As Chaka Khan's strong and determined voice pounds out, "Tell Me Something Good…," over the satellite radio, we shake off the holiday weekend revelry and tryptophan to indeed find something good in the news…anything…anyone, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Let's see…

Tiger crashed his car right outside his house at 2 a.m. Friday morning. Rumors are all over the place his wife caught him putting his putter in the wrong bag. He simply says the accident was, "my bad," and wants the rest of the story to remain in the clubhouse.

Hmmm…crashing a car right outside one's house at 2 a.m….must be a perfectly logical explanation.

Sarah Palin and entourage spent Thanksgiving weekend in eastern Washington State where she informed the local TeeVee Box reporters they would indulge themselves with Quiznos sandwiches for the holiday because preparing a turkey "is just too much trouble."

That mavericky political celeb and diva then made a big show of entering a charity 5K run but didn't bother to finish the race. Didn't want to create a stir at the finish line, she said. Wouldn't be mavericky.

Besides, she said, quitting early is the reason for her whirlwind tour of the Lower 48 and we should all not finish her book. Maybe we should all stop paying attention to her, too.

Okay, on to the good news…

Let's see, the U.S. Senate will begin debate today on health care reform. No, that's not good news.

The President will deliver a major speech Tuesday night from West Point about strategy and U.S. future in Afghanistan. No, that can't be good news, either. As the immortal philosopher Jimi Hendrix once remarked, "There must be some way outa here…"

Worse news from the Only-Criminals-Will-Have-Guns File, an obviously deranged dude has gunned down four policemen near Tacoma, Washington. The suspect may have been pardoned in Arkansas by Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Oh, wait…here's some good news: The Florida governor, legislature and all its staff get free health insurance – and have for years, now. This wouldn't necessarily be news except for the fact the GOP-dominated legislature is vigorously building steam for passing a measure to pull the Sunshine State out of any national health care reform should it eventually pass the Congress. Oh dear, that's not good news at all.

Okay, here's the good news: today is the final day of the 2009 Hurricane Season! Yea!

Peace.

Forget Thanksgiving, that hollow holiday and living testimony to gluttony and familial dysfunction.

No, indeed. The REAL day of celebration is today: so-called Black Friday, a day in which the sizeable and significant contribution of our African-American population is celebrated in song and story.

No…wait…that's not right.

No, no. Today is the day – it's already happened – when many otherwise normally and relatively sane people line up outside the 24-hour Wal-Mart in the freezing cold of 3 a.m. to wait for a 5 a.m. bell to ring, after which they charge inside to spend money they don't have on worthless crap that serves no useful purpose while strains of "Silent Night" waft peacefully over the store loud speakers.

Ah! It's Black Friday and it has begun: the assault on Christmas, that month-long celebration of greed and conspicuous consumerism masked in the shallow notion that mounting personal debt is somehow patriotic because it helps line the pockets of the large corporations who, then, take profits overseas to avoid playing their part in reducing the national debt.

The local newspaper is actually Tweeting real-live reportage from various stores around the community.

One actual Tweet: Follow @reportersname for the latest Black Friday action all morning. Tweet her the big deals if you find them.

Ha-ha-ha. This is really funny because the newspaper, in an attempt to be hip and use Twitter for actual journalism, is giving away thousands of dollars in free advertising for the stores!

"Buy one and get one free sweaters @GAPOfficial – stores only," reads another Tweet. (Sometimes grammar and spelling are slaughtered in 140-character messages across the Twitterscape.)

At least two fights (so far) have been reported at Wal-Marts around the region.

"Peace on earth and mercy mild…God and sinners reconciled…"

Yea, well, not so much apparently.

But there's hope. We can probably count on Faux News blathering head Sneer O'Really to once again launch his crusade to rid us of this "War on Christmas," during which he empties his stock of coffee mugs and T-shirts.

He's never very specific about who or what has begun this war on Christmas but that matters little because in this season of peace and hope for all talk of war really sells and selling is what is important.

Talk of war is all-important during this season of peace and goodwill. The most popular video and computer games include, "Assassin's Creed," "World of Warcraft" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3."

What fun it is to laugh and sing…and kill others on our computer screens.

"Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his Gospel in peace. "Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease."

Among the many things for which to be grateful this Thanksgiving Day is the current ghost of the Republican Party.

That's right. Many funny people around this great land of our – and many others who try and fail to be funny (read here) – were genuinely worried by the election of Barack Obama and the shrinking back into a hole of George Bush.

"Where would the political funny come from?" they asked.

Well, we all know now the defeated but retrenched and retooled Republican Party, the Galatically Obtuse Party, has not let us down. These guys and gals are more fun than a barrel of monkeys (drawn in cartoon form to look like the 43rd President of the United States). These guys and gals just keep on givin', one after the other, shrill-baby-shrill.

The latest installment of goofy, whacky, home-made political out-takes come from the Republican National Committee itself, which is set to consider in January when it meets in Hawaii (What? That's a state now?) a 10-point "purity test" for all GOP candidates.

