The political system of the United States is fundementally broken. We no longer have the ability to deal with complex issues.

Hell the current Healthcare bill in congress isn't even all that radical. Taken on its face, all it does is expend the existing system to cover more people. A few minor modifications are made to regulate private insurers. No one in power is proposing moving to a single payer system like Canada or a completely nationalized system like the UK.

And yet listening to the rhetoric coming from the right you would think the entire sytem is being scrapped.

The media's 'He said, they said' approach to coverage rewards the liars by giving even the most blantant of lies equal weight to the truth.

Add to that the most poorly educated citizenry in the developed world and we have a recipe for complete disaster.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The probems plague efforts to save the environment, fix the structural problems of our economy etc etc.

In 200 years when our few surviving descendants write the histories of the late 20th and eary 21st centuries they will bemoan the complete failure of 'democracy' to deal with long term complex issues.

Is a lousy selling point. And that's pretty much what the stimulus has accomplised. It's made things less bad than they might have been.

Me and my neighbor are out of a job, but because of the stimulus the guy across the street still has his job is difficult to sell, hard to quantify and really doesn't mean anything to people who are still out of job or haven't seen a raise in 2+ years.

As illustrated by the letters above a lot of people do not understand the difference between the bank bailouts done in Oct and Nov of last year (and continuing into this year) and the fiscal stimulus package passed in February.

The bank bailout, which gave away (depending out how its calculated) between $1-2 TRILLION taxpayer dollars to banks has done little to help the economy. It might have stabilized teh banking system. I have yet to decide if that good or not. It did a lot to protect the bonuses of the high ranking banking employees.

The fiscal stimlus is the $700 Billion dollar program over half of which was made up of tax cuts. Which have little to no effect in the economy (according to most economists, including the conservative ones). Leaving only $350 billion in direct stimulus going into the economy. Most of that money hasn't even been spent yet and is scheduled to be dolled out over the next 12 months or so. That money, as I said in an earlier post, hasn't done much yet beyond keeping things from getting worse faster. Maybe it will do more as more money gets distributed, but who knows at this point.

Take out the public option and all that is left are few minor regulatory changes to the insurance industry, which will almost certainly be be rendered toothless before they even put into place. The only thing that will give the insurace indusry any incentive to improve its ways is competition from the government.

Hell even with the public option the plan isn't all that radical. All it does is expand the existing system to cover more people and supplement some of the cost of covering those people with public dollars. It's not like we're moving to a single payer system or a fully nationalized system or even the mandatory (and more tightly regulated) insurance systems of France and Japan.

This barely even qualifies as 'incremental' reform let alone any kind of radical overhaul.

At its best 60 minutes demostrates what real journalism is all about. They take time to tell a story. They still ask hard questions and follow up to try and get actual answers.

Even in its slimmed down basic look and simple opening 60 minutes stands out from its competition. They skip the flashy graphics and over editted style that has inflicted much of TV 'news'. Even their celebrity interview segments tend to be a cut above.

No Jobs means no recovery. At least for the middle class (what's left of it). There have been a few of us making that basic point for a while now. All the talk of 'bouncing along the bottom' and 'green shoots' means nothing until people have jobs. It means nothing until those jobs pay living wages.

To all those who keep saying, Stewart did not win or it only came out a draw, you are missing the point. The Daily Show is a satire, a comedy program, its purpose to entertain. The fact that this interview was one of the very few real 'debates' that have occured on healthcare reform is just sad. The fact that Stewart even made an effort to call McCaughey out on a fraction of her lies is a true tragedy.

This kind of interview should not be happening on The Daily Show. It should be happening on CNN, NBC, ABC and the rest of the MSM. A comedian should not have to be responsible for trying to beat right wing lies.

This is what political discourse has been reduced to? This is all the left has to defend itself with? We rely on comedian to put out the truth?

Why aren't the Democrats out it force on Sunday mornings? Where are the progessives in the MSM?