I feel pretty drained right now. I’ve been turning out writing at a pretty good clip. Some pals and I are going to shoot a movie I wrote called “Live and Let Spy.” That should be in internet form for consumption in a few months. It’s pretty short too, so no excuse for not seeing it!

I feel like the writing part of my brain is on auto-pilot, and is doing pretty good. But the political part is numb. The fire has kinda petered out. I don’t know how some of these people can keep at it day in and day out. It’s exhausting. I kept thinking maybe I need a better system to organize my time and effort and what not in order to get more articles and the like, but maybe I only have one a month in me.

Like the Schumer amendment, which would have given us a gimpy public option in the finance committee bill. It lost because of three Democratic senators. Those Senators are from North Dakota, Arkansas, and Montana. Each of those states has less than a million people. Combined, they are less than 1 percent of the population. Those states are all less than 30th in GDP, compared to other states.

I’d be cool with Senators having so much power, 6 year terms, filibuster, etc, if they were smarter and more responsible than most House members, but Senators are just as dumb as any other legislator. At this point, states are just arbitrary political organizations. Why should the 600,000 people in Montana get as much say as the 20 million in New York? Because of lines drawn on a map 100 years ago?

But, honestly, I’m not that pissed about it, not pissed enough to actually try to convince other people. If anyone objects to my analysis here, I’d just think, “Sure, whatever.” I mean, this seems so obvious to me that it doesn’t make sense to argue for it. It’s like arguing for how grass is green.  If someone tries to argue grass is transparent, it doesn’t sharpen your argumentative skills by arguing with them.

But moreover, I don’t want to argue with anyone. I just want to kick back with some beers and not have to face the real world, or the truth. It’s easy to see how post modernists can argue against the existence of reality when you regularly encounter people with views that are so divergent from yours that they don’t make sense. I think we all accept that other people have other opinions, but how is it that other people can have other “facts”?  Other “facts” then build other “realities.”

I posted a screed about healthcare a while back, here and on Facebook. I hoped my sister Colleen, who works in healthcare, would respond. She didn’t for a couple of weeks, so I guessed she didn’t read it or didn’t care. I happened upon that note the other day, and saw that she did reply much later. She wrote one sentence, basically saying she was disappointed at how little I knew about health insurance.

I wonder now if she felt the same way I do. We both have our divergent set of facts, building our own realities, but they are opposed to each other. Rather than try to hash it out, and risk crumbling those realities, we just don’t talk about it. We keep filtering our information so it reinforces our worldviews.

I’ll be back in form soon enough. Just thought I’d try to get some of these thoughts out while I’m here.

Government: “You charge WAY too much and you treat your customers like dirt!”

Health Insurance: “Okay, let’s compromise.  I’ll treat them a little less like dirt if they agree to pay me more money.”

Government: “Awesome!  Helloooo reelection!”

It occurred to me while watching Meet the Press online that I was insane for watching Meet the Press online.   Then it occurred to me that the above dialogue basically explains what, if anything, we’re going to get out of this mess.  If you want a long (but really good and readable) explanation, you should read this article by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.

The President has all but said (and will say Wednesday night, I predict) that there will be no real public insurance plan, the much bally-hooed public option.  If there is a public option, the blue dog democrats have assured us that it will pay out at rates similar to private insurance (instead of lower medicare plus five rates) so that the playing field is level with insurance.  That also means the public plan would be pointless.  It’s like saying, to level the playing field, homeless shelters have to charge the same as hotels.  Whenever anyone mentions blue dog democrats, imagine a blue dog humping the leg of a health insurance CEO.

But never fear!  There is more to health insurance reform than the public option, right?  That’s the line the White House has been pushing for weeks.  They love mentioning how the bill will keep you from getting turned down for preexisting conditions, and insurance companies won’t be able to kick you off the rolls if you get sick, and they’ll cap out of pocket expenses, and they won’t be able to arbitrarily raise premiums multiple times in one year, and you might even be able to keep your insurance if you “switch jobs.”  In other words, the health insurance companies are going to have to treat people like human beings instead of bloody sacks of cash to be drained up and thrown out.

How is this real change?  Gee, you make the industry that has caused this health care crisis stop a few of it’s more egregious, blood-sucking practices.  Hooray!  A major victory!

But there’s more!  There’s also an individual mandate looming overhead, meaning everyone MUST by health insurance or face a tax penalty.  Health insurance, welcome to 47 million new customers, courtesy of uncle sam!  Forty-seven million Americans, welcome to fly-by-night health insurance, much like the craptastic state minimum car insurance advertised late at night on the CW (not that I watch it).  The only difference between that kind of insurance and no insurance is that you pay to be uninsured.

