Still unbelievable...

In America, today, an annual income of $150,000 is rich. Not wildly, mind-blowingly rich, but rich. That's a weekly paycheck of almost $3,000--before taxes--while the median income would provide a weekly check of about $850.

What does John McCain think the break point to rich--just in income--is?

$100,000--per week.

If you make two and a half times--in a week--as much as the average American makes in a year, John McCain thinks that you're rich. If you make less than that, you're middle class.

The median income earner--firmly middle class, by definition, being right in the middle--makes about three times what the minimum wage earner does. Rich--at $150,000--means that you make about ten times what a minimum wage worker does.

At McCain's barely rich number?

333 times as much.

McCain's barely rich earner makes more than 33 times as much as the real barely rich person. Given the same distribution as really exists, the (mythical) median income earner in John McCain's (fantasy) world earns about $1.4 million per year. And minimum wage would be $250/hr.

And Peacebang wonders why there are some people who are hostile to the rich? It's not the mere wealth. It's the cluelessness and the arrogance--and the effect that cluelessness and arrogance has on the rest of us that stirs it. It's the class warfare that's waged as a normal daily thing on those who aren't making enough money to even exist in McCain's world.

Unbelievable.

McCain's interview with Warren:

Warren: Define rich. Everybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich and -- but not the poor, the middle class. At what point -- give me a number, give me a specific number -- where do you move from middle class to rich? Is it 100,000, it is 50,000, 200 [thousand]? How does anybody know if we don't know what the standards are?

McCain: ... [elliptical chatter]... "I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich.... [more off-topic chatter]... So I think if you're just talking about income, how about five million.

Hear that, America? If you're only making a million bucks a year in income, you're working poor in John McCain's book.

Those of us who make something within sight of the median income ($42,000/yr) aren't even in sight of the poverty level.

More sometime after I pick my jaw off the floor.

Out. Of. Touch.

This so quickly after talking about renegotiating the water compact with other states, in Colorado--which is akin to urinating on a high voltage line.

Utterly. Out. Of. Touch.

Hypocrisy: Dope Slap!

Elliot Spitzer, having prosecuted a prostitution case and fulminated about how awful it was... gets busted for paying for sex in D.C. (a crime in the District), and for arranging for his obscenely expensive prostitute to come from New York (a federal crime, a violation of the Mann Act). For that, he gets a dope slap (he had to have been familiar with the Mann Act, it's not exactly new or obscure...) as well as a verbal flogging for the hypocrisy.

Of course, there's plenty to go around. The Republican Governors Association called for Spitzer to resign within hours.

The Governor of New York should immediately resign from office and allow the people of New York to pursue honest leadership. The American people are tired of corrupt and hypocritical politicians. The Governor of New York is just another in the long list of politicians that have failed their constituents." – Nick Ayers, RGA Executive Director

Curiously, they haven't gotten around to calling for Senator Vitter, or Senator Craig to resign. No doubt it's a backlog in their heavy duty moralizing schedule that's to blame. Not even that they're wrong. I think he ought to resign. It's just that they lack the, uh... moral stature... to call for it without it being a complete joke. Heck, they haven't even called for an investigation into Senator McCain's close and disturbingly intimate (even to his own staff) relationship with a lobbyist (of course, it's not clear to me if McCain's relationship--if accurately depicted--would violate the Mann Act or not).

It's just marvelous to me that each of these men has thrown stones from their little glass houses. Hubris, indeed.