I was diagnosed with a severe temporal spatial deficit a learning disability that means I have zero spatial relations skills. It was official: I was a genius trapped in an idiot's body.

It is past time for Republican leadership to answer for record deficits and reckless spending both in Iraq and in the U.S. It's time for a plan to bring our troops home.

We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions at certain stages of history perpetuate and produce such a deficit and even threaten human survival.

The war on terrorism has made national security a legitimate concern and a rising deficit changes brought on by globalization and even the price of oil have thrown the nation's economic health into question.

Challenges of historic import threaten America's future. Action on the deficit economy energy health care and much more is imperative yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed.

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios and the long legislative battles over health care reform financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

And so our goal on health care is if we can get instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year it's going up at the level of inflation maybe just slightly above inflation we've made huge progress. And by the way that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That's why we did it.

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it.

The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.