In another giveaway to big business, President Obama has once again screwed over the American people by delaying, at big business’s request, the provision in the new healthcare law that requires companies with fifty or more full time employees to carry health insurance on their workers or face fines.  The Obama Administration has delayed that provision for another year, until 2015.  This is just one more cowardly, corporate ass kissing act on the part of the President, leaving big businesses gleeful and millions of Americans uninsured for another year.

Yahoo news quoted Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett as saying on a White House blog “In our ongoing discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this right. We are listening.”

That is called ass kissing, and selling out the rest of us.

There have already been widespread reports of businesses seeking ways around the healthcare law, such as hiring more part time employees and cutting their number of full time employees – by the law, employees are considered full time if they work thirty hours or more.  The big business lobby groups are not looking for “time to get this right,” they are looking for ways to avoid and weaken the law, to keep their profits up at the expense of the people who work for them and make them profitable in the first place.

It was bad enough President Obama didn’t fight for the public option (a government run insurance program), which the majority of Americans favor.  When the public option was taken off the table during the health care debate because the President was a weak leader and unwilling to fight for it, and because there were too many worthless democrats who were equally unwilling to support it because they are bought and owned by the thieving health insurance companies – President Obama said that he planned to keep fighting for it in the future.  So did other democrats.  Well, what a laughable lie that has turned out to be.  Not  only has Obama not fought to strengthen Obamacare with a public option, he’s now weakened it by delaying one of it’s important components that would compel large employers to offer their employees affordable health care. 

A narrow victory was won in the Supreme Court by a split decision of 5 to 4 (now the norm in a partisan court of conservative asshole old men) that upheld the mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance or face a tax penalty.  After this narrow victory, the White House has now volunteered to let big business off the hook for another year because they are complaining and don’t like it.  Where is the man who said he would fight for the middle class?  Perhaps he is too busy choosing his next target to assassinate with a drone strike, or too busy chasing down Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker.  Perhaps he is too busy golfing with republicans to try to charm them into liking him.  He is certainly not fighting for the middle class or the poor either for that matter.  Many red states are fighting Obamacare and resisting expanding Medicaid for their poorest citizens.  And what is Obama doing?  Listening and caving to his corporate bosses, and if the rest of us have to wait a little longer to get health care so that big business can find more ways around complying with the new law, that’s just too bad for us.

There is speculation in the media that part of the motivation for delaying the healthcare law is to give democrats cover in the 2014 mid term elections against republicans who are still attacking the healthcare law.  If these democrats need ‘cover’ because they are too pathetic and incompetent to explain to the misinformed in their states who are against the new healthcare law, they do not deserve to be called democrats, and do not deserve to hold public office in any capacity.  I hope everyone of these cowardly bastards that are bought out by the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and big business, lose in their primaries to challengers who have the guts to actually fight for our best interest instead of big money special interests.

It has become painfully clear to those of us who supported President Obama’s second term, that we can’t count on him.

Here we go again, marching off to war into another Middle Eastern conflict, where we will spend billions, and kill thousands, and have nothing to show for it in the end, except more enemies.  This appears to be a bi-partisan effort in Washington between the warmongers and the ridiculously awarded, Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Barrack Obama.

There has been a narrative told in the mainstream press in this country for some time, and harped on by Republican warmongering politicians like John McCain that portrays President Obama as reluctant to intervene in the Syrian civil war that has been going on for two years now, resulting in the estimated death toll of 93,000 and rising.   Republicans like John McCain, the pro-war-all-the-time senator and sore-losing presidential candidate, and the warmongering, pro-government surveillance supporter but anti-gun guy, Senator Lindsay Graham, have laid on the criticism of Obama’s lack of aggression in Syria, as they have on Obama’s un-willingness to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf in another pre-emptive war.

Now, President Obama appears to be stepping up to the plate to push the button again on another unnecessary war to topple another leader the United States doesn’t like to be replaced by presumably, some other brutal dictator who serves the U.S. and it’s western allies’ interest.  The President has now said that Assad crossed a line by using chemical weapons (yet to be proved and highly suspect as lies such as ‘weapons of mass destruction’) and that he now supports sending small arms and ammunition aid to the rebels fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria.  This also coincides with the European Union letting expire it’s ban on arming the rebels.   There are calls for a no-fly zone to be in place.  Russia and Iran and Hezbollah are backing Assad and Russia is supplying Syria with sophisticated anti-aircraft technology and weaponry.  Obama is so far saying no to the no-fly zone and “boots on the ground.” but this is deceiving.

