But I'm with you on this issue. My mother, aunts, and uncles are the last, maybe the only, generation to be able to retire comfortably, with virtually unlimited healthcare.

I have been meeting with a financial planner and as a result, plan on working to least to 75. I should be okay as long as I don't live too long after that.

I am not so sure that young people have fallen behind their parents because their parents grew up in a different time. Also, I think there is some comparing of apples and oranges. Young people should look at their parents situations when they were young, not now.

I worked my way through college--taking the most menial jobs. I could not afford a car until I was in my early 20's. I did not have the mountain of stuff that young folks take for granted as absolute necessities. Because of horrendous interest rates, I could not afford a home until I was in my mid 30's. My first few jobs did not pay well at all but I used them to learn as much as I could.

I did not start making serious money until I was in my mid-40's, and started practicing law. I have learned though, that the only way to make really serious money, if that is what you want to do, is to start up your own business. The risk of failure is high, but if you are successful, the rewards are great.

...humiliating himself and our country, while oil reaches a new daily record of $128/barrel.

Thank you Chris Matthews and Keith Obermann for finally taking these gasbags on in a public forum. Don't stop.

"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Bush and McBush!" --The Untouchables, mostly.

Its making me sick.

The Oil Drum had a very good posting yesterday about continuous contango in oil futures. Oil futures are increasing every year out in a continuous fashion, indicating that parties speculating in futures do not believe that the price will ever come down again.

The Oil Drum and Financial Times have also provided information indicating that the "hot" money accounts for about 20% of the oil market and that it is betting both ways--that oil will rise and fall.

It has been so cold for so long that the date on which corn can safely be planted, to beat the frost in the fall, has passed, without corn plantings. I grew up in corn and soybean country and even after that date, May 15, nothing was planted. I have'nt seen anything like it in many years. This will be the year of soybeans in Minnesota. So much for Minnesota being the "Saudi Arabia of ethanol," an idiotic slogan profferd by a moronic governor, and possible running mate of McChimpy.

The rebate check idea always was an application of an inappropriate economic model for the problem at hand.

Darth Cheney fabricated the political framework to create a separate "dark" government, off the books. Clinton is just the power whore to to run with it for her own personal gain--at the expense of the country.

We need a ticket that has the integrity to dismantle all of this crap--and there is a lot of it. I'm hoping for Obama-Webb but will be satisfied with Obama--Anyone But Clinton.

This alone should disqualify Clinton from the Supreme Court. Also, she is a politician, not a legal mind. Her Manachean worldview is inconsistent with sound legal analysis.

She reminds me of the wife of a partner at our law firm. This woman was a stay at home housewife who lived vicariously through her husband. She graduated from law school herself when she was in her 40's, an action I applaud. However, her sense of entitlement was so skewed that she thought she should start at the top, as a partner or in a senior in-house counsel position. When no job of this caliber came along, she went back home. Unfortunately for her, her husband did not have the power to deliver on her expectation.

Which is apparently why she then moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton's power enabled his wife to have privileges that would not have been available to her had she not been married to him. Hillary Clinton was elevated to partner at the Rose law firm and claimed to be a trademark attorney. IP is my area of expertise and I could not find a footprint for Mrs. Clinton in the area of trademarks. I think she was hired under special circumstances, in that the Rose Law firm thought they might have special access to the governor by hiring his wife. This happens all the time in law firms. Hillary Clinton internalized this stuff and has convinced herself and many followers that she moved up the ladder because of her own attributes when in actuality, she was just a tool used by her employers to get to her husband. In this sense, her power has been vicarious. Her own limitations are manifest by the mess she made of health care reform and her vote for the Iraq war.

I think that there are many women politicians in the US who would make good to great presidents. Although I am no "spring chicken," I think I may live long enough to see one of them elected. Hillary Clinton is not one of these women.