He's back to the good old, "I'm a POW so don't be talkin to me bout houses" shit. And after a long answer about being a POW he doesn't even get the number of houses right - he completely missed his ranch in Montana which is definitely a place he stays at quite often. I thought he had 4 places he lives in, but now it sounds like 5 + another 2-7 "investment" properties, depending on which count you believe.
This really brings up 2 points: First he's overdoing this POW shit and it's fucking annoying. Second, is that he's, well, extremely rich, and I'll let this great article I just read called "Why McCain's Wealth Matters" explain why that is an important point. I'm gonna put the entire thing right here for you guys to read cause it gives some interesting facts that I didn't even know.
So McCain is rich. Or, his wife is rich, and that makes him rich too. Wasn't there some movie where Dudley Moore was engaged to a women with megabucks, and he kept getting drunk and introducing her to people as my 'financier' (instead of fiancée)?
For all the ink spilled over this last week, two related issues were under-explored, the latter of which is especially important: what's 'rich,' and why does it matter? What does McCain's wealth, and the way he talks about it, reveal about his ability to be a successful president?
On the first point--what means 'rich'?--there's no simple answer, no line in the economic sand that divides the rich from the rest. I'll get to the income data in a second, but they're only of marginal help here.
For one, there's tremendous geographical variation. If your family income is $100,000 in a rural area of a low-income state, you're well off. That income in Manhattan arguably puts you in the middle-class.
This example also suggests that there's a relative component to "rich." To be rich means you breath the rarified air in the upper reaches of the income scale. In a series of recent revealing remarks, McCain said he thought an income of $5 million made you rich. There's no doubt that's true, but if that's your income cutoff, almost nobody's rich.
The often-cited work of income analysts Piketty and Saez (see Table 0) reveals that admission to the top 1% of the income scale will run you a cool $375,000. Too many common folk there for your taste? Then you'll need about $600K to move up to the top half of the top 1% (i.e., the top 0.5%).
What's that? You want to roll with some serious money? It'll cost you $2 million to break into the top 0.1% (the top tenth of the top percent), and $10.5 million for the top 0.01% -- the top one-hundredth of the top one percent, average income: $30 million.
So yes, Cindy's $100 million in wealth, inherited from her family business, puts the McCain family solidly up there in the narrowest sliver of the richest of the rich. But numbers like these only give you an upper bound. Certainly, there are more rich people in America than those who reside in the 15,000 households of the top 0.01%.
My research on income class has led me to take a less quantitative approach to the question of who's middle class, rich, poor, etc. I think it has much to do with your choices and your access to opportunities.
Rich people's choices are generally not constrained by lack of income (boy, that sounds really obvious, but read on). Years ago when I worked with poor clients in New York City, I remember someone telling me they thought about cost before making a long-distance phone call.
Move up the "choices chain" and you get the picture. Middle class people tend not to think twice about a phone call, but a baby sitter, dinner, and a movie, is not a slam dunk right now, what with prices up and incomes down. And speaking of the price of transportation, vacations don't become "stay-cations" for rich people. Their choice set isn't constrained that way.
These choices may sound kind of trivial, but of course, there are real life-changing opportunities at stake here. One of my favorite -- well, least favorite, really -- factoids to make this point has to do with access to higher education. Once you control for cognitive ability, high-testing, low-income kids have the same (low) college completion rates as low-testing high-income kids. We do not, my fellow HuffPosters, reside in a meritocracy.
(If I may shamelessly tout my own work with colleagues at EPI, please read our forthcoming chapter on income mobility from the new State of Working America, out Labor Day -- though I'll see if I can get the mobility chapter posted here ASAP. It's a tour through this critical question of how challenging it is for people to get ahead given the mobility barriers they face these days. To us, this strikes at the heart of a basic American economic value. We may not believe in equal outcomes in this country, but we sure believe in equal opportunities. And the data on inequality and mobility suggest this basic value is under siege.)
Oh, and yes, if you don't know how many homes you own, you're definitely rich. (When I told my sister about this McCain gaffe last week, she responded: "Well, I don't know how many pairs of shoes I own." See...it's all relative.)
