The Washington Clown Show

Oh, hai.  I've been busy.  I had foot surgery (on both feet, cause I'm a f*ckin' wimp and if I did one and it hurt too much I wouldn't have done the other -- so shut the eff up about it) and was home recuperating from it for a month and a half and couldn't be bothered.

But I'm back and some things have happened in the meantime that have really gotten my attention and knickers in a twist.

The first was Occupy Wall Street.  These are a bunch of frustrated folks without a clear message.  Personally, I think they should rally behind this message:

Yes, the rich are richer and poor poorer.  We all know that.  But the problem isn't unequal distribution of wealth.  The *real* problem is unequal distribution of tax effects.  The rich pay nearly next to nothing in taxes in terms of the IMPACT that tax burden has on them, as a class.  Unlike the poor, who take a real body-slam, taxation-wise, compared to the rich.

We need to even out the effect of taxes on the classes so that if a poor person has to sacrifice the equivalent value of a loaf of bread to the tax man, then a rich SOB should suffer an equivalent burden, i.e., they should sacrifice the equivalent value of owning a 4-star restaurant.  In Manhattan.  Or Beverly Hills.

The second thing has been watching the spectacle of the Republican Circus-Clown Volkswagen as it disgorged it's content on national tv, seemingly every 3 days for the past 2 months.

If I hear the message clearly (and I think I do), it is this:

The Republican Party policy is:  that we should live in an abortion and gay-free America, where everyone who earns less than $1,000,000 per year must marry and endlessly procreate for the purpose of providing illiterate, underpaid workers and cannon fodder who will die, in the harness or in the trenches, before the age of 50, thus saving the rich from having to keep them in their old age.

Have I misread that?