For most of its history America has had a two party political system.  It now appears we also have a two realities system, illustrated by our perceptions and trust of Fox News versus other major media. From PPP survey on TV media trust: -Democrats trust everything- except Fox News. NBC does the best with them [...]

The Democrats on the Super Committee, in their efforts to reach an deal with Republicans, have offered a new deficit reduction package and just like their last offer this one also contains cuts to Medicare benefits. From Politico: Supercommittee Democrats quietly floated details late Wednesday of a $2.3 trillion tax-and-cut proposal that includes $400 billion [...]

Cenk Uygur on Democratic response to the Boehner-Obama deal.

I was one of the 2700 people who pledged to go to the office of their member of congress and let them know that if they support cuts to Social Security or Medicare, we won’t support them in the next election. And moreover, that “supporting cuts” meant voting for the creation of any committee with the power to make recommendations that would be given an up-or-down vote in Congress, bypassing regular procedure (Catfood II).

It seems that a large part of whether you support a war or not depends on the party you belong and if the president is from your party. With Americans turning against the U.S. involvement in Libya, it is the Independents and Republicans who are leading the way, while Democrats stay stable.

This quote from Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell about why Democrats and Republicans should seek a “grand bargain” is one of the most honest and revealing statements about the problem with our political system. Via David Weigel: This was the year after the bipartisan agreement between Reagan and O’Neill raised the retirement age for [...]

As last week drew to a close, the Republicans that control only the House of Representatives clearly bested President Obama and the Democrats that control the Senate in the budget fight.  Speaker John Boehner, despite controlling only one third of the relevant institutions in the budget fight, was able to get the President to agree [...]

At this point, since it seems the absolute best case scenario for Democrats in this budget fight is that, by the end of today or the beginning of Monday, Congress passes a budget containing around $38 billion in immediate cuts to domestic programs over the next few months, but is free of any major policy [...]

There are two very simple, straight forward things you can do with Medicare if you want to make a big reduction in the deficit: you can either destroy Medicare, or vastly expand it. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has stepped forward for the Republican Party to endorse the “destroy Medicare” solution as the best way to [...]

I previously wrote how from a policy perspective I think it would be idiotic for progressives to even allow the idea of changing Social Security to be entertained right now, but it is equally important that elected Democrats realize that from a purely political perspective, refusing to make any changes to Social Security is an [...]