Welcome back, this is what vengeful Indian spirits have cursed us with

Ah, dear readers, we're back from the extended eating contest/holiday that we know as Gluttony & Genocide Day, but the rest of the world celebrates/rues as the day England banished all it's weird, buckle-hatted religious fuckers to a land so far away that they could never harm/annoy another civilized soul. And after we come back from celebrating America's earliest traditions of viewing 10 pound weight gains over a 4 day period as a small victory, how is it that America repays us? By cursing us with the start of the Senate's "debate" on health care. Woe be unto us, for we are the damned.

Debate is to begin Monday morning on the measure to overhaul the US health care system, at an estimated cost of 848 billion dollars through 2019, but a final Senate vote on the bill is not expected for a month at the earliest.

The administration hailed the November 22 vote that cleared the way for debate to begin, but Senate Majority Harry Reid faces a tough challenge constructing a coalition strong enough to get the bill out of the Senate.

He can count on almost unanimous opposition to the measure from Republicans, one of whom has vowed a "holy war" against the bill.

A month...at the least. I can barely muster the will to live. But at least we get a month of the media pretending that some form of "debate" is going on in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, instead of what's really going on: 56 Senators being held up by a filibuster until 4 other Senators have gotten their name in the press enough and sufficiently weaken the bill enough so that they are judged to have contributed "something important" by the media, all the while Republicans waste time by offering up pointless, regressive amendments that have no chance of passing and alternately making pointless pleas that we should just start this whole process over.

In the end, after some severely compromised and bastardized version of this bill passes, Democrats will come out to tell us that looking at this bill is like looking into the smiling face of God, while Republicans will herald the end of freedom and democracy. We, on the other hand, will just add health care to the list we've compiled entitled "Things the Legislative Branch is Not Adult Enough to Handle". The list should simply say 'everything', but legally we're not allowed to write that down until they fuck up financial and climate reform early next year. Enjoy it, America. While the Senate "debate" doesn't provide the same level of joy that eating yourself into a coma did, it will provide the requisite levels of shame and regret that you felt when you went back for sevenths.