It is widely accepted that the compensation arraingements of many of the people on Wall Street contributed hugely to their temptation to do extremely risky deals. Essentially these guys get paid a bonus when a deal they do makes a bunch of money. On the surface that seems fine except fot one thing, when a deal bombs they do not pay back any of the bonus money they got before. Look at it this way, lets say you get a 1 percent bonus for any money you make in a derivitives transaction (say bundling home mortgages). You put together a $50 billion deal that you know is likely to fall apart in a year or two, but you also know that by then you would have already gotten a $500 million dollar bonus. WHen the mortgage deal falls apart, as it...

I was a regular viewer of Fox for many years but over the past few years their blatantly obvious right wing, even Republican bias has made them unwatchable for me. I also find watching MSNBC equally unwatchable for similar (though opposite) reasons. I have to agree with the White House about FOX at least seeming to be a branch of the Republican party, even if they are simply doing so in a totally independent way. MSNBC similarly seems like a vranch of the Democratic party.

I am not particulary interested in having someone pat me on the back and say, "yes yes, everything you believe is completely correct, you don't need to look any further". I want carefully researched news that looks into all those things that I almost wish I...

I don't want to suggest that the new administration has "got it right" with their Afghanistan policy but does anyone even know what Bush's Afghanistan policy was? Bush had the opportunity to win an important and clear cut victory in Afghanistan but he totally blew it. Instead Bush spead our military far too thin and simply got us bogged down in an impossible conflict in Iraq (not to mention that he allowed N Korea and Iran to develope nuclear weapons while we were too busy to do anything about it). I guess what I am saying is that many of the commentors on this thread seem to be expressing that some how Obama has screwed up the situation in Afghanistan, but I want to remind us all that Afghanistan was srewed up years before most of...

I am all for balanced budgets but where do we get the notion that Republicans are more fiscally responcible than Democrats. If you look at the data over the past 5 decades (and I got this from a Wall Street Journal article) it is fairly clear that Republicans consistantly run larger deficits (Reagan had the record until Bush Jr. took the new record). It also is pretty clear that the economy does better when Democrats are in power (lower inflation, less debt, more growth).

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we vote for a bunch of democrats simply to help the economy and budget deficit, I am just saying that if you are planning on voting on that issue you would be fooling yourself if you thought the Republicans are more...

Today an idiot like Ann COulter can spew her rediculous nonsense and nobody complains. I am a physicist and thermodynamisist with a pretty solid background in mathamatics and statistics. I also am an ex USAF B-52 pilot and I have no liberal adgenda to further. Ann's analysis and more than obvious racists hints make no more sense than pretty much anything elst that she says, but I understand even Hitler had followers.

In addition Ann's contention that since infant mortality is reported in numbers per thousand and the numbers are quite small (ie 7 per thousand or 12 per thousand) that the numbers are simply different by rounding errors, shows a complete lack of understanding of how statistics are generated or how "rounding" is...

It is not surprising that few if any of you reading this thread have traveled all over the world making speaches and having meetings and dinners and meet and greets, but I can tell you it is grueling unsatisfying work. Try flying for 8 hours (even in a luxury 757, whatever that is) then getting dressed up and trying to 100% on while being hounded by reporters and doing important presentations. Now do this every day for months on end, and see how much of a sacrifice it is.

Michelle has left her children at home, and any possiblity of simply enjoying the food or company or luxury or her surroundings. Of course she couldn't travel in a coach seat on a commercial jet. She needs security that would be simply impossible on a...