In case the Satan Sandwich and the stock market have raised your blood pressure:

At approximately 7:00 a.m. – the view from approximately 7000 feet on the Catalina Highway north of Tucson.

Stay cool and solvent.

First things first…I hate the Satan Sandwich with every fiber of my being. Absolutely hate it. And not just because I am going to take a hit when the veterans and their healthcare fall under the budget axe after their “supercongress” fails to arrive at a compromise. And frankly, they could ask me to pay a little more than $35-and-change every month for healthcare for two people, and I don’t pay copays on visits or name-brand drugs. I have the best healthcare in the world and I spend more every month in coffee shops. I spend less in a year than most people have deducted from their paycheck in a month. A modest increase wouldn’t kill me, since I haven’t seen one since the mid nineties. That’s pretty amazing when you stop to think about how much healthcare costs have gone up in that time, and how much your premium has gone up. they could bump my premium by fifty-bucks  a pay-period and I would still pay less in a year than another couple our age would pay in a month on the private market. Yes, we earned the benefits, but we shouldn’t be asked to pay so little while you are hurting. It’s not right, and it’s not fair. Now we will have to wait and see how hard they hit me and what I have to say after the dust settles…

That said, the Satan Sandwich is the law of the land, and until it isn’t anymore, I have to live with the consequences. We all do.

I could almost live with most of the stuff in it, if only the rich parasites who are bleeding this country dry had to pay their fair share in taxes. I keep hearing people say they want to go back to the tax rates we paid under Clinton or Reagan.

I have a word for those folks: Pikers.

I want to go back to Eisenhower’s rates, but would settle for Kennedy’s.

When there was less wealth disparity, we were a strong and vibrant country. When you have great wealth in the hands of a few, you have a banana republic.

But I didn’t get a tax increase. Unless you count the expiration of the payroll tax cut that affects the middle class.

Funny thing about that payroll tax cut — the same people who screamed the loudest over it expiring and taking a billion dollars out of the economy were the exact same people who screamed at the time it as enacted that it was a backdoor attack on Social Security, because the time would come when the revenue shortfall to Social Security would have to be made up from the General Fund and that would undermine the program and be used as a battering ram to knock it down and cast it as welfare.

Sorry folks, can’t have it both ways. Personally, I am tickled pink that nonsense is over. The longer it stayed in effect the worse off Social Security’s long term solvency looked. Our greatest strength, argument wise, has always been that Social Security hasn’t added one dime to the deficit because it has a separate funding mechanism and doesn’t get any money out of the general fund.   That tax cut expiring isn’t cause to cry “sell out!” It’s cause to heave a sigh of relief.

Now let’s talk about this “super congress” — and try to keep a straight face in the process. That isn’t going to be easy, because no matter who the “delegates” from each side are, I am going to see them in tights with a cape and a mask. I figure as long as Nancy Pelosi is appointing the Democrats, Democratic mainstays will survive unscathed. My faith in Nancy Pelosi is strong and unwavering. My faith in her is why I’m not slitting my wrists.

The Republicans send six of Grover Norquist’s choosing, the Democrats are of Nancy’s choosing and a stalemate ensues. If that’s the case, then the triggers kick in.The only element of any social program that has a gun pointed at it is a 2% cut to Medicare providers, and that is a largely republican constituency. Not only that, I am confident that a hell of a lot more than 2-3% of Medicare’s price-tag is lost to fraud alone.

You know who has the biggest gun of them all pointed at their head though? Defense contractors, and primarily they are located in right-wing states and districts that overwhelmingly voted to send teabaggers to congress last November.

(Personal aside, I will believe it when I see it. Triggers never get pulled in Washington. They always find a way out of following through. Every. Single. Time.)

I get so sick of the way that politicians come out and extoll the vitues of a piece of legislation that does this-or-that “over ten years.”

That sounds good, but it’s bunk. No current Congress can bind or mandate any future Congress to anything.

You don’t like this piece of crap?

Whining about it won’t do jack, and sitting out the next election is just stupid, and I’m not wasting one minute of my precious time on anyone who goes there. What you have to do is get to work. Prioritize, strategize and organize. Walk neighborhoods for Democratic candidates. If you have solid Democratic representation like I do, phone bank for candidates in other districts. Talk to your neighbors and explain to them why they should get involved, too.

What you don’t do is take it lying down, because that cedes ground to the economic terrorists and right-wing radicals of the right.

If you hate this POS, imagine how you will feel about the one tea party-dominated majorities in both houses would send to President Bachmann.

@clairecmc Claire McCaskill

Taking a blanket and pillow to the Capitol. #neveragoodsign 30 Jul

The Satan Sandwich in the U.S. Senate:

Question: On the Motion (Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to S. 365 )

Vote Number: 123 Vote Date: August 2, 2011, 12:16 PM

Required For Majority: 3/5 Vote Result: Motion Agreed to

Measure Number: S. 365

Measure Title: An act to provide for budget control.

Blunt (R-MO), Yea

McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

[emphasis added]

Market Says Screw The Debt Talk, We Need Growth

….By the closing bell the Dow Jones industrial average was off 266 points to 11,867, the S&P 500 33 points to 1,254 and the Nasdaq 75 points to 2,669, with all three down around 2%….

As if anyone was surprised?