I expressed some hope last week that the workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee would see through the bullshit being propagated by the state republicans and outside tea-bagger groups and vote to join the United Auto Workers union.   I expressed this hope against the backdrop of a Southern state that still suffers from a majority of brainwashed, republican voters, who regularly vote against their own best interests.  Sadly, ignorance prevailed, and the workers voted no against joining the union by a vote of 712 to 626.  It should be noted though, that unprecedented public bullying and threats from elected republican state officials played an unethical, and perhaps illegal part, in this loss for labor and workers, and will undoubtedly have a ripple effect throughout the South for years to come.

Let’s address the ignorance first.  As I wrote in my last blog concerning this union vote, the general public, and in particular the republican voters in Tennessee, have misguided notions on labor unions, and social and economic policy in general.  They demonstrate this ignorance and brainwashed belief system by consistently voting for the greediest, biggest asshole politicians they can find, notably the republicans.  Then they complain about how screwed up the “system” is, a system which is governed by the assholes they chose to represent them, assholes who are funded and sponsored by the industries and corporations that actually design the screwed up system.  I’ve written extensively in the past and noted many examples of how the average citizen votes against their own self interests, so I won’t rehash all of that here, but I will point out a quote in the news from one of the dumb asses at the plant that was opposed to joining the union:

“Look at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.”

The New York Times cites this quote from a dumb ass named Mike Jarvis, a three year employee at the plant.  Last week in my blog, I said that occasionally you would hear an argument from an anti-union idiot working stiff  such as “unions are the reason these companies moved to Mexico and China in the first place, they make it too expensive for the company to survive here.”  And, as the after the fact vote and quote above shows, I’ve heard this ludicrous line of bullshit from dumb asses like Mr. Jarvis many times before, and predictably, it is heard and repeated again and again.

Well, you can lead a red state jack-ass to water, but you can’t make him drink it.

There were just too many billboards, 13 in all,  bought up from scumbag tea-baggers like Grover Norquist and his group Center for Worker Freedom (which of course the title means the opposite) that appealed to the emotions, fears, and prejudices of employees and their friends and relatives over logic and reason.  In addition to the billboard like the one I pictured at the top of my last blog that sought to play on the negative opinions and racism against President Obama in the state, other billboards played on Southerners’ fears and prejudices of becoming another Detroit – that is, a dying and crime ridden city of decay, brought about by labor unions and liberalism.

Overcoming propaganda and workplace intimidation is always a challenge in getting the working class to vote for their own best interests, and at least there are federal labor laws that protect  workers from company sponsored intimidation and retaliation tactics.  In this case, however, the German Volkswagen company appears to have not been involved in either.  They publicly asked third party and outside groups to stay out of it and let the workers decide.

And then came the guardians of the Plantation Party:  Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam,  Senator Bob Corker, and State Senator Bo Watson.  These three pieces of possum shit were in the media actually making threats to the workers and the Volkswagen company, should they vote for unionization.  The governor warned that auto parts suppliers would not come to Chattanooga if the union won, and that future job creators would avoid Tennessee. Bob Corker claimed to have spoken with Volkswagen executives who promised expansion at the plant to make SUV’s, if the workers voted no on the union.  Executives deny saying this to him.  State Senator Bo Watson upped the threat more directly, warning that Tennessee legislators, ruled by the republican majority, would withhold future subsidies (corporate welfare) to Volkswagen, should the factory go union.

Not only are these acts of republican officials unprecedented, appalling, and unethical, they may be illegal.  I’m not a lawyer or expert on labor law, but it seems logical to me that threats of intimidation and retaliation that are illegal for companies to make towards their workers during a union vote, would also be illegal, if not especially illegal, for a politician to make.  The U.A.W. president has said that their team of lawyers are looking at legal action options, but offered no details as of yet.

What is also pathetic on the political side of this is the deafening silence coming from President Obama, the Justice Department and Labor Board, and other national democrats holding office.  Vaguely, I remember a presidential candidate named Barrack Obama once telling a group of supporters at a rally that if elected president, he would put on his walking shoes and join the picket lines with the workers on strike (I forget what workers or strike).  Needless to say, that didn’t happen after he was president and republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin managed to dismantle collective bargaining for unions in that state. I haven’t heard anything from President Obama on this current case either, and very little from democratic leaders in Washington.  This is inexcusable, and the President and silent democrats should be ashamed at of their lack of inaction and commentary.  The future of unions and workers in the country are going to be greatly affected by this loss in the Volunteer White Slave State of Tennessee.  And a message is being interpreted by republican scumbags across the states, that although employers are barred from illegal threats to unionization, that they can gladly step into the debate and use their political power and legal authority to circumvent labor law protections. And even if the politicians didn’t violate the laws in this instance, and it remains to be seen if they did,  the message is that they will go unopposed in the arena of public debate.

Republicans are always willing to lie and intimidate in order to maintain the power and wealth of the top .01 percent, and in the Tennessee case this means that the Governor, and his Senators, are willing to do and say whatever it takes to make sure that Tennessee workers will have no say at the bargaining table.  And that is just the way the plantation style republicans want to rule America: a top down system of extremely wealthy owners, ruling over the working poor, who are still stupid enough to vote for them.

 

If you wanna a fine example of how ignorant and self-defeating republican voters can be on a local level, you need look no further than the Volunteer state of Tennessee.  Like much of the solid red states of the South, the poorer the population is, the more supportive they are of politicians who’s policies support the rich and powerful, and shit all over their own well being.  Tennessee’s city of Chattanooga is home to a Volkswagen, a German manufacturing plant, who is in the process of conducting a three day vote on whether or not it’s workers will join the UAW union.  If it does so, it will be the first foreign owned auto company in the South to have union representation.  It is currently the only Volkswagen plant in the world without some type of worker or union representation, and that is just the way the republican leadership in Tennessee wants to keep it.  So dedicated are the elected republican leaders in the state committed to preventing it’s citizen workers from organizing for their rights and conditions in the workplace, that Governor Bill Haslam and other state legislators are actually threatening the workers and the Volkswagen company publicly with retaliation if they chose unionization.

