In last night's attempt by Murdoch and Ailes to clear the brush around Marco Rubio, the boy candidate who doesn't know which end of a screw driver is the handle flashed hard working Americans with the Full Welder, and believe me it wasn't pretty. I have spent the last week with a friend and neighbor putting up fence and welding farm gates, and I can tell you that Rubio's glib, uninformed, contrived comments about welders, philosophers and wages are worth about the price of two cow pies. The canned junk speech which Rubio has been spouting all week---comparing welders to college philosophy majors---is an insult to workers as well as to those who have worked hard to earn a college degree and are spending a big chunk of their income paying down student loans.

The guy who is helping me put up horse panels has had decades of those high paying welding jobs out there in the oil pipeline fields. Those jobs nearly crippled him. Does Grin and Go know that these guys are out on the road paying their own expenses for high cost temporary quarters? Does he know that many of them provide their own expensive equipment? Does he know what it's like to work under a thirty inch diameter pipe in 110 degree heat? Does he know that good jobs come and go and that there are long periods of unemployment? Does Full Welder know which end of the hose is the torch in the event he decides to weld his mouth shut?​ 

Maybe Mr. Absent Senator could help us with this philosophical question: which came first, the welder or the welding job? I guess he thinks welders came first because he said nothing about where the good welding jobs might have been created if his co-conspirators in Congress hadn't been stiffing highway bills and infrastructure spending for the last eight years.

High paying Union wages for welders? What happened to all of those jobs?

What about the welding jobs that are actually available for example, around N. Texas in the companies that make trailers, farm equipment, farm gates and pre-fab housing---does Mr. Math know what these jobs pay and what's required? You start at $9 an hour and have to weld yourself half to death to make a bonus. You have to weld a farm gate inside of ten minutes---and keep it up for eight hours a day. My friend can no longer keep up that pace.

Does Credit Card Pol know that a liberal arts major most likely makes more money than someone with a degree in business? And if a college graduate really wants to make some dough, get a liberal arts degree, go to work for Paul Singer's hedge fund or Morgan Stanley. Then have your graduate business or statistics degree paid for by your Wall Street employer.

The real tragedy of Rubio's Full Welder Amateur Hour is it's ignorance of what has recently become known about the pathology of the white working class in America. The mortality rate of those with at least a B.A. degree is going down in middle age and the mortality rate of those with not more than a high school degree is going up---and by alarming amounts. 24% worse for high school or less and 24% better for those with degrees. So if Rubio is planning on re-training middle age folks to take  $9 per hour welding jobs instead of going to community college and learning to code, he is wrong on all counts. Many people couldn't actually do a physical job but just perhaps they might want to consider a higher paying job where you don't have to drag your fifth wheel trailer out to Nowhere, Montana, because the two motels have doubled the price of a room.

Rubio failed to mention a positive trend---companies like GE are now setting up "coding" centers in smaller communities (having decimated the ranks of high paying IT jobs in this country by outsourcing them) and they are requiring no specific education other than the ability to do the work.

Rubio was obviously the beneficiary in last night's high-school-level-canned-elevator-speech display. What a farce! Don't answer the question which was asked, and don't worry about follow-up questions. 

I have a follow up question for Rubio. "Do you know the cost of a new Hobart Welder which the guy has to buy himself and haul around in his pickup truck?"

And, "Senator, what's the interest rate on a Payday loan if you need one to buy a Hobart Welder in order to get a high paying welding job?"​

And finally: "Would you mind zipping it?"