Yes, the question to Rubio was a stupid gotcha question, but the real issue is what led to it, a problem shared by both the interviewer and the OP.  Smugness.  It's nauseating.  While it might give you a little thrill up the leg to consider how much smarter you are than those you despise, it's not intellectual; it's poison.

The guy in fact does not have a point.  

1. He is, as you noted, a jerk.

2. He's sleeping in the bed he helped make for himself.  Federalism would permit twits in New York to worry very little about the way Ohioans might affect their daily lives.  With the exception of aberrant issues (like war and emancipation), the office of the President should say very little about a citizen's experience of life.  Instead, at the wish of his own movement, more and more local sovereignty has been shipped to D.C. so that the folks in Ohio are effectively voting policy in NY.  Don't like it?  Vote conservative.

Those dudes in Ohio who prefer their finished basement to term paper ideas for remaking America actually have a better understanding of their country then this cosmopolitan snob at the New Republic.  Which one of these would vote to impose his own judgment on some significant part of your life and which would be more likely to vote to just leave you alone?

3. That dude's a jerk.  And I'm getting an itch to buy a flamingo for my lawn.

There's an inherent contradiction in these interviews that I think many Americans will feel even if it doesn't coalesce into a coherent verbal objection.  Our President swears he's going to join OJ in looking for the "real" screw-up even as he seems to "take responsibility, as commander-in-chief."  Too many Americans have worked for a boss like that - the guy who's always casting about for ready bus-traction.

I agree with you on principle, but suggesting that number will immediately boomerang.  I grossed a very modest $59k last year.  With a household of five in the Seattle Metro area I don't feel quite like Richie Rich.  My Schedule A deductions were $19.7k.  Capping deductions at $17k would constitute a credible contradiction of Romney's promise to not raise taxes on the middle class.  Additionally, it would target those contributing the most financially to Burke's "little platoons."  The Obama campaign could immediately film a dozen vignettes with similar stories.  <deep, bemused, accusatory narrator voice>  "Mitt Romney promises he won't raise taxes on the middle class.  Pants on fire, Mr. Romney."

This seems to me a fairly insightful observation - one angle of describing our cultural decay.  A brief survey of other post-zenith civilizations will identify similarities in their politics.  Of course, those are now dust.

This is a hard one...

Perhaps Psalms.  It's like listening to the prayers of the Son.

I too burned the bumps off my dad's old Snoopy and the Red Baron album.  There were even a few tracks in there that introduced me to the glum melancholy of war.  I'm still not quite sure why I enjoyed it so much.  Perhaps it was just that they seemed so unashamed of their joy despite such a ridiculous premise for an album.

Sisyphus: The magic of America is that the Founders realized that people are the snake in the garden.  H/T Chesterton:

"Dear Editor,

regarding your article, 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am.  

Your's truly,

Knate"