THIS is reform?  Creating a windfall for the industry that screwed things up?  Exponentially increasing the overhead and the paperwork logjam that is strangling health care?

But here’s the best part.  No denials for pre-existing conditions?  No kicking people off when they get sick?  Keeping insurance if you lose your job?  These all KEEP people on the insurance rolls.  Wow, tough reforms.  Really sticking it to the people that stuck it to us.  Insurance companies will get to pass these costs on to the public via the mandate, or subsidies from tax money that will support the mandate.  No wonder PhRMA, the drug lobby, is spending 140 million to SUPPORT reform.  They took a lesson from Wall Street about socializing losses and privatizing gains.

It’s a win, win, win all around for insurance, and lose lose for Americans.  We’ll pay more and get less.  And the added bonus?  This plan can properly be called “Universal Health Care,” forever sullying the name of the only system that makes sense, and the system every other industrialized country in the world has, and the system that veterans, the elderly, and the very poor have right now, single payer.

Leave me alone! In recent history, at least since Nixon, definitely since Reagan, the Republican Party has claimed to be the party of small government. How odd, then, that though the Republicans have more or less been in power for several decades now, there are only more personal restrictions on the books.

The most amazing thing to me is the sales pitch. Sadly, I think this has been one of the most destructive forces to getting things done in America. Thomas Frank had a best-seller with “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” a book that examines how the heart of blue-collar America votes for a party that continuously votes against its interests. His latest book, “The Wrecking Crew,” examines how the conservative movement has corrupted the government and made it the legislation-for-sale body it is today.

Frank’s ideas are hardly new. In Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” sociologists discuss the cynical environment created by conservatives. Though the Republicans are in power, and are in position to help, they belittle the government and make it out to be a bad thing. Next thing you know, America has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the democratic world because people have no faith in their government or the power to change it.

In April, longtime Republican senator Arlen Spector (Penn.), announced that he was switching parties. The major media covered the event as if Spector truly had a change of heart. By Spector’s own admission, he switched parties because he did not think he could win the Republican nomination. He did not switch on principle or to help anyone but himself. He did so merely as a reelection ploy. Somehow, only Jon Stewart on Comedy Central reported it this way.

More recently, a host of Republican congressmen came out against President Obama’s nationalized healthcare plan. One congressman said Obama is trying to destroy the greatest medical system ever known. Another equated nationalized healthcare to going to the DMV and standing in line.

The World Health Organization rates this “greatest system” as the 37th best in the world. My own experiences, and those of people I know, lean more towards the 37 than the one. And what kind of example is the DMV? What about the military? Emergency services? The Postal Service? All nationalized systems that seem to work pretty well. Are we really going to buy this argument?

I might not care as much what the conservatives say if they stayed out of everyone’s business. I am a civil libertarian. I say if it doesn’t hurt anybody, let it be. That’s different than libertarianism, because I have more faith in the individual than the corporation. The conservatives claim to be for small government, but the movement is more about less regulation in the business world, forgetting about individual rights, because there is no profit in protecting the individual.

The conservative reach into our private lives really is profound. Gays cannot get married and are denied the same rights as other Americans. Certain organizations want to tell me what is appropriate to read and watch. Many conservatives want to interject their religion into the government, despite the Establishment Clause that clearly says this is a no-no. The abortion issue comes to mind.

The difference was never clearer than on an episode of “30 Days,” from director Morgan Spurlock, who also made “Supersize Me.” An atheist goes to live with a conservative Christian family for 30 days. While this woman shows an everyday tolerance because she is surrounded by a religious majority and has no problem accepting their beliefs, the conservatives could not even conceive of something as hypothetical as removing “In God We Trust” from our money. They had evidently never even thought about the other side.

This is the irony of the conservative movement. As little as they claim to like government, they love laws that promote their interests, even if those interests are not shared by all, and the laws in question may limit the harmless lifestyles of others. The taste, then, is not one of small government, but of intolerance.

The hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed either. In the 2004 vice presidential debates, John Edwards, who has since revealed his true, slimy character, asked Dick Cheney about gay marriage. The question was not so much about gay marriage as it was about the personality of a father who cannot even support his own daughter. Edwards was vilified for asking the question, but here is Cheney in 2009 now supporting gay marriage.

In the 80s, the Reagans wanted nothing to do with stem-cell research. Only after President Reagan became sick did they change their minds. And what of all those people who missed out on research because Reagan had good health in the 80s and 90s? Again, just another show of nothing more than self-interest and lack of empathy.

The truth is, government can make a positive impact in our lives. It does so on a daily basis. Their brand of smaller government is killing the individual and letting the corporations run rampant. Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with where we are today.