Republican state legislators have actually threatened to withhold future tax incentives for factories thinking of moving to Tennessee, if the Volkswagen plant joins the union.  Most likely this in violation of federal laws that still protect workers rights to join unions.  Employers are not legally allowed to retaliate against workers seeking to unionize, so now the good republican governor and his army of republican legislators are attempting to intervene by threatening to withhold future corporate welfare for other companies considering location in Tennessee.  Apparently, the republicans in the state want to keep the workers rights, pay, and working condition more in line with that of Mexico and other third world countries.  And the real question is, how stupid are the citizens of this state who vote for these assholes that clearly have nothing but disdain for the working class and poor?  Will they be stupid enough to vote no to joining the union?

When I was a young man many moons ago, living in Tennessee, I remember seeing workers of the Nissan auto plant, and their spouses and girlfriends, wearing tee-shirts that read “Eye Can Speak for Myself” with the “I” being spelled like an actual eye, with a big eye drawn onto the shirt.  This was part of the campaign then to vote no against unionization of that plant.  These idiots actually thought that the union was some outside force that was seeking to take over their job and do them harm, charge them membership fees, maybe even make their benevolent employer Nissan pull up stakes and move elsewhere, where the local population would be happy to work for less and with less benefits.  That campaign succeeded, the union was voted down, and moron workers got what they voted for and deserved:  now days Nissan employs “contract workers” who make as little as 12 dollars an hour, while the temp agency that technically employs them, earns upwards of a 30 percent fee for their part as acting as a vulture and roadblock to workers pay and rights.

Outside groups have bought up billboard ads in Tennessee urging the workers to vote no.  One billboard called the UAW the United Obama Workers union, in a cynical ploy to play not only on the president’s unpopularity in the state, but to stir racists feelings in the former Confederate slave state.  The irony of this is of course, that these working class people of the state, fearful of Obama putting their white asses in chains, are in practice, voting to enslave themselves to the corporate managers and CEO’s, and voting for republican politicians who are staunchly dedicated to tending to the needs of the rich and all powerful corporate paymasters, and staunchly dedicated to making sure that the workers who put them in office, have absolutely power or voice in the workplace.

It is nothing short of stunning, and infuriating.  Watching these dumb, easily manipulated, pay check to pay check living, working poor, continually vote for rich republicans who do not give a shit about them, their pay, their plight, their healthcare,  or their food supply, is about as frustrating to me as I imagine it is to a cop watching an abused woman continue to return to her abuser and refusing to press charges, even though legal protections and help is right under their nose.

Let’s hope the workers at the plant are smart enough to vote yes this time around at a chance to having a collective voice in the workforce. Let’s hope they are smarter than the tea-baggers of the state who vote for their elected officials to stand up and fight against the workers of the state in order to enrich further the handful of corporate swine that they work for.  Another irony in this story is that the Volkswagen leadership and ownership don’t have a problem with the workers joining the UAW.  Germany, the strongest economy in the European Union, is used to workers having rights, decent pay and benefits, and a say in the workplace.  In fact, most all of our European counterparts give their workers more rights, better pay and better benefits.  Contrary to popular belief among conservatives in this country, unions and a livable wage haven’t killed the economies of our Western, European neighbors.  Neither has nationalized healthcare – in fact, it makes the citizens’ quality of life better.  But here, tea-baggers still trust the “job creators” while being suspicious of Big Government, too brainwashed to realize that Big Business currently occupies OUR government, and that they are the fools voting them into power.

I have spoken many times about the sophisticated propaganda system of the super rich that is used to control public opinion, and this is a prime example.  Simple review of the facts and history of organized labor in this country show that when unions had the most membership, the middle class earned more and had better benefits.  As membership of labor unions has declined in this country, so have wages and benefits.  Sometimes the dumber of anti-union working stiffs will say something like “unions are the reason these companies moved to Mexico and China in the first place, they make it too expensive for the company to survive here.”  To which I respond, “No, you dumb son-of-a-bitch, our elected officials writing trade laws that allow these greedy companies to move to Mexico and China for the purpose of exploiting their slave labor market and lack of environment regulations for huge profit increases are the reason they moved to Mexico and China.  And now they have your dumb ass actually paying these companies through your  tax dollars to come to your state and allow you the privilege of working for them, if you are willing to do it at a low enough wage, with minimal benefits, and under a totalitarian, corporate structure in which you have almost no rights.  Or, as your slave masters’s bought and owned republican politicians that you voted for calls it, “a right to work state.”

Surely a salute to our former terrorism sponsoring and class warfare against the middle class and poor, President Ronald Reagan, deserves some credit for helping propagate the myth that “government is the cause of your problems, not the solution.”  Because what of course he really was saying was, “government is the solution for helping the rich and powerful take away your rights enrich themselves even further.”  He convinced workers in this country that “getting the government off of their backs” would make them richer and more free.  Of course what he meant by that was getting the government off of the backs of the big corporations and allowing them to do whatever the hell they want, such as poisoning the water we drink and polluting the air we breathe; move our jobs overseas to sweat shops, use our volunteer army and tax dollars to terrorize and murder people of the third world to allow them to be more profitable; to create a private owned monopoly system over our medicine supply, and allow our insurance companies to determine who gets medical care and who does not; to subsidize companies like Walmart and McDonald’s by allowing them to pay their workers poverty wages while our tax dollars provide food stamps and medicaid to allow their workers to live.  Or, as Reagan also championed this job creation theory: “de-regulation.”

Generally speaking, whatever term a republican comes up, actually means the opposite.  Slogans like “Eye Can Speak for Myself” really mean, vote no on collective bargaining so you cannot speak for yourself in the workplace.  “Support the Troops” really means pay them jack shit, abandon them when they come home, and deploy them multiple times into combat zones to kill and be killed for the private wealth of the trans-national corporations while telling them they are defending freedom.  “Invest in Clean Energy” means continue to subsidize dirty fossil fuels with tax payer money.  “Keep the government out the way between you and your doctor” has meant and still means keep the insurance company in the way of you and your doctor.  The list goes on.

In Tennessee, the term “Volunteer State” apparently means volunteer to give all of your rights to the private and powerful corporations you work for.  And if you don’t, your elected republican governor and legislature just might not give away your tax dollars in the future to companies that you work for.  Volunteer now apparently means to volunteer yourself as a grateful slave, thankful to have your corporate master give you a job, as long as you pay your taxes to pay for their “investment” in your state.

Unbelivable.  Make me proud, the state of my birthplace.  Take back some power for the working men and women and vote yes for that union.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At a recent party I heard a familiar lament:  both parties are corrupt and I don’t vote for either because they both suck.  It is true that both the democrats and republicans are part of the corporate sponsored oligarchy, but indifference and lack of participation only empower the worst elements of both.

A very long time ago in my early days of coming into my political age, I voted for a third party candidate named Ross Perot, who ran under the banner of a third party he was trying to create, the Reform Party.  I don’t agree with all of the things Perot was for, but two causes he highlighted were relevant then and even more so now: the corrupting influence of corporate lobbyist “the ones wearing the alligator shoes” and their big money contributions through campaign donations and the revolving door of cushy jobs for politicians post their time in office, and the dangers of so-called free trade, such as NAFTA at the time.

When Al Gore ran for president and beat governor George W. Bush in both the popular vote – as well as the unofficial Florida recount that was conducted after the Supreme Court stopped the official count and installed W. Dipshit as the worst president in modern history – I supported Ralph Nader running under the third party banner of the Green Party.  Democrats, Al Gore, the press and some liberals blamed people like me for “helping” Bush to win, even though in reality he didn’t win.  I agreed with Mr. Nader that votes should be earned, and don’t automatically belong to either of the two corporate sponsored candidates; I also agreed with his assertion that if you keep voting for the lesser of two evils, all you end up with is less.  Certainly his warning about the declining of the candidates has proven as true as Mr. Perot’s warning that passing of NAFTA would lead to a “giant sucking sound going south” that was the sound of American manufacturing job losses.

There is another very important lesson that Ross Perot’s surprisingly strong showing in the general election taught us and the corporate powers that rig our elections: the value of the sophisticated propaganda system that the super rich control through their ownership of the mass media, and the threat that third party candidates cause this power system.  Ross Perot, despite having dropped out of the presidential race in the beginning under suspicious reasons, and then reentering the same race after taking a beating in the polls and by the media, managed to get nearly 20 percent of the popular vote.  The nationally televised presidential debates are largely credited with allowing Perot to regain support.  His 30 minute political ads, striking for their attention to detail of policy proposal in age of 30 second sound bites, probably helped as well.

No third party candidate has been allowed in the presidential debates since then.

Ralph Nader sued unsuccessfully to be allowed in the presidential debates.  Apparently the threat to the propaganda system of the rich and powerful was so severe after Perot’s performance 8 years earlier, that not only were future non democrat and republican candidates banned from the arena, but in the case of Ralph Nader, banned from even being anywhere near the debates, even as a spectator.  Ralph Nader was a ticket holder to the presidential debate that was held on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, but was escorted away by State Troopers from this public event of democracy, on a public college campus. This was a shocking moment of abuse of power by the corporate elite that sponsor these events, a subversion of our democracy,  and was largely unreported.  I recommend further details of this event that can be found in this online college publication : http://www.dailytargum.com/police-escort-nader-from-first-presidential-debate/article_9cd3213f-a474-5164-bf97-1ad21f288155.html.

I also attended a political rally for Ralph Nader at Madison Square in New York City the year Nader ran against Gore and W. Dipshit.  The rally was filled with around 10,000 other supporters, many of which donated money to his campaign in the form of volunteer contributions to the tickets to the event.  Celebrities such as Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and  Eddie Vedder spoke or performed at this event.  It barely got any press coverage by the mainstream media, who was too busy highlighting small gathering political events by Gore and Bush.  The propaganda managers of the top 1 percent were busy on many fronts making sure that the general public wasn’t aware of alternatives to the democrats or republicans.  The narrative sold was that a vote for any candidate other than corporate puppet choice number 1 or 2  was a wasted voted.  Nader can’t win, Pat Buchannan couldn’t win, Ross Perot didn’t win, don’t waste your vote.  The maddening thing is that all it would have taken were enough votes for a third party candidate to win, and polls showed then and now that people want an independent voice or a third party, yet most people simply won’t  “waste” their vote.

I supported President Obama during both of his elections.  I would rather have had Ralph Nader or someone else, but by the time his election came around and President George W. Bush had shown the country how disastrous the more evil of the two evils could be if they won the presidency, I voted for the lesser of two evils and went with the democratic candidate.  Not because I thought my vote would be wasted if I didn’t, but because by now I have come to the sad realization that since the majority of the public believe there are only two real choices and will either vote for one of the two, or not vote at all.  I have now surrendered some of my own ideology for practicality.  And predictably, Obama has been less than I hoped for, but to his credit, better than most in conventional, oligarchy owned politicians.

The result of all of this is a broken democracy in which the will of the people, no matter how strong the polls show support among a majority of Americans in any given policy, is subverted and subjected to the watering down or outright refusal by the real powers that currently own OUR government.  Examples of this abound, from the overwhelming, super majority of voters who support criminal background checks on all gun purchases – denied by congress, to a single payer healthcare system – watered down into Obama Care.  More money for domestic issues at home instead of more military spending for aggressive military action and war abroad – not happening, despite the Drone Ranger winning the Nobel Peace prize for lofty rhetoric that bares little resemblance to reality.  Tax increases on the rich as opposed to spending cuts on the rest of us?  Largely denied.  Extending emergency federal unemployment benefits during this period of bare minimum economic growth?  The minority of republican politicians in the Senate just fillibustered that, so the majority of what voters want of course is denied.  More draconian cuts to food stamps, despite public opposition?  Done deal, suck up on crumbs, poor and hungry Americans, the republicans don’t want to spoil you and Bill O’Rielly has assured us that Jesus isn’t down for food stamps either.

