Open wide...It looks like the national health-care debacle is finally coming to a head, they’re pushing to have a vote (and I use that term very loosely) for this Sunday.

After watching this process for the last few months, I’ve come the conclusion that I never really knew how our government runs.  To quote Lily Tomlin, no matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.

I had the view of our government that you got from Schoolhouse Rock, where a bill was submitted, it was voted on, passed on to the senate then voted on again and finally signed by the president.  I know that’s a simplistic naive view, but I felt the basic premise of how the process worked was sound.

I knew that there was lobbying and in-fighting, bribery, graft, corruption, etc. but I thought it ultimately came down to the yays versus the nays for any given piece of legislation.  But with this president bringing the “Chicago Way” of politics to the Hill, it has raised the bar that is my cynicism a couple of notches.

Red versus blue, Repbulicans versus Democrats, liberal versus conservative, throw all that out.  The root problem is that the country just can’t afford to do it.   We don’t have the money, especially with the current economic conditions.  You may say, “Well, the CBO says it’ll end up reducing the deficit by billions of dollars!”   Yeah, just like when your wife goes and buys a bunch of stuff that was on sale, just look at the money she saved! 

A big chunk of that deficit reduction comes from the “savings” by cutting medicare and “eliminating fraud and waste.”   Figures don’t lie, liars figure.  If they’ve been unable to reduce that fraud and waste for the last 45 years, what makes them think they can do it now?   And if they really can, they why shouldn’t we prosecute the people in charge for letting it go on for the last 45 years?

I think that people tend to forget that our government doesn’t actually produce anything.  All the government does is take; from you,  from me,  from corporations, and criminals alike.   The basic truth is the government cannot “give” something to one man without first taking it from another man.

In the immortal words of George Carlin, “The government is all bullshit, and it’s bad for ya.“  (warning, link contains NSFW language).