I'm always amused when wealthy TV talking heads -- people whose six-figure-and-better incomes pretty much ensure that they can afford whatever they want in terms of household appliances and other necessities of modern life -- try to pretend that they're just ordinary folks who understand what "middle America" is thinking.

Even more hilarious, in a twisted way, is when they take it upon themselves to lecture those same Americans about the virtues of poverty -- or to explain, as Fox's Stuart Varney did yesterday, just how much better off poor Americans are now than they used to be.

In fact, according to his guest -- Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, who has assembled his damned lies and statistics in a single report at their site, America's poor people have a better standard of living than your average European. Right -- if appliances were any accurate measure of your standard of living.

This is just one of those pleasant reminders from our corporate masters that you're never as bad off as you think you are. Why, Varney and Rector seem dismayed that today's poor in America don't live off dirt floors. If you keep pushing for taxes on the rich, that may be what you'll get!