All of this sounds like a very logical and preponderance of evidence based reason to not vote at all.  And to a large extent, it is.

But, are we to give up completely on the right of Americans to vote?  Despite as bad as things are right now, I believe that not voting will only make things worse. We still do own the vote, and billions of dollars are now flooded into the presidential elections by corporate fat cats who realize that we can still change things, if enough Americans wake up or see through the smoke and mirrors.  Our vote is still a threat to the oil companies, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the trans-national corporations, and the financial industry that brought us the Great Recession.  That is why they spend so much money to shape public opinion.  As long as they can get us to vote against our own best interests, they will continue to funnel the majority of the wealth created in the world into their very small number of hands.

As a progressive, as a liberal, as a person with common sense, and as a person who’s so called liberal ideas are now in the majority of public opinion on the majority of issues, as noted above, I still implore you to vote, and vote for democrats when the choice is between them and the republicans.  The democratic party, traditionally the party of the working class and the poor (you know, the majority of us) are still the only reasonable choice to vote for our own best interests, when compared to republicans.  Both parties are sponsored by corporations and uber private wealth, and the democrats are increasingly weak and ineffective as a result of this, but at least they are in favor of giving us a few crumbs as opposed to letting us die in the gutter from starvation and lack of healthcare while the rich ride by in their gold plated limos, lamenting on the value of the “free market” and “capitalism.”  And maybe, just maybe, call me an optimists (which I am rarely called), but I also believe that if we stay engaged, vote, and pay attention to what the politicians are doing with the issues, we can embolden enough weak kneed democrats to stand up for the people again.  And, if enough people really pay attention to the issues, maybe even a third party, independent of corporate and concentrated wealth, can emerge.  I doubt it, but its a start and I will not lay down quietly.

 

 

 

Most honest followers of politics and even casual observers know that the annual State of The Union Address given by the President is an exercise of feel good, self congratulations mixed with a shred of ambitions and proposals for the new year going forward.  This year was no exception, but given the toxic state of Washington politics, the true state of things, and the fact that this year is an election year, I felt let down by President Obama.  While he pointed out some fairly obvious problems and some simple solutions that could be achieved, were it not for the obstructionist tactics of the republicans, he failed to set the tone needed to wake voters up to the importance this year of holding the Senate for the democrats, and the desperate need to take control away from the House of Clowns.  He also managed to lie with a straight face about his desire to create good paying manufacturing jobs while urging congress to fast track the further outsourcing of American jobs and standards by approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

The pre-game hype of the State Address was about how President Obama was going to lay out his new plans to use his executive authority where he could to get America working and to address the growing wealth inequality problem in this country.  It is true that there are a limited number of real things he can do with his executive power, such as requiring all government contract workers to be paid at least $10.10 an hour, but the real point of these moves is largely symbolic and meant to put political pressure on congress to act with legislation.   Raising the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hours is one of the more simple yet effective legislative actions that congress could take to help stimulate the economy and help the working poor.  I would say that in the list of contenders for top soundbites from the speech, “Give America a raise” directed at the republicans who always oppose raising the minimum wage, was the top.  Mr. Obama pointed out that today’s minimum wage was about 20 percent lower than it was during Messiah Ronald Reagan’s time.  This was one a few references and inferences to the undeserving and highly regarded hero on high of the republican party, which Obama still seems to think may win over hardened conservatives.

President Obama also asked congress to re-instate federal unemployment insurance  benefits immediately, that he said congress had “let expire.”  Here, in an election year, I think Mr. Obama should have chosen more honest language.  Calling the heartless and calculated blocking of extending unemployment benefits by republicans as letting “expire” is to me the epitome of what his wrong with President Obama’s tone and strategy in dealing with a republican party that is radical and far right of the majority of American’s beliefs on many issues.  The government shutdown this past year, caused solely by the republicans, was white-washed over, as a “rancorous argument” yet “important debate” that we needed to move past.  He then congratulated both democrats and republicans for a “compromise” budget that was passed.  As I’ve pointed out before, compromise is now defined as giving the super wealthy backed republicans most of what they want that goes against most of what the majority of American voters want.

Pretending that the problem in American politics is too much “partisan” arguing between two sides of good faith people who both want what is good for the country is a cop out by a president who is either blindly naive at this point (which I don’t think he is) or still unwilling to really fight for what is right.  He still wants to ask nicely for the right things while still be willing to settle for only a little of the right things.  The problem is not simply bickering between the democrats and republicans.  The problem is quite frankly, that all of Washington is corrupted to a certain degree by flood of bribery by the all powerful corporations and industries of the top .01 percent of the uber wealthy through their campaign “donations.”  Everyone knows this.  So instead of pretending like congress is just a bunch of good hearted Americans who passionately disagree over issues, the president needs to be more honest and direct and say “it’s true that both political parties are too beholden to the interests of profit over people driven corporations, but the republican party has consistently proven over the past few years that they represent outright contempt for the working class and the poor.  It’s time to throw them out of office altogether.”

He could point out any number of concrete examples, starting with changing his phrase “let expire” unemployment benefits to “killed any hope” of extending unemployment insurance.  He could point out that the Farm Bill was held up by republicans hoping that starving the poor and their children through more savage cuts to the food stamp program would somehow create jobs.  He could point to the record number of filibusters by republican senators that have been used by the minority party of the top 1 percent to undermine the principles of democracy.  He should remind everyone that the government shutdown was caused by House republicans also seeking to undermine our democracy by inflicting enough pain on the general population to cause democrats to surrender to the needs of the super rich.

