Well, it's Mr. Bob! Sounds like you've had a bad day. After that little rant, why don't you call it a night and then tomorrow tell us how you REALLY feel about Rush, Republicans, and conservatives. This is truly amazing, the whole time last month when I was jousting back and forth with you, I thought you were some 22 year old college kid going to Berkley.

So the rich are getting richer, that's great! And, you just educated me tonight. My oil company six figure salary puts me the top 10 percent. Wow! When I got out of High School, I never would have thunk it. Only in America, right? The great land of opportunity.

Do you also know what that means, Bob? I have more money to give to my favorite charities. Because, as I am sure you are well aware of, conservatives families have their liberals counterparts beat by 30% when it comes to charity donations even though liberal families average 6% higher income levels. That's really got to baffle you guys.

You know Mr. Bob, Rush is not alone in his thinking about Obama. I pray everyday that this socialist, spendthrift, joke of a President, policies will fail too. I guess that's going to get me called a racist. Oh well.

Greg, I guess I missed something. I didn't understand you though you were "jousting." That would take a lance. You're working with a toothpick.

It might --but won't--occur to you that the rich typically itemize and look hard for loopholes, and most unrich don't. Consequently, many hourly wage earners' charitable contributions are not entered on tax forms. Then, too, those who earn considerably less than your "six figure" big bucks you're so pumped up about have less discretionary wealth to share. Recall, too,that the IRS estimates that the upper income brackets don't report some 30 percent of their income.

I'd bet Bernie Madoff claimed a bundle, and I'll bet you didn't miss a thing yourself.

The American people have it figured out, Greg. We won. You lost.

One more observation. The IRS doesn't divide tax returns into "liberal" and "conservative" as I'm "sure you're well aware...of."

I seriously doubt that Mr. Pedersen is among the wealthy. I feel sure that his income is middle and at the best upper middle.

He sounds like many middle class Republicans who like to think of themselves a part of the wealthy class, and thus, they don't mind viewing the wealthy class as the ruling class.

In actuality, there are NO statistics that would say that the wealthy are Republican and the poor are Democrat. In truth, income splits don't define party affiliation.

In fact, one of the most baffling aspects of political demographics is the fact that so many struggling middle class individuals align themselves with the goals and interests of the wealthy and often vote against their own best interests. And, conversely, many of the true wealthy are the best Democrats in the nation and care the greatest about the equality, reducing disparity and creating economic justice.

So it is not true that the wealthy are Republican any more than it is true that most Christians are Republican. In truth, both parties have their fair share of both the religious and the secular, as well as the rich and the poor.

Jerry, perhaps you're aware of George Lakoff? He's written several books, the latest "Political Thinking," with essentially the same theses.

! - People more often think emotionally rather than intellectually. The Enlightenment notion that men are "reasoning animals" is largely wrong. As Thomas Hume had it, "reason is the slave of passion."

2 - The basic division of thought is between those who have a "strong father" mentality, and those who have a "nurturing parent" mindset.

3 - The two use different linguistic "frames." Sometimes that means using different words or phrases; sometimes that means each understands the same word differently.

For example, those who opppose all abortion call themselves "pro-life" with the implied opposite being "pro-death." Those who believe it is a matter of individual choice call themselves "pro-choice" which frames the other side as "anti-choice."

To the SF group, "fair" means we deserve what we get. To the NP group, the word is more often to indicate empathy for others.

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Pederson seems to fall into the SF camp, big on individual success, small on empathy for those less "deserving" than he believes he is.

And, Lakoff would say that same broad basic sociological division exists in Christianity. And, as might be expected, those on the "Christian" right are into the Manichean light vs. darkness, good vs. evil mode ("we are correct you are wrong and will be punished"). On the liberal "Christian" side, the emphasis is more on empathy and the conclusion that "good and bad are sometimes woven in a crazy plaid" as the poet Dorothy Parker put it.

Politically, Lakoff argues that those who set the "frame" succeed.

As a writer, Lakoff at time tends to be a little more "academic" than he needs to be, but he is well-worth reading, I believe.

At one time, there was a website...Rockridge Institute, I think it was called.