explained in my last blog on this subject, President Obama and democrats need to explain exactly what is going on with the new changes in the law, and how they are better for everyone, and how the people who are losing their insurance  will now have more affordable options for insurance that really is health insurance that will help them if they get sick, unlike the fraudulently junk insurance that they have been paying too much for.

Instead, we have a pathetic television news media for the large part passing mis-information back and forth for the spectacle of bullshit debate instead of informing their audience, and we have democrats who are so pathetic that rather than push back or try to explain the truth about what is going on with Obama Care, they had rather apologize and capitulate to the health insurance industry, republicans, and critics.  And we have the so-called Chief of Explaining Things, Bill Clinton, leading the example of being a cowardly, phony, suck-up to private wealth, opportunist.  I have never been a fan of Bill Clinton, or his wife, and now a president I am a supporter of, is taking this bad advice from a professional liar and opportunistic, entrenched power former president.

And for the 39 democrats in the House of Clowns who voted with the republicans on this latest attack on affordable health care, shame on your cowardly asses.  If you need political cover, as many pundits in the tv political theater crowd are suggesting is what the president gave you yesterday, you don’t deserve to call your self a democrat.  You should pack up your Washington bag and go  back to whatever district in your state you are from and tell everybody that you knew better, but you are just too big of a lazy coward to argue against criticism that isn’t accurate.  Tell them it’s just easier to sell them out and let them believe the lies from the republicans and the health insurance industry.  Tell them you are sorry for ever showing backbone, and retire in shame, you worthless wet mops.

As for the rest of you democrats and President Obama, for goodness sake, SHOW SOME SPINE! ! !   Sure, I understand you could be tempted to think people are too stupid in this country to understand the complexities of the new heath care law, given that there were Tea-baggers early on in the debate holding up signs of protest, telling the government to keep it’s hands off their Medicare.  I understand you may have to explain things a little more slowly to the Joe the Plumbers of the country that their taxes aren’t going up, and barely any going up for the rich; I understand that almost half our country votes against their own best interests.  But you need to remember that polls on individual policies and ideas consistently show that we are what can accurately be described as a center-left country, even though many of these people don’t realize that’s what they are.  The point is that people in this country can understand things if it is explained with clear language, evidence, and conviction.  For all of President Obama’s speaking skills and charisma, it would be nice if he’d consistently show conviction by fighting more for what is right instead of half-ass apologizing for half-ass bullshit criticism.

I’m going to go and bang my head into a fence post outside now, since the democrats are too lazy or chicken shit to argue with the proverbial fence post of the republicans and right-wing media.

 

Sure, the website for Obama Care is a screw-up, but this technical issue will be fixed and the Affordable Care Act will move forward and prove to be far superior to the denial-of-care-and-for-profit system that the corrupt insurance companies wrote the law for in the past.  In the mean time, a continued campaign of mis-information and lies is spewed on the airwaves of right-wing talk radio, and of course, the mega-phone of propaganda, FOX.  Not helping the cause of truth and affordable health care for all is the ever increasingly pathetic and declining broadcast television news.  Most of the impotent and sensationalized pundits on the major networks have reduced themselves into becoming a genuine, neutral referee who’s job it is is to keep the non-sense fight of the smoke and mirrors of politics in a constant state of equal debate about bullshit.  The could care less about the truth, they are all about “equal time” and “fair and balanced.”  This translates into giving more than is deserved time to lies, propaganda, misinformation, smoke, mirrors, and smelly horseshit to an argument that is easily debunked, if the media were not so interested in merely parroting non-sense back and forth.

Now we have even the so-called “liberal” media continuing to obsess and attack and criticize Obama Care because President Obama said when promoting the new law that if you liked your health insurance, you would be able to keep it when the new law went into effect.  What has happened now is that what is known as “junk insurance”, the fraudulent pieces of shit that have been until now allowed to be sold as health insurance, no longer meet the new federal standards of what health insurance covers. So if you bought some piece of shit health insurance before because it was all you could afford, and if you got sick this crap wouldn’t have done you any good, is no longer legal.  Now any insurance you buy will have to cover a new federal list of minimum  requirements.  If you get sick, you will be covered.  Unlike the bullshit you had before.  And these insurance companies are sending out notices to these holders of junk insurance telling them that because of Obama Care, their insurance is being cancelled.  Yes, it is, but because it really doesn’t cover you if you get sick.  It is no longer legal, it is now legally fraud to pose to you as health insurance.

The original argument which prompted President Obama to assure people that if they liked their insurance, they could keep it, was the fear-mongering campaign warning people of the coming “socialized” health care that would force happy holders of fantastic insurance policies out of their good private plan and into an inferior government plan.  That was the false narrative that Obama was responding people to.  Now, technically, some people with shitty insurance will now have to get new insurance, because the insurance they are losing was always shitty and overpriced and now they will have better options.  On top of that, most of the holders of this junk insurance are lower income earners, and will qualify for government subsidies under Obama Care and will get real insurance that meets the new, better federal standards, at a more affordable rate.

This is all easily explained and accessed for anyone curious about the truth or concerned with the moral obligation and real need to provide health care for all in our country. The mainstream media knows this and is either too actively engaged like FOX Propaganda News, or too sensationalized like the rest in TV Land, but  former President Bill Clinton, is smart enough to know this, and does know this.  What baffles me is why he just did an interview in which he said President Obama should honor is prior commitment to let people keep their insurance if they were happy with it.  House republicans are drafting a cynical bill to let people keep this insurance they are supposedly happy with, which means that they are still attempting sneak attack legislation to weaken Obama Care and delay it.  This legislation won’t allow people “happy” with their plans to keep a good deal, it will exploit the victims of bullshit insurance into continuing to pay for a policy that will essentially be worthless if they keep it and actually need it.  It is a give-away, and an extension to the corrupt insurance companies to continue to take money for a policy that is absolutely not “insurance.”  President Clinton is undermining President Obama and the Affordable Care Act by this stupid and asinine public statement.  Former and Wishes He Still Was President Clinton, Red Nosed Professional, Phony Liberal Bullshitter, has gone on the public record supporting the republicans plan to keep junk insurance alive longer and undermine Obama Care, and who know’s why?

Personally, Slick Willy, I don’t give a shit what your motives are, if any.  Whether you are just displaying your selfish tendencies and thinking you’ll be helping your wife out later down the road by claiming that you were against Obama on some things, or if you were just talking out of your ass, which some off the cuff statements you have made in recent years suggest you are capable of, either way — you need to shut your trap if you can’t be truthful and support affordable health care for all and the President when you know damn well he was not being dishonest.  You of all people.