It appears that we have already been involved in, and perhaps a huge instigator, and certainly a facilitator, in the civil war that has claimed the 93,000 lives in Syria already.  The United States has already given over 500 million dollars to the rebels fighting the Syrian government.  That’s a half a billion dollars to all the bean counters who favored the sequester and think we can’t afford basic government services because taxes on the rich are too high.  That’s a half a billion dollars to all the republican shit bags in the House of Representative who held up or voted against funding for the hurricane victims in New Jersey and New York this past year.  Half a billion dollars has already been given to the “rebels,” many of which are foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia and other areas outside of Syria, and many linked directly to Al-Qaeda.  Supposedly, this has been “non-lethal aid” which is of course bullshit; if you are giving money to the rebels who are waging war, it’s lethal aid.  There is an ex-CIA officer named Philip Giraldi who has written that the United States and it’s NATO allies Britain and France have been operating out of Turkey on the Syrian border for some time, helping train the rebels and provide them with communication equipment as well as weapons.  Other reports in the foreign press have stated that foreign fighter rebels were killing civilians in Syria and then photographing the carnage and feeding it to the western press, claiming it was Assad’s army that was killing it’s own citizens when in fact, it was not.  Just part of the massive propaganda campaign being waged to gin up support in this country and others to topple Assad in Syria in the name of a “humanitarian crisis.”

John McCain has even met the Syrian “opposition” groups.  Apparently, he feels quite comfortable handing over weapons to jihad-dist to overthrow the secular government in Syria.  John McCain seemingly thrives on being in the middle of endless war, he can’t seem to get enough of the endless bloodshed.   Does he think one day he’s going to wake up and say “checkmate!” and then finally retire to one of his numerous houses that he couldn’t count the exact number of when he was running for president?

Another old man who seems to miss the action of directing the bombing and killing of others (though not so much on Bin Laden as in Yugoslavia), former President Bill Clinton voiced his support of escalating our involvement in the Syria civil war.  I suppose he has to be the one in his marriage to cheer lead on this new march to war, since Hillary Clinton is currently under fire from the republicans.  No matter, war comes first, and Bubba will carry his wife’s torch on that one.  We know from our own press that as Secretary of State, Hillary Warmongering Clinton  was an early advocate of arming the rebels and pressing Obama to take a more aggressive role in overthrowing another foreign government.

So here we go, with a feigned reluctance on the Drone Ranger’s Administration and a frothing at the mouth on the usual neo-con suspects, towards another costly and immoral war, and this time without even any readily apparent economic gains such as oil being in play.

This is in spite of two very important facts:   the Syrian people support Assad staying in power by 55 percent in a poll conducted by the Quatar Foundation (considered reliable as Quatar is anti-Assad) which blows away any flimsy lies and propaganda that attempts to portray the United States and it’s allies as good Samaritans protecting the Syrians.  The second fact that should also be relevant to Washington and President Obama is that a Pew research poll shows that 70 percent of Americans are opposed to arming the rebels.

Neither fact appears to matter.  Sadly, unless we wake up quickly as a nation and recognize that another senseless war is becoming more and more likely if we do not stand up to this madness.  The weight of propaganda is heavy in the American press, unfortunately, and our politicians lie with such ease and glee.  I hope enough of us see through this bullshit and say enough if enough.

This past week has revealed shocking new details about the U.S. government and the Obama Administration’s expansion of secret surveillance on its citizens, which began under President George W. Bush after the September 11 terrorist attacks. We learn that Verizon (and possibly others) was forced by a secret government order to collect and hand over to the U.S. government all records of all of its calls both in the United States and abroad, from this past April 25th until July 19th, effectively sweeping millions of American citizens’ private communications data into the National Security Agency’s (NSA) vast data base. And thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we have also learned shocking new revelations about a top-secret government domestic spying computer program known as Prism, which collects all of our internet information, such as our search history, our emails, our shared files, etc. The government is forcing internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and others, into not only complying but into keeping silent about it as well. Sound Orwellian enough for you yet?

