Hooray For Harry!

You should have done this years ago.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) finally made good on his threat.

The Senate filibuster rules have been changed!

Instead of requiring 60 votes for routine judicial appointees and cabinet members, a simple majority of 51 is now all that's required.

This was done because just this week, three perfectly competent judges were not approved by the minority of Republicans in the Senate. They are added to the list of dozens of presidential court appointees who are waiting years to be approved by the Senate Republicans who have stalling and obstruction as their only goal.

Of course, the rightwing mouthpieces are going ballistic, screaming "hypocrisy!", "both sides do it!" and "you'll be sorry when the Democrats are in the minority and this works against them!"

Nonsense.

Let's not do the false-equivalency baloney on this one. This is by no means a "both sides do it" situation. The fact is, in the entire history of the United States, the filibuster has been used to block presidential appointees 160 times -- with half that number used in the last five years alone to block and obstruct President Obama's appointees.

Half of all filibusters in American history were used to obstruct perfectly good cabinet members and judges by President Obama. Explain how that's not blatant obstruction simply for spite.

By the way, this new Senate rule only applies to the President's judicial and cabinet appointees. It does not apply to any legislation or to Supreme Court nominees.

Now you can argue the facts with your old drunk uncle who watches only Fox,
next week at Thanksgiving!

Republican Jackass of the Week

I'll give you three guesses who gets the honor this week.

This blog post has essentially written itself.

Fooling no one but the Teabaggers.

Meet Canada's Rafael "Ted" Cruz, Regressive Republican from Texas.

"I intend to speak in support of defunding ObamaCare until I am no longer able to stand," is what he said before he began his fake filibuster.

Fake, you see, because to be an actual filibuster you talk endlessly to stop a law from coming to a vote or stop some kind of legislative action.

Canada's Cruz did neither. Matter of fact, he actually asked Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for permission for his talkathon days ahead, and since nothing was scheduled for the senate that night, Senator Reid obliged his freshman Teabagger colleague, saying, in essence, "knock yourself out." Rafael thanked him and agreed to end his theatrical publicity stunt well before the vote, which was already scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

So he didn't -- and couldn't -- stop the vote, and didn't stop the law from going into effect, since ObamaCare has already been the law since 2010.

It was a self-indulgent waste of time that accomplished nothing.

As msnbc's Lawrence O'Donnell astutely put it, this was Rafael Cruz's 21-hour surrender. He had vowed to fight ObamaCare to the very end, and he made good on his word. And then, when he ended this performance -- at exactly the time he promised Senator Reid he would -- he voted in favor of the bill he pretended to fight against.

During his bizarre 21-hour stunt, he did a Darth Vader impression, spoke of how he loved White Castle burgers and read Dr. Seuss's classic story, Green Eggs and Ham. Of course, neither he nor his Teabagger supporters got the irony in his telling of the story. The moral of that story is "don't knock it until you try it: you just might like it." Kinda like ObamaCare. See?

Hey "Ted," guess what? ObamaCare is the law of the land, upheld by the US Supreme Court, and President Obama was elected on it twice. It's not going anywhere.

In years to come, instead of the "Big Three," we'll refer to the "Big Four" which no politician will ever dare to go against: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare.