Or explaining what it means.

A skew from median and mean says that there are some abnormal numbers associated with a very few data points. Thus if the average (mean) is $8k and the median is $1.9k (as I understood the figures you gave), then you have a relatively small set of households that have HUGE credit card debt. Mathematically speaking, having the mean be roughly a factor of 4 above the median says that your distribution looks more like a slope than the classic bell curve.

Furthermore, your second assessment is fatally flawed. You state: "...can also be interpreted as stating that most American households owe less than $2000". The data clearly state that over 50% of American households are carrying NO credit card debt either because they don't have a credit card or because they pay it off when they get the bill. You're generally not considered to be "in debt" just because you just got your electric bill and haven't paid it yet. You only become "in debt" when you don't pay it all off on time. To be accurate you would have to have said that the overwhelming majority of American households owe less than $2k. Overwhelming majority? Yes. It will be ~75%. 55% of American households have no credit card debt (23.8%+31.2%)[Allowable statement: the majority of American households have no credit card debt]. Of the remaining 45%, 22.5% have debt <=$1,900 (see the statistical meaning of median). Thus we see that 77.5% of American households owe less than $1,900 in credit card debt. In my view, that's a pretty overwhelming majority and, frankly, $1,900 is a pretty small number.

The real story is the remaining 22.5% of American households who owe the vast majority of the trillions in credit card debt. I suspect they will generally fall into 3 categories: the rich (who can afford it), the poor (who can't), and the recently-had-a-family-disaster (who may or may not be able to afford it).

This in no way denies your debt fueled boom hypothesis; it's just that the debt part wasn't credit card debt (hint: see your housing bubble).

But you're the reporter, not me.

Yesterday's Der Speigel carried the news that the state prosecutor in Dortumund was planning to file charges against an 86 year old former member of the Waffen SS who shot and killed 3 civilians in Holland during WWII as part of an SS crackdown on those thought to have been sympathetic to the Dutch underground which was killing German soldiers (the specific prompt apparently was the killing of a pro-Nazi member of the Dutch collaborator government). Does this sound familiar? Substitute American for German and Iraqi for Dutch. Think Haditha. Nobody's been convicted of anything yet. Do you think something's going to happen 60 years from now? I don't think so.

Shrub and Co.? That bunch of war criminals deserves to spend the rest of their natural lives in some dark, dank dungeon populated by spiders and rats but they aren't going to. That would be justice and they all have too much money and influence to be on the receiving end of justice.

While everybody is going through the inane exercise of who will cut taxes more, I feel like I have fallen through a worm hole into an alternative universe created by Kafka. Hello People! Did you not realize, forget, not understand, whatever that taxes exist to pay for government spending? Has it come to your attention (as it has to mine) that our government is spending beyond its means? For most of us that would mean getting a second job. For the government, that means raising somebody's taxes.

So the reality is that if we want a smaller tax bite, we need to cut governmental spending. On the off chance that your mind has gone blank, let me offer a few suggestions. One, we can cut the billion dollar doomsday scenario war games featuring the failed Von Clausewitz wannabe Donald of Rum (who wasn't even in the government at the time). Two, we can cut short the run of the multi-trillion dollar production called the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Three, we can run the brushmaster through the thicket called the defense budget (both the seen and the unseen parts of the thicket - I really don't understand how American officials can complain about lack of transparency in Chinese military spending with a straight face). We already spend more than the whole rest of the world on the military. Surely, we can get by on a small fraction of that spending unless, of course, we're hell bent on world domination. Oh, wait, sorry, that's Pinky and the Brain.

There's more but we could balance the budget and start paying down our accumulated debt just based on 1-3 alone.

Comment 1. I don't view Penn as a "double digit" victory. This is a two man race. She won by 5% points (over 50%). To have a double digit victory you have to have a 60/40 split (10 over 50%) and Obama has several of those.

Comment 2. I've voted Libertarian since 1992 because I couldn't stand the candidates from either of the major parties. Except for the 2004 race where I voted Democratic because Shrub is so evil and so incompetent that I was willing to do anything to try to oust him. But if Three Names is the democratic nominee, I'll be back to the Libertarians for exactly the same reasons I had in '92, '96, and 2000.