The land of the deluded

The Missus and I were sitting around this morning with our coffee and wondering when, exactly, the shitstorm of stupid started. We didn’t manage to quite track it back to Ronald Reagan before the kid started torturing the cat, but we did manage to come up with a number of extremely aggravating thoughts.

Our first topic was what the hell has happened to the standard of medical care in this country that we’re now reading reports and statistics that look like they come out of a third world country? Ol’ Dr. Sanjay was on the TV talking about “What you should do if you’re in the emergency room and nobody is paying attention and you think you’re going to die.” That’s All American, ain’t it?

In the last 14 months both of our fathers have passed away, and I’ll tell you right now that out here in middle America their ain’t no “House” coming in with a miracle cure. Not even much in the way of “Marcus Welby” around to keep up with things.

So my wife asks me this morning:

“Why am I staying awake nights trying to figure out how to protect my Mom’s financial assets from the government?” Hmmm. Mostly because the government her parents (and mine, for that matter) paid taxes and social security to, supported and believed in would have her expend all of her assets (except domicile) before paying substantially for her medical care?

I notice that former senators and congressmen don’t seem to have the same concerns with their government-issue, taxpayer-funded insurance coverage.

Later on, driving in to work I’m listening to NPR and a little interview with John McCain about the economy. I’ll pause for a moment to point out that McCain is the only GOP candidate I have even a shred of respect for, and that’s because he’s the only one with enough of a moral compass to take a stand against torture as government policy. The rest are little more than slavering boot-licks that toady to a pack of self-deluded bigots who have forgotten so much of what America once stood for that they believe they are Americans.

But I digress.

So McCain’s solution to our economic woes is to reduce the corporate income tax rate.

That’s fucking brilliant. That will finally resolve the problem of that long line of corporate CEOs down at the bank who are all begging for loans to make the next payment on their Benz. Or have I missed something? My take on things is that a lot of what could be corporate profit (‘shareholder value’) is ending up in executive compensation packages.

Personally, I would like to be able to screw up my job so badly that my company loses billions of dollars in one quarter and then get fired with a multi-million dollar severance package. And I won’t even ask to use the company jet. Anybody else want in on that deal with me?

I don’t pretend to be a wizard at macro-economics, but please don’t shit on my head and then tell me everything will be allright if I’d only help you eat some more steak-n-eggs.