Sadly, there once was a seemingly honest man known as Senator Barack Obama, who in 2005 was part of a small number of senators objecting to portions of the Bush Administration’s Patriot Act – a historical piece of legislation crafted after the 911 attacks to allegedly give the government more tools to fight terrorism. What the Patriot Act actually did was anything but patriotic, because it gave the government broad new powers over its citizens, chipping away at our civil liberties and constitutional protections; in other words, what the right-wingers claim to cherish so dearly: freedom. Then Senator Obama was concerned about the possibility that certain provisions in the Patriot Act, specifically section 215, could lead to “government fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans.” Unfortunately, he was right.

Now, section 215 of the Patriot Act is being used by the Obama Administration to legally justify their enormously expanded domestic spying program. The former Senator and Candidate Obama once led the charge against the Bush Administration’s Big Brother tactics in its war on terror, but now President Obama has done a 360 degree reversal and not only embraced it, but expanded it.

At best, Mr. Obama’s change of heart as President is the height of hypocrisy. At worst, perhaps the then would be president was merely offering lip service to the liberals, the civil libertarians, and the moderates in this country who feared the U.S.’s new assault on our constitutional rights in the name of fighting terror, to vote for him, “change you can believe in.”  Whether or not candidate Obama was being sincere in his original opposition to domestic spying and other chilling aspects of Bush’s war on terror is hard to determine. What is easy to determine now is that he has taken Mr. Bush’s approach and embraced it, amplified it, and is running strong with it.

The Obama Administration has also prosecuted more government whistle blowers than all the other Administrations before him combined, by using the extreme measure of charging them with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which was meant to punish people handing over government secrets to foreign enemies. When the Obama Administration first took over the White House, it spoke of its intention to strengthen laws to protect whistle blowers. More lip service or outright lies? It seems all but certain now that Edward Snowden, who has come forward with the information about the use of Prism, will be hunted down by the U.S. government for severe punishment.

What is further maddening about Obama’s heavy-handed pursuit of whistle-blowers and his Administration’s continuing assault on the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights that protects us from “unreasonable search and seizure” is the outrage and hostility directed by many of our politicians and news pundits towards Edward Snowdwen and other whistle-blowers. There is a race to demonize him and paint him as an enemy of the state instead of what he actually is, which is a brave man who forever may have ruined his own individual life to get the truth out to the rest of us about what our government is doing to us behind closed doors, which is spying and taking notes on all of our communications in secrecy.

President Obama now claims to be happy to have a debate about this. Really? If he were happy to have a discussion and debate about it, we’d have heard from him or other government officials starting the conversation about the vast high-tech spying that is going on against its own citizens. Instead, we find out through the leaks of federal employees who face possible life in prison for bringing to light all of the government abuses in the first place. We can no longer trust anything he or anyone in his Administration has to say about this, as they have been lying and deceiving us all along, and viciously pursuing and attempting to imprison anyone within the government who provides the truth to the press.

Columnist and conservative and phony intellectual David Brooks of the New York Times wrote in an editorial yesterday that it wasn’t Big Brother that was the problem, but rather “the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric” that was the real danger, and went on further to say that Edward Snowden was making this worse. The entire editorial was a shining example of how Mr. Brooks and others like him spin words of bullshit into propaganda that is then interpreted as truth by many. In his editorial, he attacks the character and personality of Mr. Snowden in order to distract us from what was actually revealed. He then goes on to assure us that Edward Snowden acted “unilaterally” and un-ethically when leaking this information to the public. The editorial is a perfect example of how propaganda manages to be fed to us even through such seemingly liberal leaning and respected newspapers such as the New York Times.

Of course David Brooks is just towing the Establishment line in attacking the messengers of the truth instead of the truth itself. Aside from President Obama’s new-found support of spying on and lying to the American public, he is supported in unusual bipartisan manner in both chambers of Congress, though there are a few notable dissenters, one of which is a man I don’t agree with on many things, but on this matter is absolutely right, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. I saw some of the hacks on the FOX Propaganda Channel last night decrying the shocking news about our being spied upon by the government, but I don’t seem to recall any of this outrage from these jack asses when their chosen one, President George. W. Bush was first starting the whole program up.

