It's lovely these bastards(Lieberman) could be so blind to the hell all of them have helped create...Apparently leadership, hard-work and honor are construed as being optional to barely necessary by the top 1% these days. How else can you explain the lack of effort and sacrifice put forth by these slugs?

Much as I loathe defending Richard Cohen, and the way the man brags about his ignorance of the world bank is disgusting, the District of Columbia does rank 24 out of 51 states and territories in the same database.
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2003/R07T040.htm

the District of Columbia does rank 24 out of 51 states and territories in the same database

Sure, but that has nothing to do with the "Washington" that Cohen's talking about. He means the official Washington sea in which Wolfowitz swims. (Wolfowitz doesn't live in Washington, but in Chevy Chase in Montgomery County.) Official Washington is the rich suburbs, plus parts of Northwest DC. The rest of the actual city of Washington is mostly black, and completely ignored by official Washington.

Is a median household income of $42K considered "middle-class"? It places DC in the middle of the rankings of median incomes, but that's not a definition of "middle-class". That's one full-time person making $20/hr. or two full-time people making $10/hr. Is that "middle-class"?

According to the National Association of Realtors, that's about 10% of the 2006 median home price in the DC metro area:

http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/files/MSAPRICESF.pdf

It used to be that middle-class was defined in part by the ability to buy property.

When it comes to these debates, I always wonder what measures people use to define "middle-class".

"Is a median household income of $42K considered "middle-class"?"
================
No, it merely shows that depending on statistical "averages" to demonstrate a point usually leads to fallacious interpretations.

The affinity of congress for the so-called middle class is no doubt reflected by their inability to raise the minimum wage in ten long years. Apparently congress never heard of inflation despite regular Joe Joe Lieberman’s heart rending story of how he emerged from the middle class. I have long felt that the wealthy don’t want just most of the money, they want all the money and will not be satisfied until the have all the money.

the District of Columbia does rank 24 out of 51 states and territories in the same database

Also, and more to the point -- that ranking of DC is highly misleading. The actual city of Washington could never be called "relentlessly middle class" unless you'd call El Salvador "relentlessly middle class." Like El Salvador, it has a tiny white overclass, a small, struggling middle class, and a large non-white underclass.

Don't you see? In the Worker's Paradise of the People's Democratic Republic of America, the people are all made so wealthy that the working class, middle class and upper class all blend into one glorius whole!

Since when does having a high median income make you one of the wealthiest counties? That says nothing about total income per county, and it apparently doesn't measure the net wealth of the residents. To be accurate, I think you have to limit the statistic to what it actually describes, not "wealth."

Richard Cohen's ignorance of just about everything is encyclopedic. He is ignorant about the World Bank, his own town of residence, and he knows that if he starts growing a brain and writing the truth, like his fellow WaPo wordsmiths David Ignatius, Charles Krauthammer and George Will, the ignoramuses who lap up his drivel will move elsewhere. The Post has only a few really good columnists, and Cohen is not one of them.

In America there are only three classes that dare speak their name:

The Lower Middle Class
The Middle Class
The Upper Middle Class

there is nothing but middle. politically everyone is in the middle. economically everyone is in the middle. intellectually everyone is in the middle. morally everyone is in the middle. everyone sees both sides of everything, but claims there are no sides to see; so everyone is blind, and deaf, and senseless, and does not know it, and cannot.

and the purpose of government is to exalt the middle; and the purpose of the society is to create the middle; and the purpose of the middle is to exist and receive blessings from itself.

hallelujah.

it's not just in America, EMH. it's the same in almost every society that decides to take to the western style of democracy that they cannot begin to conceive that they are significantly more privileged than those below them.

"Official Washington is the rich suburbs, plus parts of Northwest DC. The rest of the actual city of Washington is mostly black, and completely ignored by official Washington."

One reason DC will never get statehood is the one-third illiteracy rate in DC, which is a shame beyond comprehension.

Wolfowitz is being hounded for reasons having nothing to do with anything except left-wing politics and the hatred of fifty Muslim nations in the World Bank for a Jewish man with a Muslim girl-friend.

What is interesting is there really is no definition of what middle class is though certainly most people have their own idea of what it is which is that they see themselves as middle class if they be a blue collar worker, white collar worker or what have you. What is also interesting is that classes evolve not from what form of government you have but from the fact that you have developed a monetary system. Societies that do not have monetary systems do not have separate classes. For example there was only one Native American tribe in the U.S. proper that developed a monetary system and it was the only tribe that developed separate classes. To the people in the top tier, the top one percent, everyone in classes that are lower than them are seen as a necessary evil, an end to a means. They despise us and fear us yet they cannot live without us so they will always try to control us with what ever tools that are handy, the most handy being the press.

Wolfowitz is being hounded for reasons having nothing to do with anything except left-wing politics

Dave, you have a point here, if by "left-wing politics" you mean "the politics of 97% of humanity."

