With the sequestration cuts set to take place in less than a month the attention of Washington is going to turn back to the deficit. To begin laying the groundwork for this next fight top Democrats are demanding that more revenue be part of any new deals.

The idea of Social Security being dealt with in a “separate process” should make defenders of the program very nervous.

I turned on ABC’s This Week to see if the host could get anything useful out of Governors Jindal of La. and O’Malley of Maryland. I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s usually interesting to see what each party thinks the most helpful spin is. What we got is a confirmation that America is now saddled with the two worst political parties we’ve had in my lifetime. Both men were awful, but host Terry Moran was even worse.

Why is it that ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN thought that the politician America needed to hear from this week was Newt Gingrich, a candidate who’s been thoroughly rejected by all by the most delusional and extreme Republican voters and has no chance of becoming President? Even if it hadn’t been a ghastly week, with Republican icons insulting women and degrading the national discourse while the GOP leadership and Presidential candidates hid, the idea of giving the man who has spent 20 years contributing to our declining politics yet another national platform would be inexcusable for any supposedly news entity.

Every viewer knows that any interview of Newt Gingrich usually results in an uninterrupted commercial for himself, his lies, and his fantasies. With a weak interviewer like ABC’s George Stephanopoulus, that means we get 10 minutes of misrepresentations, misdirection and evasions with little or no pushback, leaving the audience either frustrated or more misinformed than they were before.

A week ago, George Will advised Tim Pawlenty that now was the moment for him to make his move. On ABC’s This Week, Pawlenty did so. He got in the “let’s play chicken with the debt limit” car and headed it straight towards the cliff, joining the growing list of Tea-GOP presidential wannabes who should never be given a license to drive.

One can only wonder what an intelligent, worldly woman like Christiane Amanpour must have thought as she interviewed the Rev. Franklin Graham. Whether it was cynicism or cluelessness about Christianity that convinced ABC’s This Week to feature Graham, I cannot say. What I will say is that Franklin Graham came across as one of the phoniest, stupidest “religious” hucksters I’ve ever listened to. Happy Easter to you too, ABC.

ABC’s This Week didn’t even make a pretense of being fair and balanced, let alone honest, in covering the historic labor protests in Wisconsin. The elite don’t want you to know that asking the working class to pay for the elite’s excesses is profoundly wrong.

After watching White House Adviser David Axelrod on ABC’s This Week, one can easily understand the lack of enthusiasm for an aimless Democratic Party that can’t even stand up and fight for what it’s supporters believe because it’s led from the top down by incompetent and corrupt corporatists.

It remains a mystery to me why the candidates who are able to tell the truth because they are doing the right thing aren’t able to capitalize on it. Telling the public that they are constantly given the lies of the right wing in order to get their votes against their own interests seems like something we really need to press home, over and over.

The Republic is in serious decline and it could easily get worse. The party in charge can’t lead without someone with more vision and drive at the top, while the party that wants to take their places has been seized by mendacious nuts. Anyone who can’t see we’re literally in a world of hurt wins the Dan Senor Head in the Oily Sand award for the week.