Steve Kroft conducted a very tense interview this week on 60 Minutes. He brought together the two leaders of the U.S. Senate, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell, for their first joint interview.

“It was very chilly,” Kroft told Overtime’s Ann Silvio in the above video. “They did not look at each other once during the course of the interview.”

“They kept saying ‘my good friend, Harry’ or ‘my good friend, Mitch,’ but it didn’t seem very genuine.”

The Senate has become a dysfunctional place, filled with politicians on the extreme Left and Right who can’t or won’t reach a compromise for the public good, Kroft says. “It’s clearly not a fun place, and there are a lot of people that are very unhappy, particularly the new group of congressmen. A number of people have told us that they’ve come in and said, ‘What am I doing here?'”

COMMENT

Listen to Kroft’s analysis of his joint interview with Senate leaders, and tell us what you think of the situation in the comment section. Is the solution, as Kroft told us, to simply vote these guys out and elect better Senators? Or is the U.S. Senate and its system of rules and procedures broken?

via An exasperating interview with Senate leaders – 60 Minutes Overtime – CBS News.

David Axelrod says the GOP’s ‘in deep trouble,’ Eric Cantor attacks Obama for his ‘negativity,’ Peggy Noonan wishes America was more like England, plus more in our Sunday Talk roundup.

continued:

via Sunday Talk: David Axelrod, Eric Cantor, Peggy Noonan & More (Video) – The Daily Beast.

Today we get a clear picture of who is on the side of the ordinary people of Ireland.  How these ordinary people are being drowned in debt like unwanted mongrel puppies.

President Higgins wants to see a change in the law, whereby once legislation is sent by the president for Supreme Court analysis a citizen cannot challenge it,  so that a person can in future have that option.

We see clearly who profits from a financial coup like this and how the tight lipped CEO of Bank of Ireland feels he has no need to answer coherently to the  citizens of Ireland.

We owe four times more than we did in 2008

Noonan: ‘I’m powerless to tackle bankers’ pay & perks

Q & A with Richie Boucher. CEO Bank of Ireland Very Little Answers.

Higgins wants to extend boundaries of presidency

The average consumer now owes four times more than they did in 2008, stark new figures reveal.

Irish people have become buried in credit union debt and unpaid telephone, fuel and tax bills since the recession kicked in.

The figures, from the company behind the debt defaulters magazine, Stubbs Gazette, show the average consumer now owes almost €10,000 — compared to €2,442 in 2008. Those living in commuter towns and remote rural counties have been particularly badly hit.

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FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan has said he is powerless to rein in the pay and pensions of some of Ireland’s most senior bankers after it emerged that the State’s biggest bank, AIB, used some of a €1.1bn taxpayer bailout to fund former chief executive Eugene Sheehy’s estimated annual pension of €529,000.

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He felt the convention on the Constitution might consider those sections governing the President’s referral of legislation to the Supreme Court. Most difficult for him in the context was the provision whereby a matter “having been referred by the President . . . cannot then be challenged by a citizen”.

via What a banker occupied country looks like – Max Keiser.