Our National Debating Society

On a recent "Real Time," HBO's show starring Bill Maher, Carl Bernstein was a member of the panel.

Yup, that Carl Bernstein. You know, Nixon, Watergate, I am not a crook, that reporter.

He said something that stopped me cold, and here is my paraphrase:

For the last thirty years Congress has been nothing more than a debating society.

All that money spent to elect debaters, and so little to show for it.

As the world we know appears to be crumbling, increasingly conflicted, rife with poverty, the politicians have excelled at one thing - that is, opening their pie holes and filling our ears with codswallop (look it up...it's one of my favorite English words).

Our complex world becomes black and white; the poor are completely responsible for their own circumstances; the rich are overtaxed, and our revolution began in New Hampshire and not Vermont, according to one of our Minnesota representatives; and politicians talk about the needs of the body politic, but basically they're just running for re-election.

My nature suggests that I find a cave, fill it with whisky and books (the three dimensional kind) and try to hold on, but my mind says it's time to start holding these master debaters' feet to the fire to encourage them to solve a problem or two...and sooner rather than later.

Good luck to us all.