Ok, ok...but I'd rather my son put tobacco in his mouth and someone's penis in his rectum.

I can recognize the expressions on my dog's face - now, it's my teenage son that I can no longer read. "Are you ok?"  "yeah, I suppose".  "Are you depressed?"  "nah".  "Do you want a cookie?"  "I'm ok..."  "Want to play ball?"  "not really".  Perhaps I can put his pictures on this site to see if there's a consensus.  N...more

I agree that payments into your account should be required and, for the most part, I agree with most of what you say.  The money could be put into, effectively, a fixed annuity although I think more flexible options should exist.  Everyone should consider this: I've put more money, and for a longer time, into social se...more

The best fix to social security is to kill it, at least as we know it.  Personalize it, and it becomes yours to manage for your later years.  Withdraw as you see fit, but be aware that this is it - spend it foolishly and you're done.  By personalizing social security, you eliminate the massive bureaucracy that costs bi...more

I'm left with two questions: (1) How deep can these holes be? and (2) do 'sensing' devices exist that could check to see if a sinkhole is developing under my house?

This is mortifying stuff.  I'm surprised one of them didn't slash their wrists.

More happy talk by the journalists who refuse to either understand or believe the numbers - there is no recovery, never was, we're deeper in the tank than at any time during the Bush administration, and it's only going to get worse.  Years from now, historians will write of two characteristics of this era - the decline...more

It's amazing and obscene that a lifetime of savings can be consumed by a week in a hospital.  The medical system is not fixable - there are no forces that can keep the prices from endlessly spiraling upward.  It has to be rebuilt from the ground-floor up.  There was a time in my recent past where there was no health in...more

It's government theft.  We've become a nation of free-loaders, feeding and financed by the successful and industrious, and building an increasing bureaucracy that does little other than feed off someone else’s productivity.  No longer “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" but ...more