From The Washington Post comes the piece No, `both sides’ aren’t equally to blame for supercommittee failure.

Here’s why the supercommittee is failing, in one sentence: Democrats wanted the rich to pay more in taxes towards deficit reduction, and Republicans wanted the rich to pay less in taxes towards deficit reduction.

Any news outlet that doesn’t convey this basic fact to readers and viewers with total clarity is obscuring, rather than illuminating, what actually happened here.

Of course it is kind of silly to talk compromise.  One side wants to go sharp left and the other side wants to go sharp right, the only possible compromise is to not change direction at all and just go over the looming cliff.  Maybe the cliff you know is better than the cliff you don’t.

Until the American people figure this out and make one side overwhelm the other in an election, there is little hope.

Although, we have seen that when one side is almost overwhelming in control, it may still take protesters taking to the streets to get the politicians to hear the 99% over the rushing sound of the 1%’s money pouring into the campaign coffers and cushy politician retirement packages.  A few hints for financial windfalls on insider trading could go a long way to cover this up as no money is directly changing hands.

He said, she said was enough to put Martha Stewart in jail for insider trading.  However, politicians have made an exemption for themselves, so they can actually do insider trading legally.