Stylistically speaking, Barack Obama could hardly be further from Jimmy Carter if he really had been born in Kenya.

Americans get mad as hell with reasonable frequency but quickly return to their families and sitcoms.

America's great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago.

Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady.

There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.

Liberals believe that they can't get a fair shake from the media anymore.

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.