If adopted the GOP candidates would have to answer "yes" to at least seven of the 10 questions or he or she could not be considered a righteous Republican.

This comes in an effort to avoid the silliness of the recent New York Congressional District 23 race in which the Republican nominee was thrown out the house in favor of a more righteous Conservative Party candidate who went down in flames on election day and who, by the way, finally yesterday conceded the race again to the Democrat winner after unconceding last week after initially conceding on election night after…well…you see the problem.

Funny.

So, say staunch extremists on the RNC, let's have a purity test to avoid such troubles. You just can't make up stuff like this.

Called the "Ronald Reagan Unity Principle for Support of Candidates," Here's the list:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill.

(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) Workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check

(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat

(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Good stuff. The only problem is conservation icons like Ronald Reagan George Bush (either of them) fail miserably.

Both presidents oversaw massive increases in the federal deficit – particularly Bush who took office with a federal budget surplus left to him by President Clinton. Reagan raised taxes and granted amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He was president of a union.

Oh well…maybe they will have better luck with ethical and moral purity standards, like avoiding candidates who, say, leave office early or go hiking the Argentinean Tail or have mistresses or like prostitutes to dress them up in adult diapers.

Just grateful we can still laugh on this Thanksgiving.

In case you're just regaining consciousness from a weekend stupor or you live under a rock, you will be pleased to know something historic happened over the weekend.

No, we're not talking about the debut of the Florida State Seminoles' new, high-tech football uniforms nor the 46th anniversary of the tragic death of John F. Kennedy.

(Wonder what JFK would say about the wingnuts of today? Oh…wait…we don't have to wonder. We remember, now. He sent federal marshals to protect black students from wingnuts who were trying to prevent them from attending public universities.)

And speaking of that, we're not even talking about the historic weekend moment in Oxford, Mississippi when Ol' Miss students shouted down and ran off a Klu Klux Klan rally tepidly staged to protest the Ol' Miss decision to stop shouting, "the south will rise again," during football games.

In case you didn't know, "Klu Klux" is Latin for "knuckle-dragging mouth breathers."

No, the historic moment took place Saturday night as the U.S. Senate voted 60-39 to actually start debate on the floor of a proposal to reform our nation's healthcare system.

The sad news is it took everything the Senate has to make that procedural move – to actually and formally debate the most significant piece of legislation in 40 years.

Not a single Republican member of the U.S. Senate voted to move the debate to the floor. No siree bob. The Republican members of the Senate stood firm in their resolve not to debate the bill. (Remember, it's too long: over 2,000 pages.) They prefer, instead, shouting innuendo and absurd allusions to communism. (Hey, just like they did back in the 1960s!)

In a lurid and weird comment from Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, "We're like a mosquito in a nudist colony," said the distinguished gentleman from Missouri. "We have so many targets to attack in this bill we don't know which one to hit."

It's strange how often Republicans relate politics to scatology.

The leader of the GOP, Douche Limbranch, compared health care reform to grabbing one's ankles and bending over to "take it" up the place where the sun don't shine.

It remains to be seen if Senate Republicans will take part in the debate they so wanted to prevent. My guess is they will and we can look forward to talk of "socialized medicine," "death panels," "Hitler," "…the end of life as we know it."

But not to worry, Gin BecksBeer has a plan.

During a swing through Florida over the weekend, GOP floor whip Gin BecksBeer hinted his plan will transform 'Murka and it all begins with getting everyone to buy a copy of his new book, Talking with Idiots, which must be a monologue but could be the real inside story of the Teabaggers.

But Michael Steele, the guy who THINKS he's head of the GOP summed up the Senate vote and foreshadowed the debate to follow.

"A vote in favor of this procedural motion paves the way for the bill's final adoption, which would impose a government-run healthcare experiment on America that increases premiums, increases taxes, cuts Medicare allows for taxpayer-funded abortions."

Maybe the Republicans should do themselves a favor and actually read the bill. They might have something substantive to say, rather than simply evacuating out of Douche Limpbranch's favorite place.

Whoa! Hold the phone, Mablel!

Postpone your mammograms and cervical exams for another year!

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that fireball of energy and uncompromising enthusiasm, has scheduled for Saturday night the first in a series of votes that might, perhaps, maybe, unless-something-else-comes-up get us one step closer to possibly being a nation in which everyone has adequate, reasonable, affordable heath care.

But, Holy War, Batman, in an uncharacteristic move, the Republicans have a complaint.

The 2,074-page Senate health care bill is just too long.

"Who's going to read the doggone thing?" asked Utah Senator and Holy Warrior Orrin Hatch.

Pointing out that Webster's New World Dictionary – also filled with words – is only 1,700 pages, Hatch told the Faux News – while faked video played in the background – the health care bill is "a lousy bill, a terrible bill."

Not sure, exactly, how he knows that because the bill is just too long to read.

But nonetheless, by "lousy" and "terrible" he means it might actually, maybe, possibly lead to reform of our nation's health care system, might actually provide better access to health care, might limit the power and influence of insurance companies and…here's the really bad part…could diminish the million of dollars he and other Senate buddies get in contributions each year from those insurance companies.

