The proposed Korean “free trade” agreement would be a truly horrific blow to whatever is left of American manufacturing at a time when unemployment is rampant. But from a political standpoint, fighting for another so-called “free trade” agreement right now has got to represent some kind of death wish for the Democratic party. I don’t have any other way to explain it.

Social Security cuts are coming for “virtually every American alive and those yet to be born,” in the words of Eric Kingson, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

And for what? Corporate tax cuts. Every member of this commission, every member of Congress, and President Obama himself must reject these insane ideas. We’re starting an emergency petition to President Obama and his Catfood Commission to take Social Security cuts off the table.

What does AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka think about the recommendations made by the co-chairs of the Catfood Commission? The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to ‘Drop Dead.’ Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people, Social Security and [...]

The Fiscal Responsibility Commission has just announced that they will have a press conference in the hall outside of the Dirksen office building on the Hill today at 1pm. Alex Lawson, who conducted the now-famous livestream video interview of Catfood Commission co-chair Alan Simpson, is on his way there.  FDL will be livebroadcasting via Ustream [...]

Glenn Greenwald and Lawrence O’Donnell had a dust-up  on the Joe Scarborough show last week over what the 2010 election means to liberals, and to his credit, O’Donnell had Glenn on his own show last night to discuss it again. It’s rare enough that cable news hosts have people on who disagree with them, and [...]

The most recent Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll finds that the percentage of Americans who think the new health care law will make their lives and their families’ lives better is at an all time low. Only 25 percent think it would personally make their lives better while 31 percent think it would make them [...]

• The number one priority of Americans, Democrats and Independents is passing a new stimulus bill to create new jobs. The number one priority of Republicans is repealing health care.
• The number two priority of Republicans, Democrats and Independents is cutting federal spending.
• The number three priority of Americans, Democrats and Independents is repealing the health care bill.
• The number four priority of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents is extending all of the Bush tax cuts.
• Americans and Independents do not track on one single issue with Republicans over Democrats.
• More Republicans want to pass a new stimulus bill to create jobs than extend all the Bush tax cuts.

One of my strongest hopes is that everyone in the media, especially on the left, can simply stop pretending the new health reform law is some great progressive victory. It is not. It is a conservative, pro-corporate piece of legislation. From the CBS News: Obama: Well, partly because I couldn’t get the kind of cooperation [...]

Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) is possibly getting tapped as the first Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head. The fact that her name would be floated at all as the head of an agency to oversee the banks is an indication that there’s some sort of death wish on the part of Democrats for the 2012 election, and that Elizabeth Warren’s appointment was indeed a “cynical” bait-and-switch move meant to gin up enthusiasm among liberals before the election.

A new DNC memo implies that voting for health care actually helped candidates. That is just stunningly dishonest.

Barney Frank was considered one of Cook’s “competitive races.” His district has a Democratic partisan voting index of +14, and Barney crushed his GOP opponent, 61-36. So no, it’s not really fair to compare what happened to Barney Frank to what happened to say, Chet Edwards in an R+20 district. Of the 53 Democrats who hailed from districts with a Republican partisan voting index of +1 or more, only three who voted for the health care bill survived: Joe Donnelly, Bill Owens and Nick Rahall.