Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they dont realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change.

Within the cult of Wall Street that forged Mitt Romney, making money justifies any behavior, no matter how venal.

If you look back in history, as the barbarians were invading the gates of Rome, people were consulting fortunetellers and worrying about the end of the world and all sorts of other apocalyptic notions. When the tsars were finally overthrown, they were all reading tarot cards even as the revolutionaries were banging at the gates.

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.

I think America has the best assholes in the world. I defy the Belgians or the Japanese to produce something like a Donald Trump.