Instead, he spoke in a lot of generalities, and again, channeling the tired rhetoric of President Reagan, talked about how he was going to “cut red tape” to get construction projects moving quicker and factories getting built.  After all these years of President Obama pledging to use his executive authority to cut red tape to get the economy moving, you’d think his scissors would be dull and there no more tape to be cut.  He also spoke of “job training,” a recycled President Clinton line of bullshit that suggests that there are many high paying jobs out there for average American workers, if only they could get the government training they need to fill those positions.  To solve this problem, he’s appointed Vice President Joe Biden “to lead an across- the-board reform of America’s training programs to make sure they have one mission: train Americans with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now.”  So we have republicans suggesting that unemployment is caused by too many lazy people living off the fat of unemployment checks and not looking for those jobs out there, and the president suggesting that those jobs are out there, they just need government trained and recruited workers to fill them.  Both positions are baseless in facts, both are bullshit.  The republican position just demonstrates their outright hostility towards the working class, and President Obama’s position is just a false hope based on lies that he hopes will motivate people to vote for the democrats instead of the assholes.

Another lie that President Obama keeps propagating is borrowed from the tired playbook of Bill Clinton and Al Gore:  we need more secretive “free trade” deals passed in order to create jobs here at home.  We’ve all heard this crock of shit before, one of the ultimate successes of trans-national corporations, the selling of the myth that trade deals with poor, third world countries that undermine our labor and environmental laws and sovereignty, will somehow create jobs here.  President Obama once said he would oppose any NAFTA style trade deals if he became president, and that he would renegotiate parts of NAFTA as well.  Now, like his bullshit artist predecessors Clinton and Gore before him, he actually said in his address “We need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment and open new markets to new goods stamped “Made in the USA.”  It reminded me of Vice President Gore debating Ross Perot on NAFTA, saying he had a family member in the tire manufacturing business being for NAFTA so he could sell his tires to Mexico.

I’ve recently written about how TPP is a larger and worse version of NAFTA that will continue to outsource American jobs and depress wages, but I’d like to include a link here to an excellent Op Ed this week in the New York Times written by David Bonoir, who was a democrat in office at the time of NAFTA.  It is worth the read and articulates very clearly the problem with TPP and so-called “free trade” and the reality behind the false propaganda that Obama now promotes now that he is president:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/opinion/obamas-free-trade-conundrum.html?hp&rref=opinion.  I strongly recommend that you copy and paste the link and read the piece.  

The president did forcefully defend ObamaCare and called out the House of Clowns for it’s forty something votes to repeal it, and highlighted and important and easy to understand benefit:  people with pre-existing conditions can no longer be thrown to the wolves so that insurance companies can continue to profit by denying care to the sick.  I’ve said before that the once the full benefits of the Affordable Care Act are realized and enacted, Americans will realize how much better off they are now with health care in this country than they were before.  We are still a long ways off from catching up to the rest of the world on how we provide heath care to all, but there are real and concrete and life saving and cost benefits that are now being fully realized, even with the fumbled roll out of ObamaCare.

To sum it up, our broken system of democracy will continue to putter along at an unacceptable pace, with wealth inequality unlikely to change anytime time soon, with fundamental problems still bandaged and window dressed up, and our leaders talking about how great we are as our benevolent leaders work hard to compromise us into a better position.  The elections coming up this year are important, but unless the democrats grow some backbone and a willingness to tell the unpleasant truth, the balance of power will not change that much, the poor will go hungrier, and the working poor will work harder for less while the corporate fat cats get fatter.  The president missed an opportunity to use the bully pulpit to light a fire under the ass of voters and his own party, but I guess it’s hard to do when you also work for the rich and powerful that really rule our country.

 

 

One thing that should outrage everyone in this country is that there are millions of Americans going hungry or worrying that they may go hungry.  What is outrageous is that it doesn’t have to be this way at all.  The United States doe not have a food shortage or a wealth shortage.  Theoretically, its citizenry does not lack in compassion. In practice though, its citizens have let one minority political party decide that the hungry and food insecure people, families and children should have their already inadequate food assistance cut even more.  The republicans in congress, self-proclaimed and self-righteous Christians, have gotten their way twice in the past 3 months in congress, managing to get in two cuts to the federal food stamp program now know as S.N.A.P.

The first cut to the food assistance program came this past November, just in time for the holidays.  Republicans let expire, by refusing to renew, the emergency, extra food stamp funding that was included as part of the economic stimulus of 2009 after the start of the financial industry caused Great Recession.  An article yesterday on the website Think Progress  cited a report from Food Bank New York City that described the impact of the food stamp cut in November on food pantries in New York, which resulted in many food banks running out of food and having to turn people away. ( http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/23/3195501/york-city-food-pantries-food-stamps/).  Food pantries and charities across the country had similar experiences over the holidays as they attempted to fill in the increased need caused by the republican sadism.  Fox Propaganda pundit Bill O’Reilly took to the airwaves over the holiday season saying that Jesus wouldn’t be down for the food stamp program because it was helping one group (the hungry) by hurting the other group (the rest of us).

Bill O’Reilly’s absurd and offensive comments are one of the best examples I recall lately that so beautifully demonstrates the outright vile hypocrisy of the republican party that tries to claim the moral high ground on social policy by identifying themselves as Christians with family values.  These fucking scumbags have not only waged a war on the working class, demonized the poor, and chastised the new Pope for criticizing their true god of greed that they call “capitalism” – these lying sacks of rotten dog shit, phony Christian posers have now literally cut the food supply to the poor even further, while claiming to have Jesus on their side.

