The Republican presidential candidates had another debate. For some reason (exhaustion perhaps, maybe common sense kicked in?) Darryl decided not to live blog that one. I listened to a bit and, you’ll never believe this but, Newt Gingrich is still really annoying. The bit that people who watched the whole thing thought was most newsworthy was how Mittens thought to casually bet $10,000.
Now, despite what that link says, the odd thing about the number is that it’s neither a reasonable amount like $1, $5, or $10 that people actually make on these sort of things, but nor is it so exorbitant that it necessarily calls out as a joke bet. If I said to you, “I’ll bet you a billion dollars” then you know no matter who wins the bet that we’re not actually paying up because neither of us has a billion dollars. But $10,000 is both way too much, and just enough that you aren’t quite sure what would happen if you lost.
And any way why make a personal bet? Why not say for charity? Presumably the whole bet thing was because someone in his campaign suggested it knowing this had come up before, and hoping to defuse it in the future. He could easily say something like, “I’ll bet $500 that that isn’t true. If I win, give it to children’s hospital in Boston, if you win, I’ll give it to any charity of your choosing in Texas.” Then the worst thing that happens is he has to give $500 to a charity in Texas, and that doesn’t seem awful.
That’s nothing. Michael Savage has offered Gingrich $1 million to drop out because he thinks Romney is the only guy who can beat Obama.
The hell with the debate! Who wants to listen to a roost of Republicans ranting about reaming the working class anyway? It’s time for the nightly vocabulary quiz! I’ve already posted my score.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/quiz/index.htm
10/10 3380 Points tonight.
I’ll bet any of you trolls out there $10K that Obama’s going to win next year. Anyone? Anyone?
Carl,
Sorry to tell you this but $10,000 IS a casual bet.
What Mitt did was no more unreasonable in the real middle class then what happens tomorrow night at DL when you and I bet a beer on McG’s chances of succeeding McD as our Congressional expert on foreign policy. $5 for us is $10,000 for middle class folks like Mitt or for that matter for most our Congress and Senators.
Of course what they understand and YOU do not understand is that Mitt is the real middle class. The real middle class determines outcomes of elections, not just by their votes but by buying our votes.
None of us DL types make enough to understand such things but all my friends at the Seattle Yacht Club, Broadmooor, Hunts Point, The Seattle Times, and Lakeside PTSA can easily explain it to you!
I got 3480! (And that’s before coffee and having clicked on the third option for one of the questions when my brain knew I wanted the fourth!)
(Is there a neologism for that sort of mouse mishap? You know, sort of a premature clickation?)
@5
I think sj is absolutely right. This was a revealing slip for the Mittster, a bit of honesty exposing the man behind the curtain.
He does treat $10000 as a casual betting value – and likely did screw up a handle’s suggestion by inserting his own number for the size of the bet. Carl’s theory may be right, but the handler didn’t think to tell Mittens how to behave like a regular guy – which he is not, though desperate for us to believe that he is.
@2
Is that ‘RR’ on the leader board you, Rog?
@6 Oops – should have typed 3840 – but just did it again and got 3940. Practice definitely helps this sort of thing, as does coffee!
“…you’ll never believe this but, Newt Gingrich is still really annoying…”
It’s easy to beleive because it’s true: Gingrich is an annoying asshole who thinks he’s better than anyone else. If the Republicans are stupid enough to nominate him, the Milk Chocolate Messiah will have no problems winning re-election in 2012.
I do not think it was a slip.
I move in a different circles then most here. While I certainly can not bet 10k, I am painfully aware that thjs is not an inordinate amount for a lot of folks who consider themselves middle class.
As an example, among the medical faculty at UW, I have many friends who have homes in Hunts Point or on the Magnolia bluff. Others casually take trips around the world or to the Greek islands. None of these folks would consider themselves as upper class.
Trouble is .. they are right! Our new order makes the classes of 19th century Europe look flat. Gates, Allen, Buffet, Jobs, … the number of zillionaires in the US is at a record high. “1%” is is far too modest a stanine to describe these folks.
Below the uppest class, we have a huge class of the corporate wealthy. These are the folks with multiple homes, one of which is either on the Lake or in the heights. Try names like Wright, Nordstrom, or think about Microsoft, Boeing, upper managers. Hell throw in UW Presidents and football coaching staff. Add in Bill O’Reilly, Rachell Maddow, and Glenn Beck.
These folks likely see themselves as upper class, though some may think it is “their” achievement.
THEN we come to the edges of the “real” middle class. I am not sure where the line is but lets say they own a home worth over 1 mill, drive a Beamer, attend the opera ……..
11: I know that the term “middle class” is subject to a lot of abuse, with no clear definition. Most people like to refer to themselves as the “middle class”. If we follow people’s own definitions of “middle class”, then it would cover about 80% of the U.S. population. Others dump anyone who still works for a living as “middle class”, reserving “rich” for those who receive all their income from investments rather than work – but that begs the question of how much is enough, and the age of the investment holder.
Assuming that the U.S. population is referenced by a bell-shapped curve, with the horizontal axis consisting of either income or wealth, and the vertical axis consisting of the number or population within that income/wealth point, then the center of the middle class could be identified. I think the average (mean) income in Washington State was about $56,500 in 2010. Of course, the slope declines on both sides of that peak, and how far you want to take it probably has more to do with either whatever agenda you are promoting, or how you see yourself within that range.
Personally, I think the people you are referencing – the Hunts Point, Madonna Bluff, Clyde Hill and most of the Medina residents, are not “middle class” by most people’s definitions. A more apt definition is “affluent”. They don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck, unless they chose to do so by high consumption and debt. Certainly few with household incomes of $50,000 to $70,000 a year can plan on having more than one home, annual vacations overseas, drive expensive imports, etc. The average middle-class family (assuming the $54,500 mean income) is still only a paycheck or two from finding themselves among the poor.
5, 7 – I think it’s more than that. People with big bucks are used to pushing others around. He knows Perry can’t match a $10K bet. That’s why he made it that high. It’s like, “I have tons of money, so you can’t play in my league.”
But you know what? For all the talk about buying elections and such, every person in this country still has one vote, and sometimes all the money in the world can’t buy an election when the common people are aroused.
@8 Yes.
@9 The trick to getting a perfect score — I do it every day — is reacting instinctively to the word choices. To get 4200 you can’t stop and think. You’ve got to snap off your answers. I don’t read the word choices; I take this test exactly the way I would take a symbol-recognition test.
They’re looking for synonyms, not definitions, so if it feels right it probably is right. It’s like any other multiple-choice test; if you don’t know the answer, you can guess it by process of elimination. I’ve gotten a lot of the 600-pointers that way.
Obviously, high-IQ people (and rabbits) have an advantage on this type of exercise, because they have a faster mental processing time, analogous to a pro athlete with very quick physical reflexes. A big vocabulary from doing a lot of reading also helps.
Here’s the breakdown of the 10 questions:
1 – 600 points
3 – 500 points
3 – 400 points
3 – 300 points
Deduct 20 points for every extra second you take to answer a question.
Choosing the words and assigning their point values is, of course, up to the editors of the quiz and is somewhat arbitrary. The 600-pointers tend to be words most of us won’t recognize; as I said above, I guess them intuitively.
12 rhp
Well, I think folks CALL themsalves middle class as a term of self approbation … as in
“I am one of you”
” I too was a slave”