Dave and Scruggs have precisely made the point WHY conservatives continue to miserably fail to convince "leftists" (e.g. any rational person) that they are correct!

The narrow, elistist, xenophobic, race-baiting, fear-mongering, ideologically-blinded and just plain stupid myopia of neocons and their fascistic followers are so out-of-touch with reality that they are to be pitied rather than scorned!!!

Scruggs, when you finally pass the through the gates of hell, remember to ask Hitler and Stalin how that worldview worked for them and compare experiences just for the fun of it!

Ricky I agree. I think they are to be EXPOSED and allowed to display their stupidity just enough to make it easy, a lot like Scruggsy just did. By the way, how's that foot tasting big-mouth?

Remember Kids: These aren't conservatives, they're FUCKING CRAZY!

Rick & [],

You may want to recalibrate your joke-detection mechanism.

Joke? Is that how you leftists treat perfectly respectable dissent?! No wonder the Left rattles around in the dustbin of history, irrelevant and impotent yet capable of destroying all that's good and decent.

Scruggs

You've really learned the neoconservative mantra; when you have NOTHING (e.g. good sense, ethics, knowledge of any sort) then throw a description of yourself back at your opponents!

I do really pity you.

We're through the Looking Glass, people! Black is white, white is black!

(you'll have to supply the Kevin Costner accent yourselves)

Spare me your pity, leftist hater of humanity, you'll need for it yourself when reality checks in. Dialectical neoconservatism will eventually expose the contradictions in your world view. The ineluctable truth of it marches on, past the dustbin in which you rattle away in leftist hopelessness, past the shop windows you break, past the park benches where you do your drugs, lost in nostalgia for the sixties.

actually, this illustrates why, instead of statehood, DC should be incorporated into either Virginia or Maryland(therebye rendered a mite less crazy-shaped, presumably), and then some of the tax revenue from those suburbs should get rolled in to pay for DC's creaky infrastructure, et al.

Only the moment this happens we'd have to watch out for the GOP trying to gerrymander away the DC voting bloc, or prevent it ahead of time as part of the terms of the constitutional ammendment that changed the present state of affairs.

I think Scruggs is just joshing us.

But I'm not sure about daveinboca - I mean, hate Wolfie for being Jewish with a Muslim girlfriend? As a proud member of the far left - I don't give a rat's ass who is zooming whom.

But I do care about murder, wars of aggression, torture, cheating, lying and stealing. Which it appears Wolfie has done lots of of, and his pillow partner (a person with a stomach of steel, I think, after watching Wolfie on TV) has her own little agenda - and it involves $$$$$, lots of it.

A wink of the eye to Scruggs!!!

scruggs: cosell! do howard cosell!

When I was growing up there, Montgomery County was the richest county in the nation, and we were relentlessly middle class all the same.

I usually tend to view class through a mis-reading of Domination Theory: If you've got a boss but no underlings, you're the underling/working/lower class. If you've got both a boss and underlings, you're in the middle class. If you've got underlings but no boss, you're upper/capitalist class.

That would tend to mean that my economic interactions (as a computer guy) would be similar to that of an auto-mechanic: at best just a hired gun, at worst a greasemonkey, which isn't too far off, IME.

You can subdivide things further by exact reach and attitude: ruling class, upper-lower-middle class, etc.

so we should measure the wealth of the nation in terms of median personal decision authority, and start planning to help those most in need of approval. in fact — just turn over the entire society to myspace — then let the bleeding hearts befriend the friendless.

Hey there, Rick. I guess that wink means I'm busted? Oh, well. I wasn't real happy as a wingnut anyway.

Hibiscus, James is measuring class from the bottom of the pit upwards. Wealth is nearly irrelevant to that, except insofar as wealth disparities enforce control. The top of the heap couldn't care less, generally, about the national good and only act for the commonweal as a last resort.

Scruggs:

But it was a fun argument!!

Whats most fun about that argument is that there are so few of those crazy asses left, WE have simulate one for effect. My God, the world is turning for the best!

not barking at james; barking at toy james gave

always confused by class discussions these days when most are in deep debt, and somewhat put off by not looking at the whole western hemisphere as the true economy in which we are placed, and by which we should judge our social and economic status; it's not wrong to say, except for the top-top-top, that the rest of US citizens are very close in income, compared to the scary tail-off south of us

people say we're not a united states anymore, but i think instead we're not states, instead we're one big town that nearly everybody who's anybody commutes out of, to the real places where their lives are exciting, while the locals all drink and wait

Got it.

You make an interesting point Hibby. I would take it a bit further, however. The Southern "tail-off" to which you refer will not be last for long. I fully expect a hemispheric role revesal in my lifetime. We will see how many people are mocking Chavez, Lula and Kirchner when our beloved capitalist system crashes its unevitable crash.

i make no predictions, other than that bolivia will run out of water in a decade, because i am cruel