What I have not heard enough from the average person yet is any sense of outrage. I heard many more grumblings in the public from what I have maintained was an over hyped non-scandal, the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative political groups. There was much saber rattling and falsehoods being spread during the gun control debate recently, which resulted in zero new federal regulations of guns. But where is the outrage on this assault on our First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the freedom of speech and the press, and the Fourth Amendment, on our protection against illegal search and seizure by the government? Surely Americans still value these rights as much as they do criminals’ rights to buy and sell firearms without a background check. Do Americans not care all that much that all of our phone call records and details of our internet connection are being collected by the government without our knowledge? Have we been made so afraid by propaganda about the threat of terrorism that we are willfully giving up our rights with barely a murmur of protest?

I for one salute the courage of Edward Snowden and other whistle blowers before him and those that come after him, for making available to the American public what our government is doing behind closed doors. I salute The Guardian newspaper from the U.K.  for breaking the story, and encourage you to become as informed as you can about what Big Brother is doing with your private information by checking out the Guardian’s very informative coverage of the NSA leaks at :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files

And the next time you are on your cell phone or your computer, just remember, Uncle Sam is watching you, and recording your every move. Here is a music video for you to enjoy as you ponder the Orwellian state of things in this country:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY

As many Americans today put the finishing touches on their New Year’s Eve plans, democrats in congress are trying in vain to reason with the fools and crooks across the aisle.  President Obama has been bending over backwards to try to pacify these scumbags by offering up concessions that go against what he campaigned for during the last election, culminating with his offer to cut Social Security benefits in order to get a deal to avoid the so called fiscal cliff.  I’ve just read that Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel were up late last night negotiating.  To that, all I can say is thank you Joe, somebody needed to get President Obama away from the poker table before he folded with a hand full of aces.

President Obama re-won the White House, and democrats gained seats in both the Senate and House.  All national polls show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy as opposed to draconian spending cuts to balance the budget.  The President campaigned on letting the Bush tax cuts expire on those making over 250 thousand dollars, and said that Social Security would not be part of the negotiations over the fiscal cliff.  Going over the cliff means that everyone’s taxes will go up on January 1, and everyone knows that the republicans will be to blame.  The republicans will be the party that raised everyone’s taxes because they were not allowed to keep their tax cuts for the top two percent of the wealthiest Americans.  And despite all this leverage, Mr. Obama has turned out to be the republicans’s best ally, and the democrats’ weakest negotiator.  And the republican tea baggers in the House, led by John Boehner, are either too stupid to realize this and take a deal, or they have come to view Mr. Obama as the number one worst poker player on Capital Hill, and sense that he can be taken for everything we own if they bluff and threaten him long enough.  Thanks Vice President Biden for stepping in, but now, it’s time to walk away from the republicans that are holding this country hostage in the name of the top two percent, and let the chips fall where they may.

When all your friends who voted republican this past time around start complaining that their taxes have gone up, you remind them it is the republicans in office who flat out rejected cutting 98 percent of Americans’ taxes, because the rich 2 percent they represent didn’t get to keep their Bush tax cuts.  You remind them that these scumbags they voted for are the reason for their tax hikes, and all the new across the board spending cuts.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for cared so much for their millionaires’ and billionaires’ tax cuts, that they would rather bring down the entire country out of spite.  You remind them that the republicans they voted for demanded Social Security and Medicare cuts before raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  You can also remind them that it was the Bush tax cuts, that were supposed to expire many years ago, along with the two wars, and the Great Recession, that caused the deficit the republicans pretend to be so worried about now.

Maybe, with a new year, and new tax hikes for all, and  economically damaging spending cuts implemented, maybe, just maybe, a super majority of American voters will wake up and hold the republican party accountable.  Then, it might be possible that enough responsible republicans in office will stand up to their Tea Bagging, right wing nut jobs, and negotiate in good faith instead of hostage taking and sabotage.  Until we are willing to call their bluffs and actually fight them, the republicans will continue their scorched earth policy of hostage taking and extortion.   Maybe President Obama will finally realize that unless you stand up to a bully, you will keep getting bullied.

But hey, I’m an optimist.  Happy New Year !  Here’s how much I feel like jumping:

My blood reached the boiling point tonight as soon as I watched “The Ed Show” on MSNBC tonight and learned that President Obama is offering the republicans cuts to Social Security benefits in order to reach a ‘fiscal cliff deal’ by changing the way the cost of living is calculated for senior’s benefits to go up each year.  And it appears that Nancy Pelosi is ready to go along with it.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, given President Obama’s history of conceding way too much to the crooks across the aisle, but I was hoping that after his reelection and the democrats’ gains in the election as well, and with polls showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy and not cutting Social Security, that the President would grow a spine and stick to his guns this time. It even appeared recently that he has gotten his mojo back, but sadly, pathetically, he is already offering big concessions on taxes by raising his threshold to 400 thousand a year instead of 250 thousand for whom the Bush tax cuts will expire, AND, he is now offering to reduce the already small amount of increases seniors receive in their Social Security benefits as a cost of living adjustment.  And when asked about his plan, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi indicated she would be willing to go along with it.  I guess this too should not be too surprising,  since she has gone on record in the recent past, along with my good democratic senator from New York, Chuck Schuummer, as offering republicans no tax increases for people making 1 million dollars a year or less.  Apparently, both of these otherwise fine democrats, are so wealthy that they consider those in their own personal circles making 900 plus thousand a year as middle class, and deserving of a tax cut. Unbelievably out of touch, or just cowards when negotiating with the hostage taking minority party ?  It is becoming hard to say which, but I am currently leaning towards both.

Why is Social Security even part of this debt reduction package that the ‘fiscal cliff’ hopes to force?  Social Security is a separately funded entity, it is not part of the federal deficit, and it’s board of trustees in charge of its’ financing estimate that under current circumstances, it will be completely solvent until 2036 without any changes, and then able to pay 75 percent thereafter.  As recent as November, the White House had said that Social Security was not part of any budget negotiations, but now that the election month is over, and even though Obama won reelection and the democrats made gains in both houses, we are hearing that the White House is offering to make Social Security ‘adjustments’ – cuts by bullshit recalculation of cost of living adjustments.  Why in the bloody hell, should senior citizens, and us future senior citizens, be asked to sacrifice more in the most vulnerable part of their lives so that the rich can keep more of everything they have already have in abundance ?

The answer is obvious, and until Obama turned coward negotiator and appeaser once again, it was the position of the White House and democrats that Social Security was not up on the chopping block for the vampire republicans and their blood lust for cutting entitlements.  Now they are offering to push up the threshold of tax cut rates to favor the wealthy more like the republicans want, and, they are now willing to offer up Social Security cuts to these greedy bastards as icing on the cake.

What a betrayal, President Obama and Congresswoman Pelosi, what an utter spit into the eyes of the people who voted for you, and supported you vehemently like myself and other progressive commentators and activists, but worst of all, what a cowardly betrayal of senior citizens, who are once again being thrown under the bus so that the most greedy can keep their historically low tax rates.  You should be ashamed.

And we will not be fooled by the bullshit your White House spin machine is surely churning up, about how this adjustment is actually more accurate or that the cuts would be minimal.  If you are saving money through it, you are making cuts to benefits and are lying, and if it is minimal, it is still too much, since it shouldn’t even be in the negotiations, which you claimed it wasn’t until you were past reelection.   You are cowards when it comes to negotiating with the wealthy and powerful and the idiots of the republican house, and you are betraying us.

President Obama, liberals, democrats and the like have been very forgiving of your past concessions, but if this change to Social Security happens, there is a good chance that you will not be forgiven, and all your tough decisions on foreign policy and going after Bin Laden will not be enough to make up for your shitty negotiations with the the tea bagging den of republican thieves.  Where is the fight for the middle class and seniors that you promised? I think we can afford to go off that so called fiscal cliff if necessary, and if you don’t think that is acceptable, then why in the hell did you ever agree to it in the first place?

I hope that progressives like independent Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont and democrats Sherrod Brown from Ohio and Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia keep up the good fight for us, since the democratic leadership in the House of Representatives and in the White House are sorely lacking right now in spines.

I am including a link to a petition from Senators Tom Harking, Brown and Rockefeller  asking President Obama to stand up for seniors and the middle class, please copy and paste and sign :

http://www.sherrodbrown.com/petition/e1212fc/

Once again, the former preacher and pastor, and now Fox Propaganda Network liar, Mike Huckabee, has outdone himself as a professional asshole by public shitting all over the victims of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, suggesting that we shouldn’t be surprised by this senseless act of violence, since we do not have religion in public schools.

Mr. Huckaee’s passion for sticking up for the insurance companies over sick children is now well known, and his willingness to display his hate and ignorance towards gay people through his public support of a ‘national Chic-Fil-A’ appreciation day’ is no longer news.

