There are many explanations for why America is more right-wing than other countries in the developed world; an individualistic and unsympathetic political culture, the use of religion for reactionary causes, racial antagonism and division in the working class, a governmental structure designed to defend a commercial oligarchy – take your pick. But just because the Right has been more successful in America than elsewhere does not mean the political spectrum can be totally redefined under right-wing terms.

Yet that is exactly what the New York Times did.

Apparently when all the non-partisan public polling shows your position is unpopular, what you do is commission your own poll based on some highly deceptive questions. Third Way, the Wall Street-funded think tank, has released a poll of “Obama voters” which they are claiming shows support for a grand bargain. If you look at the actually survey questions, however, it is clear they don’t pass the laugh test.

Obama says you are morally obligated to pay the debts incurred to benefit the hyper-rich. Rich people fire workers because their candidate lost an election. Which is the more immoral?

How could an idea as brilliant as Americans Elect fail? HOW???

In the aftermath of a horribly bruising debt limit deal and the Occupy movement, the focus in Washington shifted away from deficits and back to the economy, jobs and income inequality. But as a reminder that social movements must be constant and vigilant, one powerful Democrat, in association with a DC lobbying group, wants to bring us right back to that moment last year when everybody hated politicians.

In Which I Compare our Political System and Centrist Third Party Wankers to a Ridiculously Oversimplified Cola War

In Social Security’s 76 year history, it has always been dealt with independent of the general budget, through the normal legislative process. Rather than enact major changes in haste and, we believe, repent at leisure after the damage has been done, we urge policymakers to focus on Social Security after the debt limit has been raised, in its own legislative vehicle, through the normal legislative process with full hearings and open debate. Let’s go with the old-fashioned way, rather than some new, untested third way.

In reality, Ryan’s plan doesn’t actually protect current seniors Medicare. With no new people joining traditional Medicare, its pool would steadily shrink, making doctors less willing to accept it.

It’s very easy for the Third Way to congratulate itself that it got a bunch of people “from Middle America” to complain that gay men and women deprived of civil rights “don’t get it,” it’s a fundamentally dishonest project. But the people who “don’t get it” are those who pretend they can separate the institution of marriage from society’s full recognition of that institution, legally, through the rights it conveys.

In our civil society, if something is legal for one, it just has to be legal for all. The bottom line is, everyone is equal under the law.

At least that’s how I see it.

Not so, it seems, for Lanae Erickson and Jon Cowan, two Third Way muckety-mucks who recently penned a piece for the Baltimore Sun in which they argued that if LGBT Americans want to see marriage equality become a reality, they need to make it less about equality and more about embracing what the authors see as traditional values.