At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing.

You can have somebody living next door to you and you can live in a completely different world from that person, which is definitely something we've never experienced before. So I think just because of the media landscape and the way we get our information now, we're more atomized and isolated from each other than ever before.

Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you'll buy products that they're advertising.

In the old days, when you took out a mortgage, it was probably through a local bank or a credit union, and whoever gave you your loan held on to it for life. If you lost your job or got too sick to work and suddenly had trouble making your payments, you could call a human being and work things out.

I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system.

In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance.

An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.