About a year ago, I lost my health insurance-- the perils of being a contractor in today's economy (actually, yesterday's economy as this all happened before everything went to hell in a hand basket). For awhile I was paying COBRA which was about $400 a month. Sucky, yes, but it's better than no health insurance which is what I would have had without it because apparently I am not eligible for individual plan health insurance because while I'm healthy, I'm not healthy enough.

Luckily, I was able to get on Harlan's health insurance as a "domestic partner" and now not only have health insurance, but really great health insurance. Today we discovered that, unfortunately, the federal government doesn't consider "domestic partner" health insurance but as extra income and so a huge bite was taken out of her paycheck. This despite the fact you'd think it would be in the best interest's of the country to have me, or anybody for that matter, insured.

Apparently not.

And, as Harlan pointed out, the one's who get really screwed are gay people because unless people stop being idjits, they can get registered as domestic partners and domestic partners only. That is if they're lucky.

Lately, I read "Deerhunting with Jesus," a book that I thought would be really funny, being all about life in White Trash Land and all. Unfortunately, it was depressing as hell. The so-called working class hasn't just been screwed, hasn't just been fucked, but more like gang-raped over and over again by the Powers That Be. It's awful what's happened to them and by them I also mean us. Now these people are the people who supposedly would never vote for Democrats, Obama least of all, as the people in the book all hail from that place Sarah Palin oh so eloquently referred to as the "Real America." This fact brings all sorts of hand-wringing/mocking from us Blue Staters because the people who probably need progressive politics the most are the very same people who vote against them because of things like guns and Jesus (the book, in fact, was the inspiration behind Obama's bitter comment). The thing about the book, though, is that that these people are either too stupid to realize just how fucked they are and/or so fucked that they don't have time to realize just how fucked they are.

What's the point of all this? Because now that the glow has faded from the election, what's left is the cold hard fact that this country is now a burnt-out shell of a wreckage. I know it's a little out of context, but at this point, the only way to feel is exactly like Charlton Heston felt when he came upon the Statue of Liberty at the end of "Planet of the Apes".

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Or, as Ricky Gervais said in his HBO Special, "how does it feel to be a third world country?"