Digby watches television so I don’t have to and saw the following discussion among three of the denizens of the Village: Wolf Blitzer, Paul Begala, and Mary Matalin.

Wolf Blitzer: “In an interview the other day with the New York Times, the president said about his press secretary Robert Gibbs, Paul let me read it to you:

He said “We’ve been on this ride together since I won my Senate primary in 2004 … He’s had a six-year stretch now where basically he’s been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay.”

Blitzer noted that the modest pay was $172,200 per annum without considering the perquisites. The responses show that none of them has any math skills, nor any judgment as to the difficulty of a position.

Paul Begala: “And, as Mary points out, if it’s a hourly wage, then Gibbs is probably making about fifty cents an hour.”

Mary Matalin: “For those kinds of jobs, and those hours, it is minimum wage. That’s how hard those jobs are.”

Actually the current Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and assuming an hourly wage for all of the available hours in a year, Mr. Gibbs is making $19.66 per hour. US Senators only make slightly more than Mr. Gibbs, $174,000, and the Vice President only makes $200,000.

The totality of the job is to talk to the press. There are thousands of kindergarten teachers in this country who are qualified to do what he does, and they work for a lot less money.

С Рождеством Христовым to my Orthodox friends who are still waiting to see how the calendar reform works out.

Table for One

Nom nom nom…

[Editor: This is Tip, who eschews dishes to avoid the crowd at the feeding station. She is only semi-feral, which causes problems within the Family.]

Friday Ark is in Europe