I know. I should be watching the Saints game like the rest of you, and thanks to a monumental coup by Cox Communications, it is on in another room. Maybe I can get more engaged in the second half.

But for now, I’m thinking back over the events of the past 24 hours or so with a great deal of remorse. I awoke this morning to the news that Obama had achieved some measure of success in Copenhagen, and was coming home to 60 “aye” votes in the Senate for healthcare “reform.”

It hasn’t been a good day, and I’ll confess to having taken too much of my anger and frustration out on my poor son and his dog. The same son, and to a lesser extent the dog, who will suffer the consequences should this day prove to be the turning point I fear it will become in the imposition of socialism on these United States.

Healthcare and climate change are the two issues that awakened me from my peaceful life of ignorant bliss, and the economy coupled with six months of unemployment afforded me the time to study and become engaged in the fight to resist both, as well as to attempt to educate those “less fortunate” who were still employed and didn’t have the luxury of time to study these movements as I have. I am now employed again and thankful for that, and time will be less available as I transition from south Louisiana to north with the new employer, but I am now committed to the fight, and though my efforts may be diminished in the short term, they will not cease. One of the surprises and blessings of this experience has been the invitation to participate via this forum, and I will continue to do that, and in so doing will be able to offer a unique perspective from my new vantage point in the northern parishes of the state.

But I digress. This is shaping up to be a catastrophic day in the history of the United States. Progressive ideology is threatening to prevail over logic, experience, common sense, and the fundamental tenets of economics, capitalism, freedom and entrepreneurial spirit on which this country was founded, and around which our Constitution was written.

Socialized medicine is on the verge of passing the Senate, as Harry Reid has identified another political whore in his midst and has established the price for services rendered. Bob Nelson of Nebraska and Louisiana’s own Mary Landrieu are now bedfellows in selling out their constituents for thirty pieces of silver.

I was naïve to the ways of Washington politics, and apparently I still am, for it is beyond my feeble abilities to reconcile officials elected by a group of constituents who can vote against the wishes of the majority of those constituents, then look a TV camera in the “eye” and proudly exhort that they have done what’s right for that constituency.

The federal government has demonstrated countless times that it cannot administer any program as well as the private sector. I will acknowledge that there are enough crooks in that sector to justify some measure of regulatory oversight, but not nearly enough to justify government takeover. Experiments in socialized medicine have been attempted in Massachusetts, Maine and Oregon, and they have all failed, so how can it make sense to expand those programs on a national level? On the other hand, Texas has implemented regulatory and tort reform with the successes of reduced costs, but our majority party won’t consider those avenues of relief. Europe and Canada have tried a socialized approach as well, and their populace is gravely dissatisfied, so here we go, following their lead.

And now we are threatened that if “cap and trade” legislation is not adopted, we will be sanctioned in a much harsher manner by the EPA. On the basis of questionable science, to put it kindly, we are about to swallow legislation that will increase our energy costs, use our tax dollars to supplement inefficient wind and solar alternatives, and suffer the grave consequences to our already struggling economy. Such initiatives have been undertaken in Spain, and the level of unemployment has risen with the “growth” of green jobs.

America is sitting on, and surrounded by, vast reserves of oil and natural gas, and we have the technology to extract it, process it, and consume it without detrimentally impacting the environment. We developed nuclear energy as a source of heat for the generation of electricity, but we have not taken advantage of that, but rather have abandoned it and watched the French advance it successfully.

A few years ago, ethanol was espoused to be the panacea of renewable energy. Suddenly the world was clear cutting forests (which consume CO2) and planting corn. Over-fertilization of those crops and the resultant runoff caused major fish kills in the Gulf of Mexico as those pollutants discharged from the Mississippi. Studies later demonstrated that the energy consumed in the manufacture of ethanol exceeded its heating value as a fuel.

Now we are going to follow the same utopian leaders who preached ethanol down the yellow brick road of wind and solar.

Government subsidized healthcare is not the answer to mushrooming costs or uninsured citizens – and I will leave the issues of uninsured illegal’s for another time – and government subsidized windmills are not the answer to clean energy or energy independence. Transferring wealth from this once great nation to the developing nations of the world will not reduce the polluting emissions of those nations as was touted in Copenhagen, either, but rather will line the pockets of their socialized dictatorial governments while they continue to pollute, and while the industries that gave this country the standard of living we now enjoy move their operations to those locales, our economy will continue to decline.

Legislation that “we are on the cusp of” passing, as Obama said today, will result in the further degradation of our economy, ongoing and escalating unemployment, and diminished quality and availability of healthcare. And we will have our prostituting elected officials, who know better than we what is best for us and couldn’t care less what we think, to thank.

And it would be funny were it not so nauseating, but Obama is now saying that job creation and economic growth are now his priority! And why not? Now that he’s taken over the auto industry, banking, and finance, and is on the verge of taking over healthcare, the energy industry, and the hydrocarbon industry, his socialist utopia will be established, and it will be his economy to manage.

The Saints are now in their fourth quarter, and it looks like their unblemished run is in grave jeopardy. I would suggest that this is a fitting analogy for the events that are happening in Washington today. A loss in either venue will be greatly disappointing, but in both cases the season will not be over, and an ultimately successful season is still possible.

And with football, and especially with our federal government, there is always next year, when an angered and emboldened citizenry can take our government back from those who seek to destroy it.

For the sake of our children, America, don’t pull a Les Miles and go to sleep while the clock runs out.