I’ve been following the whole healthcare debate taking place in Washington from a distance, and deliberately so. First of all, because I can’t keep track of all the plans being put forth – what’s in, what’s out, how much it will cost, etc. Second of all, because I’ve thought all along that if what Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and/or Barack Obama were proposing was so good for the Democrats and the American people it would have passed by now. Thirdly, I find the whole Pelosi / Reid / Obama trio so brain-numbing whenever I see them or hear them on TV that I immediately change the channel to something more relevant.

“Thanks, Alex, I’ll take the letter ‘C’….”

After all, regardless of the spin you get from these clowns, there are – well, until Scott Brown came along – there were enough Democrats in both houses to get the job done. They didn’t need the Republicans. But between the fact that they couldn’t even craft decent legislation (well, legislation that at the very least didn’t require threats, or gimmicks, or graft to get people in their own party (of their own party, no less!) to convince them to support it), and the total abdication of leadership on Barack Obama’s part (leaving Reid and Pelosi to their own radical, left-wing, big government/anti-free market devices sole responsibility to draft their own legislation at the White House’s urging), they now find themselves 16 months down the line, no single bill that anyone can up or down a vote on, and, now, another artificial deadline imposted by the White House to “save healthcare reform”

All this time and effort when the President should have been focusing solely on jobs, getting the economy moving again, and, of course, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Not that, compared to that 60-lb. gorilla in the room called “healthcare reform” any of these matter, of course….

Talk about screwing up your first year in office and setting your entire Presidency up for failure!

I just find it hard to take any of this seriously. I mean, it’s not as if I think, were the Republicans solely in charge like the Dems are, they could come up with something majestic that would “fix” health care and be acceptable to everyone. (I do have sufficient faith in the Republican approach to government that anything they came up with would probably be better than the hog slop Obamacare currently looks like – if only because it wouldn’t involve new government programs and a slew of regulatory commissions that would choke the marketplace.) But I just think our country has bigger fish to fry right now then healthcare reform.

Some might say, ‘well Great White Shank, that’s because you have health insurance; easy for you to say’. But the fact is, life isn’t fair. And while this country has enough wealth to be able to take care of every person’s every need, no matter how big or small it might be, that doesn’t mean we have to, or even ought to. No matter how hard anyone tries, you can’t level the playing field for everyone. It’s not practical, it’s not possible, it’s not even advisable. That’s life. That’s the way life is.

Look, this nation ahs already spent far too many years and wasted far too much money encouraging people to look to Washington as the answer to all their needs, as opposed to looking for work, encouraging families to hang together and look to themselves and their communities (both civic and religious) for helping each other out. Washington, in the end, cannot take care of us. We have to take care of ourselves.

And to think that the answer lies with the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, or any host of politicians that every ill that ails us can be assuaged, that every boo-boo can be kissed away with billions upon billions of taxpayer money, and that something as complex as healthcare reform can be fixed with a single, sweeping piece of comprehensive legislation is to believe that tooth fairies wear monkey boots while eating Big Macs with their toaster ovens.

And it’s time America and its political class grows up and understands this.