If you were one of the last people on earth holding out hope that the Super Congress would produce a bi-artisan deal to reduce our nation’s debt, yesterday’s Sunday talk shows should have crushed whatever hope you had left. There was no talk of compromise or common ground. Just attacks and finger pointing.

“As long as we have Republican lawmakers who are more enthralled with a pledge they took to a [anti-tax activist Grover Norquist] than a pledge they took to help solve the country’s problems, this is going to be hard to do,” Democrat co-chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said on CNN’s State of the Union. “This was not about extending the Bush tax cuts. It was about trying to do entitlement reform on the mandatory side of the budget,” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., told Meet the Press.