Somebody should tell Joe the Plumber to get his head out of the toilet it's stuck in and breathe some fresh air. Maybe that will bring him to his senses. Anyone who makes more money is going to pay more income taxes, no matter who the next President is. That's the way the system works.

When Obama answered Joe's question he really put his foot in his usually eloquent mouth. He said he wanted to spread the wealth. That played right in to the fears of conservatives that liberalism is just another form of communism. John McCain hasn't been able to remind people of that phrase enough at his rallies.

I want to make two points about this. First, no one wants to live in a socialist or communist society. It's just not in our DNA. Nobody wants to live in a world where we all have the same salary, house, or car no matter what we do or how hard we work. We always want to have more than the other guy. It's just the way we are.

My other point is that Republicans aren't really against redistributing the wealth. The difference is in where the money goes. Instead of giving everyone and equal amount of money, they want to take money from the middle class while giving more to the wealthy. In their perfect world there are only two classes--those with nothing, and those with everything.

Their thinking is so warped that they believe that someone who makes $200,000 is in the middle class. In a country where the median income is $40,000, to them, most of us are in poverty.

There is a war on the middle class, and they are losing it. Just look around. Remember when all of those companies like Enron and Tyco failed? When they fell, some of those at the top walked away with millions while the employees lost their jobs and their retirement accounts.

The same thing happened in this mortgage crisis. The people who drove these banks out of business also walked away with millions. Their employees lost their jobs, and their customers have lost their houses.

The middle class is also losing the battle in the cost of living. The cost of everything, not just luxuries, is rising much faster than wages. Everything from groceries to gas continue to get more expensive while income stagnates.

Health care and the insurance to pay for it gets more expensive every day. At the rate it is going, it won't be long before it too becomes a luxury.

In all of our history each generation has come out with more than the previous one. At the rate we are going, this generation could be the first one to be in worse shape than the last one.

I'd like to make one more point about Joe the Plumber. I believed him the first time he said he was tired of all of he attention he is getting. By the time I heard him say it, during his appearance on every network, I began to doubt him.