"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."  -Aldous Huxley

I'll admit it - I'm a liberal. You can stop reading now if you are a conservative. What troubles me about recent events in Washington is that our government has become ludicrously incapable of doing anything of consequence at all. The recent battle over health care reform is a perfect example of the imperfection of representative democracy. The latest feat of logic from the 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court will only exacerbate the problem. I understand that many of the elections I've taken part in have consisted of choosing the lesser of many evils, and that that representative or senator or president is not going to focus on his constituents as much as he/she focuses on those who have donated large amounts of cash or trips or other goodies.
In health care, we have a fight that includes Big Health Care, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Lawyers, and other middle sized and small groups kicking butt and taking names and bringing congress to a stand still. I thought the initial Big Issue would be the "public option", which would either give most of the Biggies listed above an Excedrin headache but help "regular people"  save money and get better health care, or turn us into a socialist hell where tea-baggers would be dragged off to secret containment camps left over from Dick Cheney's secret plan to take over the country. I was certainly surprised when president Obama spoke to a joint session of the House and Senate and gave it away immediatley.  Then Obama's brain trust went into high gear and turned over the whole plan to another brain trust that included Max Baucus, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, and a bunch of old white guys in suits. Suddenly, we were kissing Olympia Snowe's shrivelled butt for a meaningless vote and dropping  truckloads of goodies on Ben Nelson for a vote in a watered down bill that would essentially do nothing. For obviously  reason, this "nothing" was considered much worse than the "nothing" that Republicans were crying for because Mr. Obama liked it. So what do we have now ?  Nothing , zero, naught, bubkes, zilch, nada !  Well, not entirely nothing. There were certain sections of the economy that were given a large stimulous package. That, of course, would be the wonderful companies that provide those stimulating political ads we so enjoy during dinnertime or driving to work, or spread like goat droppings all over the internet by the blogosphere !  We learn valuable information, like the fact that Obama is the reincarnation of Hitler or that Scott Brown is the reincarnation of JFK !
This is a heck of a way to run the country, but get used to it, because Mr. Roberts and his gang of four have unleashed the oppressed giant corporations and unions to spend as much as they like for the candidate of their choice and make up whatever they want because they're not really "connected" to the candidate they're supporting.  
Well, this is our Brave New World. Just take your soma and everything will be fine. As Mr. Huxley wrote, it has "all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
 I'm going to relax and go watch "24".