His recent remarks though, are so far off the chart, it baffles the mind.  While families and loved ones of these innocent, child victims are struggling to cope and make sense of this barbaric act, there are politicians, law enforcement officials, and mental health professionals trying to find answers not just to why this happened, but how to prevent it or turn the tide in what is now becoming an all too familiar nightmare in this country.   Ordinary citizens across the country continue to offer their prayers and condolences and messages of support, and many are engaged in meaningful debate as to how to help curb this crisis.

Mike Huckabee, ex-preacher, ex-pastor, ex-governor, and current republican propaganda megaphone, is blaming our constitutionally backed secular institutions and the victims.  Instead of offering words of comfort through scripture – like you might expect a preacher to do – he is offering words of judgement.  In this disgusting man’s mind, we shouldn’t be offering comfort or questioning how we can make deadly weapons less accessible or how we can care for the mentally ill better.  In this laughable excuse for a pastor, politician or commentator, we are to somehow blame ourselves because we have supported the constitutional separation of church and state and therefor, brought this on ourselves because “we have systematically removed God from our schools.”

Mr. Huckabee, perhaps instead of worrying that we have removed God from our schools, you should be asking yourself how you removed God from your heart, if you even have one.  How dare you pretend to know of God when all you do is spew hate and intolerance and promote greed.  You are less than a joke anymore,  you are nothing more than another pathetic, delusional man like Pat Robertson, who has imaginary conversations with a god that reinforces your bigotry and simple world views.

If we were following the Old Testament teachings of an eye for an eye, perhaps a fitting punishment for you would be for you to choke on a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, or be impregnated by a gay rapist, or denied coverage from your health insurance provider for your future diabetes because of your preexisting condition of being a gluttonous, greedy asshole.  Perhaps worse.

We can only hope.  But in the mean time, could you do preachers, teachers, politicians,  commentators, and most of all the victims of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut,  a favor, and shut the fuck up !

Calloused and single minded assholes like the leaders of the NRA will always tell you that now is not the time, during this great tragedy in which another homicidal maniac unleashed a hail of bullets upon innocents in a senseless slaughter – that now is not the time to talk about gun control.  They couldn’t be more wrong.

While the nation prays and sends it condolences to the victims and community in Newtown, Connecticut, it should also be having a frank conversation about gun violence and gun control while the families and loved ones of the victims grieve together in what what must be an unimaginable hell.  We can offer our heartfelt empathy, but these victims and the inevitable future victims of gun violence in this country deserve more from the rest of us, who at this moment, have the luxury of suffering their tragedy from a distance.  Those of us not directly effected by this current tragedy should have the courage and will power to stand up for common sense gun control, particularly, closing the so called ‘gun show loop hole.’

There are many areas of gun control that need addressing, but I am going to stick to the most obvious, sensible gun control that a simple majority of Americans should be able to agree on.  At the time of this writing, the news continues to change on the facts and details as more information becomes available, but it appears right now, that the guns of the killer belonged to the mother, a gun enthusiast, and that the guns were all legally purchased.  This is surely a fact that right wing nut jobs will jump on, claiming with their typical rhetoric that laws can’t prevent criminals from acquiring guns. Anti-gun people will say that people should not be allowed to own weapons capable of such carnage, by limiting the type of weapon and the ammunition capacity of gun clips, and there is plenty of evidence to argue for this point as well.  But let’s take this moment, while we are reflecting on gun violence as a whole in this country, and focus on what could be done most immediately, such as closing the gun show loop hole.  This may not have prevented this tragedy, but it stands to reason that this simple common sense approach to regulating guns by requiring that anyone who buys one must pass a background check, no bullshit gun show laws tolerated anymore.  This is something that the majority of Americans should be able to agree on as a starting point.  I am including this short, informative, less than four minute video explaining what the gun show loophole is, and hoping that in our emotional and intellectual, philosophical and political conversation, we can at least agree that to some extent, guns need to be controlled.  They should not be readily available and easy to stockpile and wage a one man crazy war against the innocent.  We will never completely cure mental illness and evil in our society, but we should at least be able to limit their access to weapons, as well as limiting the access that criminal gangs and organizations in our big cities and the drug cartels in Mexico enjoy thanks to the gun show loophole.

