I'm convinced, given the part of the country you say your from, and your continous adolecent ranting, that you are the product of some kind of inbreeding that went Terribly bad. One can only hope that you are incapable of reproducing. If you managed to produce offspring, I feel sorry for them, as you must be a terrible embarrassment to them. Maybe you can take solice in knowing that the majority of people in this country that include independents, democrats and yes, even some republicans, feel pity for the likes of your kind, and support the very medical services soon to be available to you through Obama care. Hope you take advantage, and get the help you need.

MO is correct. That is why I have lost faith in Jacksonian Democracy--i.e. every adult gets to vote.

You can stick your racist accusations of racism where the sun doesn't shine. Fact that you feel compelled to resort to name calling is due to the weakness of your position.

IMO Obama's election is clear evidence of extended adolescence.
Gross error was made back in the 1960's in giving the Vote to 18yo who were not in the military.

I say raise the minimum age to 25yo and actual payment of tax dollars in three of last five years.

I think that's a pretty broad condemnation you are drawing, and "criminal and corrupt" is a pretty strong damnation for the entire organization. If that's true we're really in the deep kimshee. The answer is to vote them all out after a couple of terms!

A question for lobbyists: Is purporting to believe something, even if you have personal reservations, and accepting or charging a fee to represent/lobby for that belief morally different from those who accept the money, campaign contributions, vacations, home improvements, stock tips, etc. for voting a certain way or trying to influence the vote whether they believe it or not?

If you want to lobby your congressman for something, do it your self(s) or start a letter writing campaign, hiring pros to do it for you adds another distasteful level and odor to it.

I have never believed that social security is going broke. Medicare, on the other hand may be legitimately in trouble.
I think there is an inherent shady claims by doctors, hospitals, and a growing number of both legitimate and illegitimate claims for signing up for disability which places a deeper burden on the system.
It may be too late to salvage any attempt to provide solvency to the program. Although I truly believe the original intent was good, it is the perverse use of the money by our representatives that has caused this, not the recipients.

ion funds and others

From your reply I see you are the one that really doesn't understand what happened.

The housing crisis started when a Wall Street banking employee ( a young women in her twenties I believe.....if necessary I can find out her name) realized they could sell risk by bundling up risky mortages and selling them as securities. The risk of all them failing was considered remote, the remainder would carry them through, or so the thought was. The riskier the loans, the higher the interest rate and the more the security was worth on the market. These were further bundled up and truncated. The bankers knew they were risky and sold them to pension funds and others. Knowing they were bad investments they insured them for loss even though they did not own the truncated mortages. They were able to insure for losses they did not incur and did not own, unlike life insurance. This is what brought AIG to near bankrupcy. The government bailed out AIG to prevent a total collapse of the financal markets. They let Lehman Bros. sink, for some reason

Your belief that Clinton was to blame is only partially true. The clinton adminstration wanted to stop lenders from red lining neighborhoods. The rest the bankers did themselves, as stated above. Don't believe all you hear on right wing radio.

Lets keep this civil. No more comments like, "you know so very little, the subject that you have chosen to interject yourself is a bit deeper than your cute little nippy reply... ". This type of reply is juvenile and all too common on this forum.