David--

How many cards are there in the American deck now?  We've long heard about
the "playing the race card"; now you talk about playing or mis-playing the
class card.   Denying the issues of race and class or to belittle them as
"playing the x card" is the rhetorical mark of dishonest social and
historical analysis.   True to form, you've not only raised the Marx
bogeyman, you've followed up with the hollow chauvinistic claim that the
United States has the "the best standard of living yet known to man."  I'd
like you to substantiate that claim.  The US often ranks high, but has not
been at the top of the standard of living indexes in quite sometime.  In
2006 the US ranked 8th on the widely regarded UN Human Development Index.
And in the UN Human Poverty index, the US ranked 16th, right behind Great
Britain.  The data for 2007 is likely to be markedly worse with the
devaluation of the dollar and the instability in the financial markets as
only a couple of factors.  As for the American middle class, it's
shrinking--it's been in all the papers.  The income inequality in the US is
now the worst of all developed countries--that's some classless society
we've got here.  Cite the sources of your data, please (no attacks on the UN
allowed).

--Larry Howe