We saw this last night and thought it was terrific. Mr. Stewart captures Mr. Beck’s nutty conspiracy theorizing — complete with incomprehensible blackboard diagrams — just about perfectly. And, BTW Mr. Beck is recovering from his emergency appendix surgery.

And that’s exactly what it is. It seems that a number of our Congresscritters — Republicans as well as Democrats (never let it be said that we subscribe to any sort of partisanship, for we are loyal to no political party)– are representing the insurance companies rather than we, the people.

And what are these two “tough” issues? Believe it or not they are abortion and immigration — as if!

Now health care reform — or rather, health insurance reform — is supposed to extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans who do not have health insurance by requiring that almost everyone buy health insurance, while obliging businesses to cover their employees, and providing subsidies for lower-income people. It is also supposed to keep insurance companies from turning people away (or canceling their existing polices) due to their health status.

But now the House has to dither over the relatively minor issues of abortion and immigration.

The anti-abortion Democrats (yes, such creatures do exist) aren’t satisfied with the language regarding prohibitions against the federal funding of abortions. They say the stipulation that people will have to use their own money for abortions isn’t straightforward enough. Oh well, at least they don’t seem to be looking to outlaw abortion entirely, just a more solid declaration against use of federal funds for abortion.

They still cannot make up their minds about whether or not illegal immigrants would be allowed to buy insurance in some new purchasing exchange — whatever that’s supposed to be in its present incarnation. Regardless of rude Congressmen who shout “you lie” at the president, the White House doesn’t want illegals to have access to the exchange.

Of course, abortion and immigration, in and of themselves, are important issues, but they shouldn’t be holding up the larger issue of a very urgent need for insurance reform.

I’ve always wondered why I could never drive very well, even if I did learn how to drive safely after getting into several accidents. It’s in my genes:

No need to curse that bad driver weaving in and out of the lane in front of you — he cannot help it, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found that people with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people with a different DNA sequence.

The study may explain why there are so many bad drivers out there — about 30 percent of Americans have the variant, the team at the University of California Irvine found.

Now, I’ve not been tested as my health insurance probably won’t cover it — it’s all I can do to manage to pay the premiums (and forget those deductibles) — but this may be the reason for that five foot-long dent in the side of my truck…

Today is Jon’s 50th birthday. He thinks he’s “old” now, but he’s always looked 10 years younger than he really is — not one gray hair on his entire head.

For his birthday, Jon is going to paint the wall where the air conditioning installers finally dry-walled over the holes they had to make to install our new ductless mini-split AC system. Big fun there…

And, of course I am going to pull a party out of my ass, which is something I am pretty good at.