"First of all, how many columns of Neil Steinberg have you read? One? This One? Living in Chicago, I've been reading him for years and find him entertaining and informative."

Quite a number of Steinberg's columns actually. I've been familiar with him for some time, but on the strength of your posts, I looked him up on the net and read a batch of his stuff (you can do that, you know, without having to live in Chicago). I find him essentially an pale imitation of Dave Barry. He's shallow, opinionated, full of himself, and nowhere near as funny as Barry. Each to his own taste.

"Neil Steinberg is hardly a member of the Radical Right, but you are obviously way too uniformed to know that."

I don't know what political party Steinberg belongs to, but I judge his position by what he has written. As to how uninformed I am, I'll let that pass and suggest that people read my posts and determine for themselves how uniformed I am by what I have written.

"Secondly, you are somewhat laughable about how seriously you take yourself."

When someone likens people on Social Security to pigs at a trough, I tend to get a bit pissed off by their ignorance and mean-spiritedness, especially when they have access to wide distribution, such as Steinberg has. Perhaps he should try to get by on $700 a month and see just how much Metamucil he can afford after paying rent and buying food. Or perhaps he should take a good dose of Metamucil himself to clear his thinking.

"An extreme left wing liberal like yourself is just as uncredible (sic) and as unbiased as the extreme right wing you and so many others here like to criticize."

I criticize the right-wing because there is plenty to criticize them about. You may not be aware (as you are unaware of so many things) that I used to be a conservative, and even now I could hardly be considered an "extreme left-wing liberal." It is not me who has changed all that much, it's the whole flamin' country. And I'm not the only one who has pointed this out. What used to be considered "right wing" is now considered "centrist," making any formerly centrist or moderately conservative position "liberal" or "left wing." Most Europeans regard American liberals as pretty conservative. And they regard the current crop of American "conservatives" as a bunch of pretty scary reactionaries (but their opinion doesn't count for much, because they're all a bunch of socialists, right?). Try this on your Martin Gibson ukulele: way back, I voted for Barry Goldwater!

I would say that I am a fiscal conservative, but as I see more of the world and learn of its ways, I have become something of a social liberal. It is this latter that makes people such as you characterize me as "extreme left wing." I believe that if a person has worked all his or her life and paid into the Social Security system, they have a right to receive the benefits they have paid for without some mindless twit who's hardly seen enough life to know what the hell is going on, much less write about it, implying that they are somehow receiving something from the government that they don't deserve. I also believe that if a person works, he or she should make enough money to, at the very least, pay rent and buy food.   And yet I know a number of people who are working, but have to sleep in their cars and keep their stuff in a storage locker for $50 a month because they can't afford $750 a month for a one-room apartment (the going minimum rate in this area). They did have good jobs, but said jobs got "off-shored," and they now earn minimum wage by throwing hamburgers out a window at passing cars. Some of these people used to make big money at Microsoft and Boeing, but now programming is being done in India and wing parts are being made in Japan. So they take whatever jobs are available.

"Steinberg is where many people I believe in this country are at, and that's moderate, on the fence, listen to reality, common sense, non-knee jerking over-reacting middle-of-the roaders."

If Steinberg represents the middle-of-the-road in this country, then that road—and the whole country—is headed off a cliff into the Abyss. Just being a "middle-of-the-roader" doesn't mean that Steinberg and those who believe as he does have any sort of lock on the truth. I still say the man is an ass.

I happen to think that some things in life are kind of serious. If the fact that I do take certain things seriously makes me "laughable" as you seem to think, then have yourself a good giggle.

Your welcome.

Don Firth