Which brings us to he who would be president. I understand and appreciate the urgency in campaigns to frame your opponent. In this case, the Obama team jumped quickly and effectively on these gaffes to paint McCain as elite and out-of-touch. But beyond the campaign politics, what do these statements, and more pointedly, his wealth, say about McCain as president?
After all, FDR was rich, and his empathy and energy devoted to helping the have-nots was boundless. Lots of politicians who came from humbler backgrounds but ended up rich, like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, or for that matter, Barack Obama, also built a policy agenda to offset the status quo regarding inequality and opportunity. Is it simply that rich Democrats get this in a way rich Republicans don't?
Perhaps so, though I'm sure there's lots of exceptions. Problem is, I don't think McCain is one of them. It is important to view his comments in the context of his agenda, which is as unempathic as his gaffes. As I pointed out last week (see Figure 1 here), his tax plan delivers by far the biggest boost to the average incomes of the richest households; Obama's plan does the opposite. McCain really does double-down on Bushonomics, which takes the inequities inherent in today's market outcomes, and injects them with a dose of steroids.
From this perspective, the problem isn't that he's rich. It's that his wealth is part of a package that strongly suggests he can't relate to the economic struggles faced by so many people from households that don't reside in the top "fractiles" of the income distribution. And if you can't relate, you're much less likely to craft and move a policy agenda that will help, a shortcoming we've seen much too much of in recent years.
This whole dust up reminded me of a CNBC spot I was on with Phil Gramm when he was still McCain's top economic advisor. He was going on about the supply-side, trickle-down nonsense that fits ever so neatly into these guys view of wealth. Arguing his case, Gramm said something like, "I've never been offered a job by a poor person. Have you?"
If government helps rich people, so goes this mythology, they'll unleash a torrent of economic activity that they're sitting on now because tax rates are too high. Cut the regulations that bind them, the taxes that squelch their incentives, and they'll not just lift their own economic fates, but those of the least advantaged as well.
The evidence, of course, points precisely in the opposite direction, but, and here's the kicker, these folks are impenetrable to evidence, and I fear their privileged positions make them so. Their wealth insulates them from reality in a way that you don't see from the other rich folk noted above.
It's not just that McCain can't relate to have nots, it's that he doesn't really want to. He wants to pull the levers that Phil Gramm and others tell him work best, and since he doesn't relate to folks who know very well how many homes they own -- though they may be uncertain whether they'll own them next month -- he lacks the motivation to question whether these levers actually work.
I don't care how much money our president has (though the seven homes thing really does seem beyond the pale given today's housing climate). But I deeply want him or her to understand the economic plight of those with less, and the evidence regarding the policies allegedly designed to help. When their wealth operates like empathy-killing blinders, then that wealth is a problem...a big one.
To listen to McCain last week, and to do so while poring over his policy agenda, really does suggest the dangerous degree to which he's out-of-touch. The Obama folks are right. We'd better work to keep him out of yet another house: the white one on Pennsylvania Ave.
Oh yeah, this is definitely a heater. Haven't had one of these in a LONGGGG time, but the timing is fucking awesome cause I'm in the process of moving up to NL100. Hopefully it lasts long enough to hit 5k, that way I can cash out 1k and still have 40 BI to keep playing NL100.
Here's today's graph... I'm running good in the sense that I get lots of good cards and when I get action they hold up. I'm playing well and not getting my money in bad very often at all, so I'm not sucking out on people. I started out on NL50 and when I realized I was in heater mode (won 3 BI really fast) I started replacing my tables with NL100 ones till I had 8 NL100 going. Won 2 BI there.
I'm not gonna let it get to my head this time - now I know what a serious heater feels like and also know what it's like to break even for long stretches of time. The first 27,000 hands or so of this month were a break even stretch. Check out this month so far - fucking rollercoaster and now I'm on a serious climb.
Funny cause my profit for the month is like $1,200 and as you can see I made all of that in the last 4 days, hahaha.
