The word of the day is...

...austerity. You hear calls for it all the time from the crew that runs Congress these days. Apparently, these folks are unaware that things are already pretty austere for the nearly 25 million Americans who are un- or under-employed or the nearly 50 million without health insurance.

If these people have their way, things will get even more austere for the millions of seniors who depend on Medicare and Social Security and the tens of millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid for everything from pre-natal to nursing home care.

AUSTERITY is bad medicine at a time when the world economy is sliding towards a double dip recess.

SPEAKING OF AUSTERITY, you won't find a whole lot of it amongst the very wealthy.

STILL SPEAKING OF AUSTERITY, conservative ideologues seem to want to destroy the economy in order to save it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED