"Middle class" according to Pew Research Center is just trying to make everyone feel better

MarketWatch here says that Pew estimates middle class household income for a family of 3 at between about $35,000 and $105,000 for 2011.

To understand how too liberally defined that is, consider that in 2011 almost 60% of individual wage earners made $35,000 or less . . . about 91 million wage earners out of 151 million.

Actually the middle third of all those paycheck earners, 50 million, made between just $15,000 annually and not quite $40,000, the average of which is about $27,500. Make over $40,000 and you were already in the top third of individual wage earners that year.

A couple making $27,500 can survive in this world, but it wouldn't have been able to buy the median priced home of $225,000 in 2011. Just financing that without a down payment, an impossibility, at the average 30-year rate of 4.5% in 2011 would have meant 50% of income going to principal and interest.

Putting 10% down would drop that to 45% of income, still hardly affordable. And who do you know making $27,500 with $22,000 saved for a down payment on a house?

They'd be renting, most likely, and not yet solidly middle class.

In 2016 the average median sales price of a home in the US soared to nearly $314,000, putting the American dream even farther out of reach than ever before for the majority.

US drone captures Afghan men having their way with a couple of goats

And you thought retired US Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a goat-fucking child molester.

We should have blown these sick bastards to kingdom come 16 years ago and not wasted one drop of American blood on them.

Video here.

Middle Class: The 30-30-30 countries according to wealth distribution are primarily Germanic

The following are the countries with relatively equal sized lower, middle and upper classes in 2013, meaning roughly 30% have wealth under $10,000, roughly 30% have wealth $10,000 to $100,000, and roughly 30% have wealth in excess of $100,000 up to $1M:

USA: 31-33-31

Austria: 28-32-37

Germany: 29-33-35

New Zealand: 26-34-38

Qatar: 25-38-35

Taiwan: 23-45-31

He ain't dead yet: Ted Cruz sees Trump's Wall, raises him one

Here:

"El Chapo led the Sinaloa drug cartel," Cruz explained. "There is a sense of justice. A sense of, this is what is right, that the people who are violating the border like crazy, we should use their ill-gotten gains [$14 billion] to finally build the wall, and to finally ensure we have the assets to secure the border."

Republicans to fund Planned Parenthood, but not The Wall

Republicans. Doing the opposite of what they promise, just like Democrats.

Story here.

Trump's Mick Mulvaney is letting the Senate's 60-vote rule stand in the way of funding The Wall

Screw the 60-vote rule.

It's a rule dating to 1917, last revised by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 1975.

It's not in the constitution, and the Senate can change the rules any time it wants.

Now would be a good time, but Trump, McConnell & Co. seem content to leave some water in The Swamp, the better to bog down what the people want, my dear.

Mulvaney, quoted here:

MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT & BUDGET: Yes. The problem is the Senate rules, people forget this sometimes, that the spending bills are different than the budget. The underlying budgets sort of move through the House and Senate differently. Anything that passes on reconciliation moves differently. But most bills, including spending bills, take 60 votes in the Senate.

TAPPER: So you need eight Democrats. 

MULVANEY: Got to have eight, which means that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have a place at the table. We recognize that. But that's why we just can't do it on our own.

TAPPER: A source close to efforts to avoid a government shutdown tells CNN that the Republican proposal in the House will not include funding for President Trump's border wall with Mexico. 

Is President Trump willing to sign a government spending bill that does not include that money? 

MULVANEY: Yes, because I think the bill -- at least the offer that we received from the Democrats the last couple of days included a good bit of money for border security. The Democrats said they would go to the mat and shut the government down over the border wall, the bricks and mortar. 

Laugh of the Day: The top one percent in brains tend to become our senators

Gotta be a typo.

Seen here:

Reflecting on the latest findings of longitudinal studies on gifted students, Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program, concluded that children with early cognitive ability “control our society…The kids who test in the top one percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires.”

Michael Savage: There's an easy solution to the shortage of lethal injection drugs, just give 'em an overdose of street heroin

Beautiful!

And clean out all the death rows already.

I've been workin' on the railroad . . ..

The Wall delayed is justice denied

As socialist Venezuela starves, remember Bernie Sanders once said that's the American Dream

Equal poverty for all!

Here, August 2011:

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

Marine Le Pen is popular with France's multitudes of unemployed youth

From the profile, here:

Part of her allure is rooted in the plight of young people in the world’s sixth-largest economy, nearly a quarter of whom are unemployed. On the eve of Le Pen’s rally in Metz, 20-something supporters from across the country came together in the city’s party headquarters to discuss their plans for the following day. It had more the feel of an awkward school dance than a strategy session – they had put out bowls of potato chips and bottles of soda.

Emilien Noé, a former Socialist who coordinates the youth movement in the region, says young people are drawn to the FN’s promise to restore French glory, something they’ve never known. “A lot of young people are living abroad instead of in France, and this is sad for a country like ours,” he says.

Le Pen #I'mWithHer

MOAB left Afghan tunnels used by ISIS "apparently undamaged"

Should have bombed the damn dams of Afghanistan instead.

Put out their lights for good, waste all their water. Send them back to the Stone Age where they belong. And leave.

From the story here:

Afghan special forces troops entered one of the caves used by suspected Isil fighters and found the tunnels apparently undamaged by the explosion. ... Afghan officials claimed that nearly 100 militants and no civilians were killed by the blast but those claims have not been independently verified.

Illegal alien workers in US get $4.2 billion in tax credits: Times five years is plenty to pay for The Wall

From the story here:

[A] July 2011 report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration ... said individuals who are not authorized to work in the U.S. have been paid $4.2 billion in refundable tax credits.

Marine Le Pen sounds just like Michael Savage, calling on France to choose French borders, language and culture

Quoted here after coming in 2nd in the first round of the French elections yesterday: 

It is a very simple choice for France. Either we carry on towards total deregulation without any borders or protection, and all that entails. With international unfair competition, mass immigration, the free trade, and the free circulation of terrorists. 

Or you choose the France with borders that are going to protect her, employment, and a national identity. 

So you have two choices. ...

I am the candidate of the people. I appeal to all sincere.. patriots to join us and abandon old-fashioned quarrels and particpate in the best interest of our country... and the survival of France. We will unite behind the project of renewal and they will be our brothers.

121 years of National Weather Service temperature data show a cooling trend in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Single deadliest attack in 16-year Afghan war, perpetrated by just 10 Taliban, kills over 140

This is payback for the MOAB attack. 

So bomb the water supplies in Afghanistan now. Cut off the money they make from well-irrigated opium.

From the story here:

Dressed in military uniforms, a squad of 10 Taliban militants drove in two army Ford Ranger trucks past seven checkpoints. They arrived inside northern Afghanistan’s largest military installation just as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed soldiers were emerging from Friday Prayers and preparing for lunch.

For the next five hours, the militants went on a rampage, killing at least 140 soldiers and officers in what is emerging as the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the country’s 16-year war. Some assailants blew themselves up among the soldiers fleeing for their lives, according to survivors, witnesses and officials.

Pat Buchanan still believes 3,407 votes "mistakenly" cast for him in Palm Beach County made W president

Here:

[Buchanan] won 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, Florida—a liberal, heavily Jewish community—thanks to the “butterfly ballot” famously confusing many voters. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Buchanan makes no bones about what happened. “The Lord intervened,” he says, grinning. “We sunk Al Gore and won the election for Bush.” 

Like Nader wasn't to blame, or the libertarians, or "other".

There are many ways to cut the cake George W. Bush ate:

Florida Results  Election 2000

Palm Beach County Results Election 2000

Tim Alberta profiles our old general, Pat Buchanan: This is the last chance for our ideas

Here in Politico Magazine.

Hungarian razor wire border fencing like this has cut illegal immigration to a trickle, so to speak