Need to play more hands though - only ~500 today and it's not enough to get lots of VPP. Luckily I do have the weekend before the month ends so hopefully I can put int 5k hands on fri/sat/sun which should push me over if I play 3k hands during the week, which is definitely possible.
Whew, let's hope it lasts. Usually when I make a blog post about doing well the next session I get destroyed, hehe.
I can't believe it! I've been in a pretty big lull for a while now, about the last 2 weeks. I couldn't break 2k and was constantly up and down between $1,500 and $2,000. Thursday I sat down to play with $1,600 in my BR and today I make this post with $2,400. So things obviously went pretty well finally!
Last 4 days:
August:
I'm at 36,000 hands for the month and 8,400 VPP. To make platinum star I need 1,600 VPP by the end of the month. I figured if played 45,000 hands @ NL50 I'd make it. I'm not sure if I'll make it or not, it's going to be very close cause I don't think I'm going to have much time before the month ends.
I had a seriously long session last night which ended @ 6am. I took a break near the end and read sniders blog about taking a shot, and it inspired me to play some NL100. My plan is to move up to NL100 with 3k, but I was feeling good and went for it and things went well. Ran into a cooler with KK right away, but made it back and came out with a 1.5 buyin win. I think that once I hit 3k I will go to NL100 full time, but till then I'll warmup on NL50 and take shots if the NL100 tables are good. VPP come a lot quicker @ NL100 so if I move up before the end of the month I should make platinum easily. Once I'm @ NL100 full time I should also maintain platinum until I make supernova. I need 23,300 VPP for supernova and I have 4 months, so I am pretty sure I will make it. But the sooner the better!
natdogg40: checks
k2o4 : bets $12
25 Bonds: raises $12 to $24
natdogg40: raises $21 to $45 and is all-in
25 Bonds said, "you really had ace king???"
k2o4 : ?
I think this is a fold . When bonds raised I thought "he has JT or QT" and then natdog got in and I said "FUCK". Then I thought about it for a bit and figured one guy could have QJ and one could have JT, and I thought natdog could be JTs and called flop cause of odds and now he hit. AK didn't seem to fit cause he was nitty enough to fold the flop with AK.
Don't miss the stats up top and the info on the bottom. Please post a comment on what you'd do before you check the spoiler with the hand results.
natdogg40: checks
k2o4 : bets $12
25 Bonds: raises $12 to $24
natdogg40: raises $21 to $45 and is all-in
25 Bonds said, "you really had ace king???"
k2o4 : raises $12.60 to $57.60 and is all-in
Azur_2007 said, "VERY interesting hand !"
25 Bonds said, "had low straight"
25 Bonds: calls $33.60
River (Pot : $175.95)
Showdown k2o4 : shows (a full house, Threes full of Jacks)
25 Bonds: mucks hand
k2o4 collected $25.20 from side pot
natdogg40: shows (four of a kind, Jacks)
natdogg40 collected $147.75 from main pot
Summary Total pot $175.95 Main pot $147.75. Side pot $25.20. | Rake $3
Board
Seat 1: 25 Bonds mucked
Seat 2: banshee1337 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Azur_2007 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Tiger041180 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: natdogg40 showed and won ($147.75) with four of a kind, Jacks
Seat 6: k2o4 showed and won ($25.20) with a full house, Threes full of Jacks
I think it's a good choice. Welcome to the fight Joe!
As to Biden, since the late 1980s he has established a consistent record as the brightest analyst of American foreign policy at work in Washington. Not all of his ideas have been fantastic winners, but on almost every issue he's been months or years ahead of the rest of Washington and he's proposed better policies than have been followed by administrations of either party. When I worked on the Hill a while back, Biden's policy speeches were some of the only ones that people on other staffs would bother to print out and read. Worth looking in the Congressional Record; he gave a several-part address on U.S. policy after the Cold War sometime around 1991 that was about the most perceptive policy analysis I heard at the start of that wasted decade.
Biden is, simply, the smartest strategic thinker in Washington today. He's also a serious student of the Constitution. His areas of expertise are perfectly suited to the challenges America faces right now.
