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Melissa Harris-Perry was on vacation this weekend, but I was very happy to see her guest host, Joy Reid and her panel members go after Democrats and President Obama for pretending that this god awful proposal for chained CPI would not be a cut in Social Security benefits for our seniors who can least afford it.

Sadly we don't have the opportunity for a group of actual liberals to debate policy as we saw here very often and are usually treated to our millionaire beltway Villagers talking about how we must extract a pound of flesh from the most vulnerable among us to balance our budget on the cable news programs instead. This was definitely a welcomed change of pace from what we're treated to far too often on MSNBC, where we've got way too many of them pushing for more austerity and cuts to our social safety nets, because heaven forbid we can't have taxes on members of the beltway cocktail party circuit going up.

Harris-Perry guest: Potential change to Social Security ‘absolutely a cut’:

On Melissa Harris-Perry on Sunday, panelists discussed the fact that Social Security was on the table in fiscal cliff negotiations — which has “progressives calling foul,” said guest host Joy Reid.

She discussed a proposed plan to divorce Social Security benefits from cost of living increases and tie them instead to the “chained consumer price index,” which assumes that people will buy cheaper alternatives when products become expensive.

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claims that such a shift would not be a benefit cut and would strengthen the program, but others claim it would inevitably lead to reduced benefits.

Reid goes on, “As we await a [fiscal cliff] deal, one of the most looming questions we face is just what aspects of Social Security are on the table?”

Recently, 102 Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) requesting that a shift to chained CPI be removed from consideration.

As they noted, that got some real push back from The Nation's Richard Kim and their other guests, Bob Herbert and Raul Reyes.

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Anyone who doesn't watch Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC on the weekends is missing out on some of the most intelligent conversation on cable news, and the segment above was no exception. I didn't get a chance to watch the whole show Sunday with the other video monitoring I do for the site, but Digby flagged this segment the other day and I agree with her criticism of Jonathan Alter.

The discussion was over the problems within the judicial nomination and confirmation structure and the fact that the process has been broken ... and it's been broken by the right. Alter seems to think that the left would be behaving "just as badly" as the right if heaven forbid Democrats nominated judges who would be perceived as just as "partisan" as those on the right.

What Alter didn't point out is that the biggest problem with judges like Thomas or Scalia isn't just the fact that they're "partisans." It's the fact that they're corrupt and have huge conflicts of interest and won't recuse themselves from cases where they have no business ruling. And unfortunately as long as we've got members of Congress who are going to defend their actions, we're not going to see them impeached.

Here's more from Digby's post — Partisan (Judicial) Review:

Yep. We can have as many right wing fascists on the court but Democrats should only nominate people who "moderate" and have a "reasonable" judicial temperament.

These Village "liberals" are killing us. He is completely wrong about this. If the people didn't give a shit that a partisan court stole an election, giving them a lecture about the Obamacare mandate isn't going to get the job done.

No, we are living in an ideologically polarized age and this guy wants liberals to stand around tittering politely about how wrong it is that we be so. History shows how well that works out for them when the other side has gone mad.

The left has allowed themselves to be completely outgunned when it comes to whipping up public outrage and getting their base to care about judicial nominations. Guest Nan Aron pointed out what's at risk if the Supreme Court is allowed to move any further to the right than it is already:

ARON: This is going to take a fight. Not just from the White House, but from the Senate, from all of us. This election... the stakes with this election for the future of this Supreme Court are enormous when you think about it. And we now know just how this court and several courts under it make decisions that affect every aspect of our lives and we can't sit back.

I don't know what it will take to get those on the left to pay more attention to this issue but I was glad to see it raised on Hayes' show, regardless of the fact that Alter wants Democrats to bring a knife to a gun fight. The rest of the panel was in complete disagreement with him about the sort of judges the left should be trying to get nominated and what tactics should be used to try to get some better judges through our broken nominating process. The Democrats could take some lessons from Republicans about getting public opinion on their side and with being willing to fight for good nominees.