When asked about being successful, Pino replied with, "Success is an elusive thing. As far as financially, no I don't think I'm successful. As far as being the pianist that I want to be, yeah, I'm always happy when I'm playing - as long as there's fire in the furnace!"

"As long as there's fire in the furnace"...well said sir.  

I don't know, it's one thing to be wrong about something, but it's even more disgusting when someone is too much of a weasel to be honest about it.

10 years 2,354.81. A 1.5% reduction.
20 years 8,904.58.  A 3.0% reduction.
30 years 19,528.49.  A 4.3% reduction.
40 years 34,109.19.  A 5.5% reduction.

The reduction is average, but because the rate is increasing, the actual reduction is higher the further you go out.
In this example, from 30 to 40 years, the reduction is 9.85%.

SS is not in trouble. Our collective longer life expectancy is due much more to declining infant and childhood deaths than it is to people dying at an older age. And, this longer life was factored into the SS equation by the people who were charged with figuring all this out back in the '50s.

Those people were a little bit too optimistic about longevity. Those in the bottom half of the economic spectrum are not living to quite as old an age as they had thought. Between 1986 and 2006 the life expectancy at age 65 for men in the lower half of the economic spectrum increased by only 13 months.

Since we have already increased the Social Security age from 65 to 66 and now to 67, those lower income men are not living long enough to collect much if any Social Security.

So, Reich is wrong, majorly wrong, in his main argument. He is perpetuating falsehoods, falsehoods tossed around by the same people who want to destroy SS.

And, Mr. Obama has repeatedly alluded to his willingness to re-engage with Republicans on his last offer for $400 billion (more) in Medicare cuts.  Stevenson says that Mr. Obama sees his offer on entitlements as a way to build trust with Republicans.  

But, inside the White House, there is deep skepticism about whether Republicans actually want to address Medicare in an immediate and concrete way--or whether Republicans would prefer to pillory Democrats for backing Medicare cuts, as they did successfully in 2010 and could again in 2014, and avoid voting for anything themselves that could bring a backlash from voters.

He drives on roads built and maintained by taxes that he pays. He may ride public transit, again paid for by the taxes he pays. Kdog enjoys many of the niceties of 21st century on-the-grid life.

Now, if what your husband means is moving to a personal cash economy, working under the table and avoiding taxes and shunning banks and credit cards, well, he may be on to something.  The problem is that w/o that bank account or plastic card it gets harder to pay for running water and electricity. Not impossible, just harder.

This space is for comments, not repinting long articles, yours or others.'

I completely disagree with your immigration position and you are now limited to four moderate length posts a day. I do not want to be associated with your position, and snippets of it will come up in Google under "TalkLeft" without saying I didn't write it.

Talkleft is one of the strongest supporters of immigrants, documented and undocmented on the web, and I will not have you dilute my message by posting things I strongly oppose and believe are misguided. Please pick another site to do that on.

Michelle is way cooler than this ex-FLOTUS.

The Near-Earth Object Program Office of NASA's Science Mission Directorate is tracking the AG5, 140-meter wide asteroid that has the potential to impact Earth in 2040. NASA puts the odds at 1 in 625 of it hitting the Earth.

The odds of hitting a populated are 1 in 100.  So the odds of this asteroid hitting a populated area of the earth are 1 in 62,500.  

The article put the odds of dying from an Asteroid strike at 1 in 74,817,414/year.  Which is odd since at no time in human history has anyone be killed by an asteroid.  In other words, it's the absolutely least likely way to die.

"Let the punishment fit the crime" has been replaced by "find the crime to fit the desired punishment".

I predict a jury foils their plot, just like Clemens.