Let's see if we can help out the Republicans get through this piece of legislation filled with words and maybe even avoid the "Holy War" Hatch said he would start over the bill, a Mormon Jihad.

First, we'll ask Sen. Reid to have his staff see how many words can be replaced with pictures or drawings. That'll make it easier to understand.

Second, we'll suggest the Senate Republican staff get together and divide up the bill piece-by-piece. Each staffer could take say, 20 or 30 pages, read them and make a book report back to Senators. I think they could each probably handle 20 or 30 pages, especially if much of it is illustrated with pictures and drawings.

Several Republican senators have pledged to not read the bill, preferring instead to wait until the movie comes out.

But, you see, the wily Sen. Reid has a plan. He intentionally scheduled the first cloture vote on the bill for Saturday night because he knows by then many of the senators will be three sheets to the wind and he can trick 'em into doing anything he wants just by dangling fresh bottles of triple malt scotch in front of their bloated faces and blood-shot eyes.

Ah, governance at its best!

Wait…is "drunk" a pre-existing condition to be eliminated as a reason for insurance companies to cancel coverage?

Having enough Chinese food for a while, the President's next stop is South Korea.

A cheap and tawdry crack could be made here about the President having Seoul but that wouldn't be right…mostly because one couldn't make that crack about any other president! Ha! So, take THAT, wingnuts!

Seriously, though, we're all grateful to the lame editor emeritus of the Washington Times, that bastion of principled journalism which is about to implode, for pointing out to us how it's really not the President's fault he was born black and, therefore, out of touch with 'Murka.

"It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of 'the 57 states' is about," wrote this numerically and cartographically impaired lame-o. "He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream."

Maybe while in South Korea, the President will ask that nation for an apology for sending us the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the whack-o wingnut pastoral dynasty which owns the Washington Times.

And, of course, the wingnuts are still going crazy over the fact the President bowed to the Japanese Emperor, a show of respect. That's a really funny bunch, those wingnuts!

"I would argue (he is) bowing at the alter of socialism," said the Faux News' Shame Humanity.

Hey Shame, I think you may have confused Japan with China but that understandable. I'm sure to you all Asian people look alike.

These moes seem to forget how President Nixon bowed to Mao on his historic trip to China is 1972. (Of course, the wingnuts of the day said he was bowing to Communism.)

And no one complained when President Bush kissed and walked hand in hand with the Saudi king.

Oh well, consistency is not a strong suit of the wingnuts…except, of course, for being consistently nuts!

Meanwhile, up in New York's Congressional District 23, the wingnuts favorite loser, some dude named Hoffman, has "unconceded" the race he lost last week to Democrat Bill Owens.

Drinking an uncola while making the unnecessary unequivicaton from his un-address in the district, Hoffman said he would remain unconceded until newly discovered ballots and absentees could be counted.

Most observers put his chances of getting enough votes in the recount to overcome Owens' lead at "snowball's chance in hell," but that matters very little when there's grousing and complaining to do!

Maybe they should ask the U.S. Supreme Court to settle this. Oh sure, they'd LIKE that.

Owens, for his part, said he would unfriend Hoffman on Facebook.

Back in the good ol' days – you know, about 10 years ago – when we got into a little financial trouble or needed to expand a skosh, we headed down to see our good buddy and occasional golf partner: our local banker.

That's exactly what the President of the United States is doing in China.

"So, Hu, ol' buddy…how's it hangin'? How's the fam? I brought my sticks but with all the state dinners and speaking over your head directly to students, I guess we won't be able to get out and hit a few.

"I brought you sleeve of balls, though. They're Tiger balls."

Okay, maybe not.

But the fact of the matter is, the Chinese are the bankers for the U.S. of A. No matter how you slice it, the Chinese owns us at this point. The government of China owns nearly $800 billion in U.S. Treasury Securities. (Followed closely by Japan which holds just over $730 billion and to which President Obama traveled first.)

That's debt. That's over $800 billion we OWE the Chinese. We pay the Chinese over $50 billion a year in interest alone.

On top of all that is the problem – most economists see it as a problem – of China keeping the value of its currency – the renmimbi – artificially low. In the short term this leads to great trade imbalances in favor of the Chinese. Along with the rest of the world, we buy Chinese stuff because it's cheap. But in the not-so-long run, this is keeping the world economy from rebounding because it's acting as a funnel, drawing money from around the world into Chinese coffers when trade spending could be more evenly spread across the globe to stimulate the greater economy.

This presents a problem from President Obama. Although he inherited this massive debt to the Chinese he can't exactly waltz into Hu's office and tell him to quit it.

"Oh yea," Hu might say. "Gi' me back my $800 billion – NOW!"

The Chinese, for their part, think the U.S. economy has been far too reckless and blame the U.S. for the world-wide recession…hardly a leap of belief.

So, the President has to walk a fine line with the Chinese. He needs to urge them to let their currency grow more into line with world currencies – against the backdrop of a drastically fallen dollar – but he can't be too insistent. After all, one doesn't scold another who happens to have one by the thrusters.