Since President Bush took office, we have lost 3 million more good jobs.

When Lincoln ran into trouble during the Civil War, he got new generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front.

We have seen voters denied their rights in recent elections as they have been incorrectly purged from lists, their absentee votes not counted, and voting machine integrity and security not assured.

Who owns the assets of our Nation? Increasingly, foreign interests own our assets, and we owe them money. No wonder people think our country is headed in the wrong direction. It is.

The government is fully capable of delivering services. Even complex services.

Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.

Generation after generation, there is this never-ending, contemptuous, condescending attitude to the next generation or the next way of thinking: music, art, politics, whatever. And I have never been like that.

The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.