Credit where it's due.

So it's after 3am here, and I'm tired. But before I take another shot at trying to sleep (Damn this insomnia...) I want to say something that requires an Independent voter with no remaining filters to say.

The word of the week has been Obamacare, which is mildly odd because I don't think the administration has ever referred to it as such. The point is that President Obama has been idolized, vilified, and everything in between for having managed to pass this Health Care Reform Bill.

Except he didn't do it.

That's right, sports-fans...you heard me correctly! (What are sports-fans doing on my political blog when my NCAA Basketball picks are elsewhere, you ask? Well shut up, because I'm trying to get a train of thought going.) Obama is not responsible for the passage of the Health Care Bill. But if he's not...who is?

George W. Bush.

Remember that guy? The last President we had? That's the one.

"But wait!" People are saying. (It's 3 in the morning, so I can hear them...) "Bush didn't pass the Health Care Reform Bill...in fact he strongly opposed this kind of legislation!" And they're right. But he's still responsible for its passage.

How? By becoming such an incompetent laughingstock that at every level of government, Americans would've voted for a gerbil so long as it wasn't running as a Republican.

Think about it: the Democratic Party has held an almost idiot-proof majority in both houses of Congress for more than a year. On top of that, there's Obama himself, a young, charismatic, wildly popular Democratic President who built an entire campaign around his promise to make new things happen in Washington. The deck was stacked astronomically in the Democrats' favor.

And yet it took them over a year to barely squeak through a heavily-diluted bill. In fact it was so close, they had to resort to 'old-school' Washington bribery: juicy kickbacks for certain states just so their Congressmen would deliver the necessary votes. Some of these kickbacks were actually so juicy that the bill was amended to take them out...after they got their votes, of course.

What does this mean? Unfortunately, not a whole hell of a lot. Obama and the Dems will keep claiming responsibility for the Health Care Reform Bill, even though they only managed to do it by NOT being members of Bush's party...and even then they only barely managed to pull it off anyway. The cards fell right. Nothing more, and nothing less. And the Rebublicans (and their new favorite stepchildren, the 'Tea-Partiers') will keep blaming Obama and the Dems for taking our country to the so-called 'brink of socialism' and then will fight harder and harder in some unrelated area in the hope of claiming at least a 'moral' victory. (*iBear gazes into the future* I'm seeing...gay rights taking a hit. Write it down, because you'll see it, too.)

And that's why it sucks to be an Independent sometimes: I can see all of this as it unfolds, and I can even see where it's going...but there's not a damn thing I can do about it by myself. And so much of the country has drifted into either the "Obama is The ONE!" or "Obama is the AntiChrist!" camp, and those of us who actually retain some recognition of reality are left in the middle.

We don't have logos.

We don't have speechwriters.

We don't have vast fundraisers or multimillion-dollar ad campaigns.

All we have is some measure of common sense...and that just doesn't seem to impress anybody.