With the divide between the rich and the rest of us growing wider each day, it’s no wonder this story sent me into a slight tizzy this weekend.

This is so seriously outlandish there’s no way you could make it up. This company Vertu, a division of Nokia, is actually selling cell phones for $70,000 a pop.  And some people are actually buying them.  (Yes, those are indeed diamonds surrounding the phone.)

In fact, people with way too much money on their hands include Quincy Jones and Seal, both outed in this piece as truly stupid, ostentatious exhibitionists.  If they’re looking for something a little more worthwhile to spend their $70K on, I can suggest a few right off the top of my head: put it in an interest-bearing account so I can send my kid to college in eight years, pay for a health insurance policy for me (from what I can tell, I can actually get a policy if I spent around that amount), pay my mortgage so I don’t lose my home…

Or, from a less selfish vantage point, buy cell phones for homeless people so they can apply for jobs and have a phone number to put down on the application.

Seriously, in this day and age where so many of us are struggling to get by month to month, the fact that some of these people who are so disconnected from reality would even consider spending such an obscene amount of money on a cell phone is truly disgusting. And if they don’t realize how disgusting it is, they could all use a reality check.

After  I got that rant out of my system tonight, I turned my anger and disbelief toward South Carolina. The state that brought us Gov. Mark “hiking the Appalachian trail” Sanford, Joe “You Lie” Wilson, Strom “shtupped the black maid & produced a black daughter” Segregationist Thurmond, and Nikki “I did not have two affairs” Haley, now brings us Alvin
“I’ve always been a Democrat” Greene.

Alvin Greene, the unemployed veteran who lives with his father, somehow came up with the $10,400 filing fee, just under the wire, to run in the primary for the Democratic nomination for US Senate. He had no campaign organization, held no rallies, nada, nothing… yet he won the nomination with 59% of the vote. Amazingly, he got more votes than were actually cast in some districts. Hmmm.

I was joined on the show by Tom Schaller of fivethirtyeight.com to discuss this anomaly. He followed our interview with a new post, “More Developments in South Carolina D-Sen Primary” which tells of a legal challenge filed by the legit candidate for the nomination!

Victoria Jones checked in from the Talk Radio News Service.

And, as we do every Monday, Crooks & Liars‘ Nicole Belle joined me for Life During Wartime… our Monday evening recap of the Sunday talking head shows.