Jon Stewart Is Wrong

Jon Stewart presumably came to DC to rally the sane against Glenn Beck’s minions and 9/11 Truthers. But instead of amplifying that message in The Daily Show interview with President Obama yesterday, Stewart opted to focus on the most weak and superficial criticisms of the President, and refused to budge when those criticisms were ably […]

GOP Abandons Own Plan To Let Tax Cuts Expire Despite Public Opinion

What was that again about a “center-right” nation? A new CNN poll finds only one-third of Americans backs the congressional Republican position for extending the Bush tax breaks to those earning more than $250,000 a year. Nearly half of American share President Obama’s position to only extend the Bush tax cuts on income below $250,000 […]

How To Cut The Deficit Without Stabbing America In The Back

Conservative austerity activists have long sought to whip up deficit hysteria and manipulate Washington into gutting Social Security and Medicare and stifling public investments. But Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a progressive member of the White House deficit commission, has just released a deficit reduction plan that proves we can achieve fiscal stability without destroying our long-term […]

Republicans Already Forgoing Job Creation Ideas Embrace Job Elimination Ideas

Yesterday I observed that Republican congresspeople literally are not offering any substantive ideas to create jobs. Now, leading Republicans are coalescing around an substantive idea … for the Federal Reserve to stop trying to create jobs. It is currently the law for the Federal Reserve to pursue that both restrain inflation and full employment. The […]

If Its Sunday Its A Bunch Of Republicans With No Ideas About Jobs

On the day before Congress reconvened in Washington, in the middle of a continuing job crisis, Republicans took to the Sunday talk show airwaves and … had no ideas what to do about creating jobs. This is not terribly shocking. There have been no actual job creation proposals from the Republicans since their congressional election […]

The Choice A Congress That Works With The President Or Doesnt Let The President Work

LISTEN Bill Scher discussed the 2010 midterm election on The Rick Smith Show October 29. Here is the choice voters face today. Do you want a Congress that works with the President, or a Congress that doesn’t let the President work? Do you want continued wonky debates between liberals and moderates that result in actual […]

Who Do You Want To Fight With Next Year Right-Leaning Dems or Tea Party Republicans

No matter what happens on Tuesday, progressives will not have unfettered control of Washington, just as we have not the last two years, the last decade, the decade before that, or the decade before that. We will have to fight for more change. The question is: who will we have to fight? The last two […]

Obama Steep Hike In The Retirement Age Not The Best Way To Fix Social Security

Potentially overlooked in yesterday’s blogger roundtable with President Obama is his response to the question “Will you rule out raising the retirement age to 70?” House Minority Leader John Boehner has explicitly backed the proposal, and a raise in the retirement age is reported to be under discussion by the President’s deficit commission, which is […]

Vote As If The Planet Depends On It Because It Does

While many progressives have lamented the inability of the President and the congressional leadership to pass legislation capping greenhouse gas emission, few have recognized that the White House always had a Plan B for averting the climate crisis – the EPA. But if conservative Republicans take control Congress, preventing EPA from exercising their legal obligation […]

Shocking Spewman Memo Professional Misinformant Behind ObamaCare Kills Unicorns Campaign Launches Operation Squash The Vote

While much of the traditional media has been diligently reporting on how Corporate America is doing nothing wrong by using secret donors to fund its multi-million attack ad blitz, they have ignored the explosive evidence of how the shady underworld of professional misinformanting is spreading lies about health care reform to the nation’s eight-year olds.