The second round of cuts to the food stamp program has just been pushed through by the republicans, with the help of capitulating, pathetic democrats seeking a ‘compromise.’  Their claim to compromise is that they agreed to only 10 billion dollars in cuts to food stamps over the next decade instead of the whopping 40 billion dollars that the tea bagging House Republicans were seeking.  With no shortage of food in this country, and in fact with an overabundance of food helped in part by government subsidies to industrial farming, and with no shortage of wealth, and no shortage of bombs to drop on other countries, it cannot be called a compromise to further cut back food assistance to the poor in this country.  In fact, the only thing these democrats deserve to be called for the “compromise’  is COWARDS.  These same, near worthless ensemble of impotent, wet-mop democrats also managed to let the republicans dupe them into a ‘compromise’ over the holidays on the budget that did not include extending unemployment benefits, which of course republicans have now refused to do.  Bill O’Reilly’s Jesus must be smiling down from heaven in pride at what Bill’s colleague on Fox,  Sean Hannity calls “the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.”

Republicans have succeeded far too long in getting away with this claim that they are a political party of God and country, of Jesus and family values.  Liberals and democrats have let them get away with this for too long and taken a defensive posture until recently.  The super-wealthy power systems that run our country have managed through a variety of sophisticated propaganda techniques over the years to get many Americans to demonize and blame the poor, and to vote against their own best interests.  One of the tricks employed has been to play on the prejudices of people, and to exploit their religious beliefs.  The republican party is the model for this type of cynical propaganda. They’ve brought their game of deception a long ways over the past three decades, from President Ronald Reagan’s portrayal of the poor as Cadillac driving, black “welfare queens” and able bodied, unwilling to work “cowboys” eating steak on food stamps, up to the present, with Bill O”Reilly claiming Christ’s endorsement of cutting off the food supply to the hungry.

The republican party has also played on the religious beliefs of their voters as well, from abortion to gay marriage.  They have solidified a large voting block of conservative Christians with images of aborted fetuses and professions of commitment to the “sanctity of life” which of course they mean the fetus, or group of cells at conception.  They have solidified this support even though the republican party’s actual support of that life at conception ends with it’s birth into babyhood and childhood.  Cut the food stamps, cut the welfare, cut the school lunches, cut the healthcare, it’s the parent’s lazy fault if the child suffers.  That child who’s “sanctity of life” they pretended to care so much about before it was born for the purpose of motivating the compassionate conservatives to vote for them because they are against abortion.

Reasonable gun control, such as universal background checks on all gun sales, which has overwhelming public support, has been successfully thwarted as well by the gun lobby and republicans.  What strikes out at me is how the republican propaganda of God and country filters into the gun control debate on social media, such as Facebook.  Despite high profile school shootings of children, what lingers around now is not outrage over how control has once again been defeated.  What lingers around now are recycled, simplistic answers to gun violence:  it’s because we took God out of the public schools!  Gun violence in schools is apparently the fault of lack of  prayer in schools, or because of leaving God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

But, what pisses me off the most at this moment, as I sit here comfortably fed, living in a wealthy country with a surplus food supply and a population that likes to think of itself as exceptional, compassionate, moral, Christian, family value oriented, and caring of children and the sanctity of their life, is the fact that our democratically elected government is actually deciding to cut food assistance to its most needy even more than it already has.  It pisses me off that the supposedly progressive democratic party is so utterly worthless sometimes when it comes to taking up for even the most basic causes of a progressive society, such as feeding its poor and needy, and helping its unemployed during a historically bad economic time.  So do me a favor, the next time a friend or neighbor is talking politics and supporting the republicans or just bashing the democrats, remind them that people in this country are going hungry because the political party they support has decided to deliberately and literally, take the food out of the hands of hungry children, women and men.  And that they claim it’s the way Jesus wants.

 

 

 

 

Here we go sailing into the new year of 2014 with democracy in the United States of America still in critical condition, with the rich and powerful continuing their assault on the working class, and foreign governments bribing our congress to affect our foreign policy.  Nothing new in this, but let’s take a quick overview of the most pressing crises impacting us at the moment.

For starters, it doesn’t seem to matter whether a democrat or republican holds the White House when it comes to so called “free trade” agreements, nor what the president in office said about free trade before being elected.  The U.S. government’s disastrous trade policies over the past couple of decades have enjoyed support from both houses of congress and all presidents, including the current leader, President Obama.  Once upon a time candidate Obama said that he never supported NAFTA and would not support any NAFTA like agreements, and promised to re-negotiate parts of treaty.  Once in office, not only did he reverse his pledge to re-negotiate it, but he has pushed through similar trade agreements.  Now, there is a huge  free trade deal that he is trying to push through congress called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will open up free trade with more poor countries such as Vietnam.  Apparently, it is becoming too expensive for American companies to run sweatshops in China and Bangladesh, and the corporations have written this new trade deal as part of their effort to ever expand and exploit the slave labor market, as well as circumvent environmental laws.  And, the Obama Administration has tried to have this pushed through congress through a procedure known as “fast track” which in essence tries to pressure congress for an up or down vote, with no amendments allowed, on the trade agreement.  This monstrosity has been in the works for over three years, and like the past sovereignty breaking “free trade” deals, it has been written in secret by corporate lobbyists, and under-reported in the media.