Please, share this video with friends and family and don’t be distracted by old NRA bullshit about ‘guns don’t kill, people kill,’ or that God allows such violence in schools because officially lead prayer was removed.  We can stand up as a nation to the special interests of the gun lobby and still protect the constitutional right to bear arms without having to let everyone that can spit and drag their knuckles to posses a military grade firearm.

Here is the video, and a special thanks to a politician I admire and respect but sometimes disagree with, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, who has devoted considerable time and effort to control the trafficking of illegal guns in our society:

I have three posts coming this week, some requiring more extensive research than usual, but as the 3 a.m. hour has passed, I find the cold beer I have poured for myself isn’t cooling down the anger boiling inside me enough to silence me for a brief outburst. So I will tell you what is keeping me up right now, and I will be elaborating on all of these subjects within the week’s end in the coming blogs.

The CEO’s of a handful of companies, including Papa Johns and a coal mining company, have said they are going to be forced to cut jobs because Obama got reelected.  Some of these companies had the CEO’s or bosses send out official memo’s to employees, threatening them that if Obama were reelected, their jobs were in jeopardy.  Of course these memos attempt to make it appear as if the big, fat, greedy head-cheese at the company is only espousing legitimate political concerns about the future of the economy, but it is blatant intimidation  and should be illegal, if it isn’t already.  I’m not a lawyer but I can tell if you I were the president right now I would be directing the Justice Department to looking into immediate legal remedies to bring these would be slave owners to justice.  This is outrageous, and I will bring you the details and  names of these slimy sons-of-bitches in my my upcoming blog

There are also large, respected American companies that are actively exploring ways to staff their workforce with part time employees as opposed to full time employees in order to avoid having to provide health care coverage as a benefit to their employees.  The sociopaths that are the people making these decisions in name of the almighty bottom line want to continue the trend of the past decades in this country, which is increased productivity, stagnant wages, decreased benefits, and historically and exponentially high salaries at the top, and historically low taxes for the richest of the rich.  I hope some of these narcissistic pieces of shit will some day know the pain of watching a loved one die and suffer because they cannot afford the cost of  for profit healthcare and insurance.  I will comment on detail on pathetic continuations of the never dying thirst of the love of money.

And finally, what a bunch sore losers and whiners, and now I hear their are states with petitions to succeed.  This is comic relief at 3 a.m., but it is a shining example of the ignorance and vitriol of the far right in this country, and I will give you my post election analysis of this foolishness as well.

Stay tuned, and in the mean time, I strongly encourage you to watch at least a couple of minutes of the late, great, Ted Kennedy’s speech on the senate floor, asking how much greed was enough for the billionaires that were fighting raising the minimum wage, as they are now fighting health care coverage.  It is still truly inspiring and haunting to watch this greatly missed senator.

We did it America, we saw through the republican and Romney lies, realized their real agenda, and rejected it.  Not only did we reelect President Barack Obama, but we gained two democratic seats in the senate, which were thought just months ago to be favorable to the republicans.  Tuesday night was a big winner for America, for President Obama, for democrats and liberals.  I congratulate everyone, and am extremely happy and extremely relieved.  It was a hard fought election, the stakes were high, and the historical amount of spending by conservative super-PACS spreading lies and misinformation was astounding.  Somehow, a majority of Americans saw through the billion dollar smoke screen and chose the right man for president, and the right people for the Senate, including the future democratic star that won back Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.

The Fox Propaganda News Channel did it’s usual job of pretending to be news while it lies, omits, and distorts facts, and then editorializes on the false reality that they pedal with such assholes and liars like Karl Rove, Bill O’reilly, Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity,  Britt Hume, Dick Morris, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the army of douche bags at the network.  Voters in swing states such as Ohio and Florida were saturated with false advertisements from the Romney campaign, including outright lies about Jeep manufacturing being moved to China when the CEO was saying, ‘that’s not true.’  Early in the campaign, Romney’s cronies ran television ads deliberately distorting and doctoring the video of a speech from President Obama to portray him as telling small business owners that if they had a business, they “didn’t build that” when it was proven with the full clip that he was talking about infrastructure.  The Donald, Mr. Trump, who is on a full throttle downward spiral to convince most everyone watching that he is damn fool who should never be taken seriously, was out spreading the birth certificate myth that Obama wasn’t a citizen.  Mr. Romney embraced  the Donald, as he did every right wing nut job or clown when he thought it would help him win the republican nomination and the presidency.  In the end though, Americans saw through the fog of Karl Rove’s super-PACS, the Koch brothers,  Sheldon Adelson, the health insurance companies, and Big profitable Oil. Americans  saw through Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s real agenda, which was the further consolidation of wealth to the top percent, and the dismantling of affordable health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of the financial markets that caused this Great Recession, more military spending, and spending cuts for everyone else.

