I agree with parts of what you said, especially about politians ("meet the new boss, same as the old boss"). I never said anything about the current Congress compromising, I said what I would do (but, I'm not King). I couldn't agree more with you regarding any meaningful compromises on big, high profile issues in the Congress; that won't happen, and may not happen until radical campaign reform, and maybe term limits, or some other way so that the elected rep isn't merely pandering to constituents and/or money people every day of their current term.

It's all pretty disgusting, I think many have lost their way. A graph of the sense of personal accountability and responsibility in this country would look like the graph of MNKD stock for the last couple of years! The converse graph would be that of the sense of entitlement.

I'm not sure where the roots of this abdication of duty lay, but I think I started noticing it toward the late 60's, among my peers and those younger (I was born in 51), and it's gotten progressively worse. We are far removed from "The Greatest Generation." Sure, we can do more things and do them faster and more efficiently, and we can know what's going on all around the world in moments, but we've lost something important, and now so many people consider themselves "victims."

In theory, I wish the banks failed, in practice it may have been a worse disaster than we had. We'll never know, and neither will anyone else ever know for sure. You take a route, and you kiss the other one goodbye. Among the things that I hate is how quickly the friggin bankers were back to their richly undeserved gigantic bonuses.