“Free Trade” shouldn’t be a partisan issue either way, it should be a near unanimous agreement against in.  Instead the opposite is true.  Although there has been superficial bickering over the years between the two parties over the various trade deals, in the end, the deals pass against the will of the American people as well as against the will of the citizens of the other countries involved in the agreements.  These agreements, purely and simply, are corporations agreeing on a new set of “international” laws that allow a way around any given country’s labor and environmental laws, for the purpose of exploiting the poorest countries for cheap labor and virtually no regulation of any kind.  For years, so-called mainstream economists and the press have made the false claims that these agreements grow economies by increasing exports and business globally.  In reality, they have done nothing but ship what was once good paying manufacturing jobs overseas where labor can be purchased for pennies on the dollar.  That these false claims are continually made with very little challenge to the complete lack of evidence is testimony to the power of the big business propaganda system.  When NAFTA was being debated under President Clinton, Ross Perot warned that if it passed, we would hear a “giant sucking sound” going south, the sound of American jobs and factories closing up shop in the U.S. and relocating to Mexico.  He was labeled a “protectionist” and “isolationist” at the time by NAFTA proponents.  Two decades later, he has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to have been absolutely correct.  His only miscalculation was that he may have underestimated the negative effects NAFTA would have on Mexico as well, such as the destruction of their traditional agriculture due to  having to compete with the flood of U.S. government subsidized, industrial agriculture.  Almost every citizen who is even remotely aware of NAFTA and other free trade agreements knows that jobs are outsourced because of this.  It is no mystery where the manufacturing jobs have gone and why.  What is less known is how it is not just trans-national corporations that have benefited from these immoral trade deals, but U.S. pharmaceutical industries as well.  They have managed to get poor countries who cannot afford the monopoly pricing of U.S. drugs to stop making generic versions for their citizens on their own, and agree to recognize the pharmaceutical companies’ “intellectual property rights.”  So their citizens must die in greater numbers so that our big pharmaceutical corporations can enrich themselves even further on the scam they already have our citizens enslaved to, and our politicians bribed to uphold.

And here at home, the republicans are adding insult to injury by continuing their war on the working class and the poor.  The emergency federal unemployment benefits that the republicans refused to renew but said they would take it back up after the Christmas break and after the democrats caved to them on the budget, well guess what?  Defeated.  So now those 1.3 million unemployed Americans that have just lost their unemployment benefit check – the really generous one, on average about $258 dollars a week – they are really shit out of luck. The number of unemployed people who are about to lose their benefits will drive this number even higher.  Also shit out of luck are their children that republicans pretend to care so much about before they are born.  But educated idiot, Senator Rand Paul apparently won over enough simple minded and/or stone cold hearts of greed and selfishness in his party on the idea that extending unemployment benefits “:would actually do a disservice to those workers.”  This of course implies that these workers have gotten spoiled living off their generous unemployment check and have become just too lazy to go and get a job.  Again, not to sound like a broken record, but experts still say there are 3 job seekers to every 1 job available.  But according to the tea-baggers, the lazy unemployed are the reason there are no jobs.  Mind blowing, but logic is not needed for a group that has been successfully brainwashed and indoctrinated to idea that the poor are lazy or drug-addicted or stupid and deserve to be poor.

The same disdain for the poor is displayed in the republicans’ contemptuous treatment of the hungry as well, even if they are employed but making poverty wages.  The spine-less Senate democrats had already agreed 4 billion dollars in cuts to the food stamp program (SNAP) over the next ten years, but the House of Clown republicans rolled over on the House Wet floor mat democrats and got that cut up to 9 billion.  But there is a laughable excuse being given the narrative of the press, even the supposedly liberal New York Times, that the 9 billion dollar cut to the already inadequate SNAP budget is still a lot less than 40 billion dollars the House Clowns had wanted.  We are to be grateful that we didn’t get screwed over and pissed on as badly as republicans wanted.  That overly generous, slightly over $4 dollars a day on average of food stamp benefits that has repeated scene cuts over the years to the point where we have more food insecurity in this country now than we did years ago, was just burning the ass of republicans and conservative assholes like Bill O’Reilly who’d rather led a kid go hungry before he’d give one penny to the father of the kid if one penny might buy booze or drugs (refer to previous Rant on Christmas).

Here’s the real kick in the ass to all this:  a clear majority of Americans favor extending unemployment benefits, and a clear majority do not think we should cut food stamps.  The democrats have the White House, and the Senate.  The tea-bag caucus in the House of Clowns, and the still allowed to fillibuster, sad sack of republican shits in the Senate (because Harry Reid still hasn’t manned up and ended that abuse entirely) have  gotten their way on almost all this, against the majority of the voters and against the majority in government.  That is dysfunctional democracy at its finest.

On foreign policy, it was seeming like there were some breaks of light through all the dark clouds, with U.S. bombing of Syria seemingly dropped from the plans for now, and with the historical talks and temporary agreement with the Iranians, led by the Obama Administration and Secretary of State John Kerry.  But, just as we now enter what is anticipated to be an even more challenging and dicey six months of intense negotiations with Iran regarding their nuclear program, members of congress – democrats and republicans – are attempting to sabotage the entire progress and process.  There is a push in the Senate to add more sanctions onto Iran now, which would kill the temporary deal negotiated with not just the U.S. but our Western allied countries as well.  According to the opposition in congress over the Iranian negotiations so far, Iran is the Big Bad Wolf that can’t be trusted and is menacing Israel with nuclear weapons to wipe them off the face of the earth.  Therefore, more economic warfare against its innocent citizens, which is what the sanctions amount to, should be increased, not negotiated away.  Of course, this is just regurgitated rhetoric from the neo-cons like Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu, but apparently Israel’s war-mongering hawks donate a lot of money to Washington politicians, and AIPAC and other high powered Israeli lobbyists have been working overtime to bend U.S. foreign policy towards doing their bidding, fighting their wars, and supporting their oppressive and murderous policies towards the Palestinians.    We already have a system of legalized bribery know as campaign finance laws – or we should say lack of laws, thanks to the Supreme Court.  It adds insult to injury that not only are our politicians bought out by the big banks and financial industry, the big oil industry, the big pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, and the trans-national corporations, but we also know for a fact that the foreign government of Israel has high powered Washington lobbyist donating lots of money to our political system, for the benefit of their foreign policy, not ours.  Often times mention of this gets a person quickly labeled as “anti-semetic” which is just a strong arm tactic designed to quell debate and dissension from what the Israeli warmongers want, and all to often, they succeed.  This current sabotage of the Iranian negotiations is unfortunately another one of the few bi-partisan agreements which our congress can conspire in unison on.

Our democracy is broken, and we will continue to see disappointment as the popular will of the American people is undermined by the true rulers of our country, the concentrated and heartless wealth of the super rich and their narrow interests.

