Because being the world's oldest profession means never having the day off

Around here, we always thought that a good leading indicator of how the economy is going is how much disposable income is going out the door to ummm…. less-than-ecclesiastical pursuits. Apparently, we’re wrong.

Yeah, we know what you were thinking. Congress did break for five weeks over the summer and will be in recess over the elections. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Story here.

Now, About This Whole "Compromise" Business....

Lately, there seems to be an obsession in the press over the word “compromise”. As noted in the attached article, members of Congress aren’t playing nicely with each other right now, particularly with respect to the SCHIP bill which was commented upon here and which would’ve expanded health insurance coverage for families making what we would consider, very middle-class dough. After the bill passed the first time around it was vetoed by the President and the Democrats began working to get enough votes to override the veto.

(Another word-trend we’ve noticed lately: The SCHIP program in virtually all the news accounts we have read, including the one linked to above, is not merely the “SCHIP program” but the “popular SCHIP Program”. This is reminiscent of that home-spun truism, “Any program that counts on stealing from Peter to pay Paul, can count on the unfailing support of Paul.”)

As the Democrats were working on a “compromise” to peel-off Republican votes, their water-carriers were simultaneously ramping up attacks on the Republicans for refusing health care to children of families that earned 4 times the poverty level. Bastards! The Republicans felt back-doored by this stunt and have, for the most part, refused to go along with any sort of “compromise” that involved lowering the threshold to merely 3 times the poverty level.

And this failure to “compromise” is all a bad thing, you see, because if a horrendous piece of legislation is made slightly less horrendous, then everybody ought to just shake on it and get R done, right? It’s a compromise! Look at us work together! Everybody’s in bed with everybody else! Whoopee! Compromise: “Making the sucky only slightly less sucky.”

Its all been pretty humorous as now the Democrats are wondering where all those free-wheeling, good-time, rock’n’roll Republicans that blew out the stops on spending when they were in the majority have now gone. Well, to the wood shed as it appears that these clowns may finally be getting the message from their constituents on what lost them the mid-term elections in ’06.