Also moving this pic up from my other post since I'm already bumping it off. Earlier this year, the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation did an analysis of the net worth of each of the 535 members of Congress based on their personal financial disclosure.
Things have been slow politically lately, and by slow I mean I could live with only making 1 blog post a day. I think the combination of McCain's newest gaffe about houses plus the upcoming VP selection and Dem Convention means that I'm about to go to 2-3 posts a day for a week or so. This is my preemptive apology, because I know it's gonna be more than most of you wanna see, haha. I'm going to try and keep em short though.
For now I just wanna link to a fun article I just read... here's a excerpt followed by a link to click if you wanna keep reading.
It's probably time for the Republicans to panic.
Reason the first: despite all of the McCain campaign attacks of the last six weeks and, naturally, Senator McCain's whiteness and military service, the McCain campaign can't, as Pat Buchanan likes to say, "close the deal." He can't overtake Senator Obama in the polls given the roster of assaults on Obama's patriotism and character as well as the continued accusations that Obama, according to the McCain campaign and the barbecue media, is a skinny, exotic, infanticidal, egg-headed evildoer.
Reason the second, and more importantly: Senator McCain appears to be losing his shpadoinkle. When he admitted that he doesn't know how many houses he and his heiress wife own, it might not have been because he owns too many houses to count. Instead, it could be that he simply couldn't remember how many houses he owns.
Brit Hume once called this kind of glitch "a senior moment," but how many senior moments can a guy have before we seriously begin to question whether, for example, in the middle of an international crisis, he's going to forget who the president of Russia is and then bomb Berlin thinking that Putin is the president of Germany. Oh. Wait.
Ask any homeowner how many houses they own and they'll probably answer correctly -- or, if they're crazy rich, they'll at least answer within the margin of error (+/- one house). Ask Senator Obama and he'll probably answer correctly (one). Yet Senator McCain simply couldn't remember. Slipped his mind. Even if he had answered, but answered incorrectly, it still would've been a problem, but nowhere near this level.
"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you."
He could've totally invented a number like Grandpa Simpson, "I got 'dickety' houses! Why 'dickety'? Because the Kaiser stole the word 'eight'!" But McCain blanked. "It's condominiums," was the extent of the information he could muster. That's sort of like asking your bank for your checking account balance and they reply, "Errrm. It's dollars."
This is a semi-bump, semi new post. I made a in depth blog post yesterday which I thought was pretty good but it didn't get that many views, so this bump is in the hope that people scroll down and check it out. I also found 2 vids I wanna post. One is Olbermann following my lead (haha jk) on the POW card and houses shit, and the other is the "Fabulous Life of John McCain"
So please scroll down and check out the blog post below!
I'm so sick of the fucking POW card. Sick and tired of it. Anytime McCain does something wrong they say "he was a POW and tortured, leave him alone". When you try to say that POW experience doesn't qualify him for being president people lose their shit as if you're questioning his patriotism or whether he was a hero. I totally agree with General Wesley Clark when he said "Well I don't think riding in a fighter plan and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
Wesley Clark's Statement
Now McCain can't remember HOW MANY HOUSES HE HAS, and what do they do? McCain's campaign plays the fucking POW card again and say "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison."
Yep, so even though he can't remember how many he has, and when he asks his aides they tell him 4, even though he has 7, it's all good, forget about it, he is a POW and you best not be questioning McCain on anythin.
See all of McCain's Houses
I'm tired of it. I'm sick of it. I'm angry about it. And I'm not going to be scared to say shit about McCain because he was a POW, and I'm not going to give his POW status more credit than it deserves. Yes it's pretty fucking hardcore to survive that shit. I give him props for that. But surviving a POW camp 30 years ago and running the country right now are 2 different things. His policies of today are way different than his policies of 8 years ago, so why should I think what he did 30 years ago reflects how he will act now? The character that I assumed he would have developed from that experience hasn't shown it's face lately as he has gone from the straight talking moderate to a manipulating,smearing, fear mongering conservative so that he can win this election and appeal to the far right.