Let’s not go down without a fight and a voice.

This music video seems fitting for all the greedy and their brainwashed, tea-bagging masses:

http://youtu.be/8gZEox8Crwc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to hand it to the Republicans and the Fox Propaganda News Network, they have truly crusaded this season to keep the “Christ” in Christmas, and jumped onto the battlefield of secular America where they claim a War on Christmas is being waged.  Lets review their views of the true meaning of Christmas, shall we?

First and foremost, language over substance.  It just burns Bill O’Reilly’s ass that merchants are saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”  It apparently doesn’t bother him that merchants are shitting on their employees, underpaying them, making them move Black Friday up to Thanksgiving Day, etc.

Santa Claus and Jesus are both white.  As one of Fox’s blonde cheerleaders, Megyn Kelly explained, “Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change. You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man, too.”

Pope Francis is clearly not speaking for Jesus, because he is attacking capitalism, saying that the incredible wealth disparity in this country and the world is immoral.  And wanting to talk more about God’s love, and helping the poor and the sick, it’s just more than the good Christians at Fox can take.  Rush Limbaugh is infuriated too.  Apparently, Jesus was a staunch capitalist, and was misquoted when he said “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”

Apparently, Jesus only approved of feeding the hungry through his miracles.  He certainly wouldn’t have approved of a small percentage of a wealthy nation’s taxes going towards feeding it’s hungry.  As Bill O’Reilly explained of his Lord:  “You know, Congressman McDermott is trying to convince people by saying that Jesus would feed the poor which he would. We all know that. . . the problem I have, as I stated is that you are helping one group by hurting another group and a bigger group. And so I don’t know if Jesus is going to be down with that.”

Since Bill “Big Heart” O’Reilly was talking about cuts to food stamps, we can assume that the “bigger group” that is being hurt are the employed people in this country who make enough money to actually pay federal taxes.  Guys like Bill O’Reilly, one of the bigger groups being hurt by our federal government’s food stamp program, just don’t think Jesus would be ok with that.  It’s just too radical.  Seems I remember Jesus saying something along the lines of “you will be judged by how you treat the least among us,” but I must be mistaken.  Jesus of Nazareth, according to Bill O’Reilly, would certainly not approve of tax money feeding the poor.  Presumably, if Bill agrees with his asshole, twin blow-hard colleague, Sean Hannity, on the same network,  that “the U.S. is the greatest, best country, that God ever gave man on the face of the earth” -presumably Jesus would be down for the bigger group, the people with money and food, paying taxes to drop bombs on the rest of the world.  He would approve a military budget that dwarfs all other nations and takes up slightly over half of the federal budget.  Jesus would be down for that.

Jesus would also apparently champion the cause of the health insurance companies’ noble pursuit of rationing out health care for the sake of their profits over the treatment of children with pre-existing conditions, if we are to accept Fox’s commentator, republican, hater of gays, and ex-preacher and pastor Mike Huckabee’s values about what is right and wrong.

And how about those family value Republican politicians out there?  As of right now, they are letting most of the Farm Bill expire, because they are at a crossroad with Democrats:  the good Christians in the House G.O.P. want more cuts to the already underfunded food stamp program for the poor in the Farm Bill, but want to continue the huge subsidies that benefit mostly the large industrial, corporate farms.  So more kids of poor parents  will go hungrier this season.  That’s ok though, because as Bill O’Reilly explained in addition to Jesus not being down for feeding the poor through taxes, he (Bill Reilly) won’t feed a kid unless he absolutely knows their parent who is probably a drug addict or alcoholic, is not going to receive one cent to fund their addiction. Tough shit for that guy’s kids. Republicans have a long standing tradition supporting the rights and sanctity of the life of a fetus, while voting to cut all programs that help poor children once they are actually born.  School lunches?  Let the poor go “dumpster diving” as Rush Limbaugh once offered.

Republicans also managed to get the weak- ass Democrats to agree to a budget deal they call “bi-partisan” that not only doesn’t get food to the hungry, but also lets extended un-employment benefits run out on Dec. 28.  Traditionally, up until now, both Republicans and Democrats in power have extended un-employment benefits in a sluggish economy with an un-employment rate as high as ours is now, in the worst economic disaster the country has faced since the Great Depression, brought about by the reckless gambling of Wall Street.  But as Tea Bagger Rand Paul explains, extending the un-employment benefits any longer would actually be doing a “disservice to the workers.”  So those workers without jobs will have to get off their lazy asses on Dec 28 and go out and find a job, although there are currently 3 job seekers to every one job available.   But we wouldn’t want to do them a disservice and enable them to continue to keep a roof over their family and living children’s heads, or food in their bellies, by keeping them alive with tax payer subsidies.  That would hurt the bigger group, like the Big Hearts, the lovers of Christmas and Jesus, the Assholes and Liars and Idiots of Fox, and the Republican party that they work tirelessly for, spreading their campaign of lies, mis-information and propaganda.  The bigger group (code for the top 1 percent) only wants what a good Christian nation should want:  capitalism that funnels an overwhelming majority of the nation’s wealth to the top 1 percent, and bombs to slaughter the enemies of “freedom” of God’s greatest gift to the world – America.  And don’t even think about a minimum wage increase, the good people at Fox and the humanitarian and intellectual giant, Sarah Palin, are too busy praying for the safe return of the Duck Dynasty family to their 200 thousand dollar an episode job at A&E, having been discriminated against too, for their strong Christian values of judging their neighbors.

Happy Holidays.  I think I’m going to head over to Walmart, curse out the Salvation Army volunteers in the parking lot for asking for money from the group that has money to do a disservice to the less fortunate.  Walmart needs their half of the 400 million dollars spent on the Duck Dynasty merchandise this year alone, to be able to afford to pay their poverty wage workers.

And in the true spirit of Christmas, I’m going to give Bill O”Reilly the microphone on my rant, singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” in this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy-Y3HJNU_s

 

 

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.