Erin go bragh, my fellow Irishfolk, or those who merely choose to get their Irish on today.
We're here together for yet another round of the Beltway Bubble telling us how we need to sacrifice for the good of the country. Funny how that sacrifice never seems to trickle up to those inside the Beltway, innit?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think that it's time to push back against the real divide that's destroying this country: the very wealthy elites and the rest of us. Truly, this is a wholly bipartisan thing that both the left and right could get behind. Imagine the uprising if you ran ads showing an elderly couple stressing over their bills with the copy, "Are you tired of worrying about how you'll pay your bills when Exxon gets tax cuts?" Or better yet, a disabled vet: "I've put as much 'skin in the game' as I can, why is DC asking me to sacrifice more when BP posts its most profitable quarter and paid no taxes?" Or a homeless family, living in the car, "We've been looking for work for two years, lost our house in the mortgage crisis and the banks are the ones who got bailed out? Why?"
It's the Beltway bubble that ignores the CPC budget, that continues to frame this as a deficit issue, to push for SSI cuts when that is deficit neutral. It's the Beltway that focuses on cutting benefits to grandma and grandpa instead of common sense solutions of lifting the FICA cap, cutting tax subsidies to corporations, etc. Now it's time to remind them that there's a whole lot more of us than there is of them. The French aristocracy forgot about that too. It didn't turn out so well for them. Maybe that's a lesson from history worth remembering.
ABC's "This Week" -- House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Round table: ABC News' George Will and Matthew Dowd; House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.; co-host of NPR's All Things Considered Audie Cornish; and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, chair of Good360. Foreign policy roundtable: former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; former Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chair Gen. James Cartwright (USMC, Ret.). ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff.
NBC's "Meet the Press" -- Reps. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis.; Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. Church and state round table: Host of MSNBC's "Hardball" Chris Matthews; former two-term Republican Governor who, in 2002, was appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to investigate the sex abuse scandals in the Church, Frank Keating (R-OK); author and former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; and Republican Ana Navarro.
NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" -- Joe Klein, TIME; Kelly O'Donnell, NBC News; Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent; Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent.
CBS' "Face the Nation" _ Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman. Foreign policy round table: Richard Haass, The Council on Foreign Relations President; Danielle Pletka of American Enterprise Institute, David Rhode of The Atlantic and David Sanger from The New York Times.
MSNBC's "UP with Chris Hayes" -- Stuart Bowen Jr, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction; Koby Langley, Iraq War veteran - 82nd Airborne Division. Senior legal adviser for Southern Bagdad District; Raed Jarrar, Communications Director, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee / Former Iraq specialist, American Friends Service Committee / Contributor, A Family in Baghdad blog; Zunaib al-Suwaij, Co-founder, American Islamic Congress.
MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry" -- Rula Jebreal, MSNBC Contributor and Foreign Policy Analyst for Newsweek; Fmr. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA); Amb. Dennis Ross, Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Amb. Marc Ginsberg, Former US Ambassador to Morocco; Zephyr Teachout, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham; Lee Fang, Contributing Writer for The Nation Magazine and Author of “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right”; Errol Louis, Host of Inside City Hall on NY1 News and Co-Editor of “Deadline Artists: Scandals, Tragedies & Triumphs”; Joe Gantz, Director and Producer of “American Winter”; Harry Gantz, Co-Director and Producer of “American Winter”
CNN's "State of the Union" _ Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Panel: Al Cardenas of the American Conservative Union, Democratic Strategist KiKi McLean, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and a new face in the political world, Dr. Ben Carson.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" -- Former Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg, and Victor Cha of Georgetown University. Former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
CNN's "Reliable Sources" -- Lauren Ashburn, Editor-in-chief of Daily-Download.com, and Adam Buckman, TV columnist for Xfinity. New York Times religion correspondent Laurie Goodstein and The Washington Post's Sally Quinn. CNN’s Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper. The Washington Post's senior correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Time Magazine's Mark Thompson and former NBC News Senior Correspondent Fred Francis.
"Fox News Sunday" -- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks; Steve LaTourette, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership. Panel: Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard, Nina Easton, FORTUNE's Washington columnist & senior editor, Karl Rove, former Bush White House Senior Adviser, Joe Trippi, Former Howard Dean Campaign Manager.
So what's catching your eye this morning?