The other thing that drives me crazy is how McCain made a point about how he doesn't want to talk about Vietnam, how he didn't want to make his POW story what his campaign was about, but he's done the exact opposite and turned the POW story into his entire narrative. McCain is saying that he's a war hero cause of his POW experience and HE puts his country first, while Obama is an elitist snob who is willing to lose a war to win an election. That's McCain's story and I call BULL-FUCKING-SHIT on it. He went from saying "oh I don't want to talk about my POW experience" to using it as the answer to several of the questions at the Saddleback forum and playing it as a trump card whenever he fucks up. "Yeah, he can't remember how many houses he has, but forget about that, HE'S A WAR HERO! HE WAS A POW! RESPECT DAT!"
So he went from this:
In his first presidential campaign, eight years ago, John McCain went out of his way to avoid talking about his military background. Four years ago, when John Kerry campaigned in part on his military service, McCain criticized him for it, saying he was “sick and tired of re-fighting the Vietnam War.” McCain even disparaged Kerry personally, saying his emphasis on his military record is “clearly a tactical or strategic move.”
To this:
McCain's Cross Story @ Saddleback
It reminds me of that Jib-Jab video from 2004 with Kerry always saying "I have 3 purple hearts!" Now I feel like it's McCain screaming "I was a POW and I'm a war hero!" as if that's the only fucking thing that matters.
I'm sticking with Obama, cause like me he has 1 house, and like me he grew up without a father, and like me he experimented with drugs in his teen years but then got his head on straight, and like me he took on loans to pay for college, and like me he spent time working in the community, and like me he has lived in other parts of the world and seen serious poverty first hand.... Obama is a hell of a lot more like me than McCain is and I'm sick of this constant effort by the GOP to say that he's "different". They're trying to paint a question mark over his head and say "you don't know him, he's different, stick with the guy you know, vote McCain!"
I'm not scared of a black man with a funky name, so it's not going to work on me. Obama 08 is thx.
I enjoyed this clip of Obama talking about all of this house and economy shit, so I'll close with it.
And this is what I sit down to - the horror. A 4 buyin loss in about 300 hands. I played well but just got raped over and over again. Here are my top 10 winning hands and then top 10 losing hands. Notice the All in EV on the far right... the pain. (this is @ NL50)
And here are the 4 biggest losing hands. Notice how my 5th biggest losing hand was only $11.50. Overall I was doing well avoiding big pots without a good hand, but I was also getting no action on the few good hands I made.
Showdown allen6786: shows (two pair, Sevens and Fives)
k2o4 : mucks hand
allen6786 collected $98.25 from pot
Summary Total pot $100.25 | Rake $2
Board
Seat 1: k2o4 (button) mucked
Seat 2: olifant 12 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: allen6786 (big blind) showed and won ($98.25) with two pair, Sevens and Fives
Seat 4: aky9999 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
k2o4 : checks
Marty2773: bets $9.50
k2o4 : raises $34.60 to $44.10 and is all-in
Marty2773: calls $29.90 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($4.70) returned to k2o4
River (Pot : $99.30)
Showdown k2o4 : shows (a pair of Kings)
Marty2773: shows (two pair, Aces and Queens)
Marty2773 collected $96.30 from pot
Summary Total pot $99.30 | Rake $3
Board
Seat 1: k2o4 (small blind) showed and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 2: olifant 12 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: allen6786 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Darby23 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: jeffnwl folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Marty2773 (button) showed and won ($96.30) with two pair, Aces and Queens
Showdown k2o4 : shows (two pair, Queens and Jacks)
rth1: shows (three of a kind, Queens)
rth1 collected $97.50 from pot
Summary Total pot $100.50 | Rake $3
Board
Seat 1: phishkiller folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: I_Pown_Lives folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: I80PROOF folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: 1Bunn (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: k2o4 (small blind) showed and lost with two pair, Queens and Jacks
Seat 6: rth1 (big blind) showed and won ($97.50) with three of a kind, Queens
I quit for the night after the 4th buyin was lost. Gay. hopefully tonight goes better!
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(four of a kind, Jacks)
(a flush, Ace high)
(two pair, Sevens and Fives)
(two pair, Aces and Queens)
