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.