Back in 2009, the American media offered a series of stories on the recession's impact on the tragically rich. The New York Times, CBS News, AP and even PBS toured yachts, vineyards and beach resorts (even profiling soon-to-be fugitive millionaire John McAfee) to warn that the super-rich "are not sleeping any better than the rest […]

As things now stand, Senate Republicans will carry through on their threat to filibuster Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense. As the GOP's number two man John Cornyn declared Wednesday, "There is a 60-vote threshold for every nomination." Two votes short of the needed filibuster-breaking tally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called […]

While most eyes were trained on the State of the Union address (or a burning cabin in California), PBS on Tuesday aired a documentary on the ongoing fiscal deadlock in Washington titled, "Cliffhanger." In it, the House Speaker John Boehner is portrayed as hopelessly trapped between an equivocating and untrustworthy President Obama who "poisoned the […]

With Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address just hours away, the media conventional wisdom machine is already busy warning about an "aggressive" and "partisan" speech from the reelected President. Despite four years of unprecedented Republican obstructionism, Politico alerted readers to beware a speech that is "less a presidential olive branch than a congressional […]

When it comes to political commentary and analysis, the only thing worse than conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. But each day, Washington Post writer and MSNBC regular Chris Cillizza walks that fine line between the banal and the inane. And with his latest stenography on the budget, the national debt, President Obama's cabinet […]

Last summer, John McCain was asked about his vote for the August 2011 Budget Control Act, a law which starting March 1st will slash defense spending by $500 billion over the next decade. "I plead guilty. It was a bad thing to do, OK?" But now in his latest effort to avoid just the first […]

In just their latest failed effort to peel away supporters from one of the Democratic Party's most reliable constituencies, Republicans in 2012 still lost among Jewish voters by over a 2-1 margin. The reasons for the GOP's consistently dismal performance are no mystery. Survey data show that Jewish Americans overwhelmingly reject the Republicans' reactionary social […]

Back in December 2005, John Yoo was asked if any law or treaty could prevent the President of the United States from torturing someone, "including by crushing the testicles of the person's child." Yoo, then head of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, responded, "I think it depends on why […]

In his 2005 book What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank provided a case study in how conservatives in his home state successfully used social issues to get working class Americans to consistently vote against their economic self-interest. But that formula failed spectacularly in 2012, as Republicans nationally hit the brick wall of America's changing […]