It was very telling watching Bill O’reilly say on Fox Propaganda News that if Obama won, it would be because “The white establishment is now the minority, and the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff.”  He went on to say that 50 percent of Americans ” “want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it, and he ran on it.”  He also termed these Americans as feeling “entitled.”  It was very telling to watch Bill O’reilly speak from his heart, his true condescending, racist heart, and unwittingly say almost the exact same thing that Mitt Romney was secretly video taped saying at a fund raiser of his during his famous “47 percent” tirade that went on to haunt him, although not near enough.

It was telling because it revealed the ugly truth behind the facade of the republican’s ‘freedom’ ‘god and country’ and ‘family values’ rhetoric.  At Mitt Romney’s core, he is       a greedy vulture capitalist who made his money buying up troubled businesses, busting them up, laying off a large part of their workforce, and reselling them for a profit.  At his core, he is an American businessman, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who pays far less taxes than most Americans even though he is a multi-millionaire, and hides his money in Swiss Bank Accounts, and has maintained shell companies in the Cayman Island to avoid paying taxes to his country.  He has personally visited sweat shops in China and used his experience to sell to his colleagues on the opportunities of off shoring jobs.  He advocated letting the U.S. automobile industry fail. When speaking of such agencies as FEMA in the republican primaries, he said we should send all those responsibilities back to the states, and privatize whenever possible.  When asked about this after Hurricane Sandy struck, Mitt Romney ignored reporters questions about this 14 times with silence.

At his running mate Paul Ryan’s core is an idealistic, Ayn Rand dope who likes to think of himself as some sort of serious budget ‘wonk,’ but he is nothing but a fraud.  His math for his draconian budgets have never added up, and his ‘immoral budget’ as his fellow Catholics have called it, has been his passion since he and George W. Bush’s dream of turning Social Security into a privatized Wall Street program failed.

For both Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, greed for the top few and disdain for the rest have been their faith from the beginning.  I am thankful this country has not been fooled by the wolves’s in sheep’s clothing posing as good Christian men, while really doing the bidding of those ultra greedy at the top who could not care less about the rest of us.  They are a shining example of hypocrisy and deliberate liars who will cynically exploit people of their own faith and those of others.  They are the puppets at the top of the pyramid of the 1 percenters who truly do not give a shit if any of us live or die, so long as their bottom line remains profitable.

When I watch a presidential candidate give a concession speech  or any other politician, or coach or athlete, I usually feel some empathy for the loser even if I am rooting against them.  Watching Mitt Romney give his concession speech last night was an exception.  I wanted to see his true emotions for once, leap out onto his robot face, and see the agony of his defeat.  I felt no empathy for this man, because I know the truth about him and I’m so grateful that a small but still majority of America  saw him for the man so greedy for power and wealth, that he sold his soul.  I’m not sure his running mate ever even had one.  I am so thankful to see these would be thieves of affordable health care and Social Security get their asses kicked to the curb.  And not only would I tell them to not let the door hit them on their asses on their way off the national political stage, I’d also like to tell Governor Romney that he can take the ‘fake donations’ at his fake ‘storm relief’ rally in North Carolina for the hurricane struck area, and stick them straight up his ass.  And I hope the next time Paul Ryan is walking down the street that a homeless man spits a large lugey in his face, the way some idiot tea-bagger did to one of the congressmen who voted for Obama Care.  I hope this is done for his brazen stunt of pretending to wash dishes at a homeless shelter for a photo op earlier in the campaign.  The dishes were clean, and the homeless had long gone.  It was a fraud like their entire campaign.

I’m glad you two would be thieves and con men are gone.

Thank God the majority of us were not fooled.  And to my friends and neighbors and family members who did vote for Romney, I want to hug you and try to explain, if you will listen to the facts, why you will be better off in the future because Barack Obama won again.

Here is my Victory Music Video picked out for our president’s win, raise your glass and enjoy: