Oldie-but-goodie found on the Internet — Two English professors run into each other and start shooting the breeze:

Professor A: “B, old chap, I haven’t seen you for a long while.”
Professor B: “I’ve been away in America researching my new book.”
Professor A: “Ah, what’s the topic?”
Professor B: “The persistence of social classes in America.”
Professor A: “Why, I didn’t think they had social classes in America!”
Professor B: “Neither do they. That’s how they persist.”

For weeks blowhards from both major political parties insisted the country would implode without “across the board” sacrifices. But then both houses of Congress voted for legislation that did not include long-overdue tax increases for the wealthy. Then, after having helped seal the disastrous deficit deal, Barack Obama called for a “balanced approach” to reducing the deficit.

To do otherwise would be to risk being accused of “class warfare” by David Brooks, aka the Earnest Weasel, and other right-wing propagandists, who also like to make the contradictory claim that there are no classes in America.

But Obama doesn’t take risks and he doesn’t believe in classes, except for the elitist gang that helped bring him to power — the one that stretches from Wall Street to certain Ivy League schools to the University of Chicago.