A little over a year ago, I wrote:

There is a big rally Saturday in Philadelphia, to begin to "change the conversation" to focus on the needs of working Americans.

Even Olympians are, alas, not immune from America’s homeownership crisis. The Associated Press reported this week that the parents of U.S.

This month the Mitt Romney campaign offered a one-page economic plan, Mitt Romney’s Plan For A Stronger Middle Class. One of the points of the plan focuses on what they call "small business." So what does the Romney plan do for small business? Let's take a look.

Mitt Romney released a new ad today about welfare reform. It's a stone-cold lie. The ad's narrator says: "Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

While on The David Pakman Show yesterday, host David Pakman asked me why I thought Mitt Romney has proven to be such a bad candidate.

We tend to over-emphasize personalities in our politics especially in Presidential campaigns. It matters who's President, of course, but our national elections are the product of much larger economic and social forces.

In the case of fetuses and rich people, Republicans insist on the sanctity of life.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans are being shielded from accountability for their economic plan, because the plan is so extreme that many people just won't believe you when you tell them about it. They think that you have something wrong with you for saying such things!

"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." --- Ralph Reed

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games. One of the last things the House did last week before leaving Washington for five weeks was to spend time and energy defining legislative masturbation.

Yesterday I got an email for the President's birthday inviting me to sign an e-card (and no doubt asking for contributions, too.

In today's anything-goes political fundraising world, the nation’s super rich and their favored politicos are no longer even going through the motions of maintaining 'separate and independent' campaigns.

The following email appears to be circulating widely: THIS IS A GREAT IDEA...LET'S DO IT!! AUGUST 1st to Sept. 1st Well over 50 yrs ago I knew a lady who would not buy Christmas gifts if they were made in China. Her daughter will recognize her in the following.

A well funded network of right-wing extremists wants to make it socially and politically impossible to express the ideals that made this country great.

Austerity bites.

It is often stated as fact that Democrats always want to raise taxes and Republicans always want to lower taxes. We now know this to be false.

Republican tax plans raise taxes on the middle class to pay for tax cuts on the rich.

Ed Kilgore is righteously irked about the latest idiotic right wing contretemps over the fact that Olympic athletes have to pay taxes on their medals:

The nub of Bill Keller's recent essay on why Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid must be cut is a graph – taken from a report by a group called Third Way – that compares federal “investments” with “entitlements,” showing that one is in decline and the other is on the rise.

Is a little-known bureaucrat named Edward DeMarco an unreasonable, ideological obstructionist who's blocking badly-needed homeowner relief? The White House says he is. So does Paul Krugman. Some of us having been harping on the subject for months.

Everybody's all excited because Huckleberry Graham is being a grown-up: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday urged Mitt Romney to embrace revenues as part of a plan to stave off the automatic spending cuts set to take effect next year.

Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

Today the House is expected to vote on what to do about the expiring Bush tax cuts.