Thanks Jon. Impressed by how well these numbers are holding up against the avalanche of “false equivalence.”

Indeed, perhaps most of the people can, no longer, be fooled most of the time, Boo?

Thank you, Jon, ’tis always good (and reaffirming to the soul) to see these numbers, in bold black and white, from time to time.

DW

Thank you for pushing back on the “everyone wants cuts” Obama theme. It is such a disgusting sell out to our corporate overlords on Wall Street and to the MIC. So they are using social “pressure” right out of Fahrenheit 451, “Everyone likes mental oblivion, Julia, don’t you? Don’t you want to be part of the group?”

The FDL book announcement reads:

“Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were first-generation Zionists and founders of Tel Aviv, tells the story of his own evolution toward a more moderate viewpoint.”

There was an Arab town in what is now Tel Aviv. It’s inhabitants were driven out Ben-Ami’s parents. Does this make Ben-Ami’s parents “moderate” ethnic cleansers.

How about asking ” If you would give up your social security to keep the Middle East wars running”, for our security for sure?

MSM is part of deceiving the public. keeps running polls showing americans want a balanced approach. It is sickening and a bloody lie, and polls like the one above need to get wide circulation. Also agree americans should be asked if they want to see cuts to SS and MC, so we can keep funding endless wars

Valuable data, thanks very much for your usual amazing speed, Jon. Kaiser just released this thing this morning.

Directly related to this overwhelming public opposition, the CBO has scored both Reid’s Senate bill and Boehner’s House bill as producing massive savings: “both seek to cut spending primarily by capping discretionary appropriations.” But nowhere in the longer-form “blog” from CBO does CBO explain whether benefits paid to Social Security recipients, or medical cost reimbursements paid under Medicare & Medicaid (SSMM) would be affected by such “caps on discretionary spending.”

I assume benefits & reimbursements under SSMM are not covered under “discretionary” spending because Congress has no “discretion” whether to appropriate money to pay for valid SSMM claims. Am I wrong about that? (I downloaded the 11-pp. PDF of CBO’s complete formal report on the Senate bill but didn’t finish reading it yet.)

Oops…

who don’t think they will ever have trouble affording the basic necessities after they retire who salivate at the thought of getting a grip on ALL your money through privatized derivative monetization schemes

There. Fixed.

Lets start a list. Do you want to see cuts to SS and MC:

so people who own 6 vacation homes can pay a lower tax rate than you do;

so your parents can move to your house from the nursing home as the funding is slashed;

so the company who sent your job overseas can continue to pay no taxes at all;

so people who send their children to european summer camps sit by and laugh while your local public school crumbles;

The majority? Ha! Let them eat cake!

These people control all the media. How do you counteract misinformation? How do you broadcast your message, how do you counter the falsehoods? You need your own outlet to control the message. This is where you have to begin.

Clearly shows America is no longer a democracy.

let me change that last one to:

so people who fly their children to expensive european summer camps can get a tax break for their corporate jet while your public swimming pool is closed due to funding cuts.

Do you want to see cuts to SS and Medicare and Medicaid [fixed]:

so people who own 6 vacation homes can pay a lower tax rate than you do;

so your parents can move to your house from the nursing home as the funding is slashed;

so the company who sent your job overseas can continue to pay no taxes at all;

so people who send their children to european summer camp sit by and laugh while your local public school crumbles;

so your state govt will go bankrupt trying to pay for constitutionally-mandated hospital treatment for poor people cut off from Medicaid;

so your sales taxes/gasoline taxes/car registration fees skyrocket to bail out your bankrupt state govt;

This hard-sell reminds me of the incessant chorus demanding an Iraq war, never, ever, mind the facts.
Now S&P, and other rating agencies threaten a downgrade no matter how soon we accept austerity, to the benefit of the malefactors of great wealth.
Who are these righteous yet illigitimate demanders of our American dream of a decent society, a decent life, and benefits earned over a lifetime.
Who manufatured there authority?
Who manufactured our consent?

hit the hard. where their children live.

I totally get that we must take direct action against the Catfood Commission II but I am trying to find out if Congress can claim with a straight face that “nothing in the deficit-reduction deal we just passed requires cuts in benefits” for SSMM.

so your grandmother will have to choose between her peanut butter sandwich tonight and her medicine because her Social Security check has been cut.

Wall Street wants to rob us some more. And their employees in Washington will help them do it, regardless of polls indicating what we want. Polls have indicated for the past four years what we want and they have done the exact opposite. What does that tell you? Taxation without representation. Time for some real change.

Too bad the powers that be don’t give a damn about what the majority thinks or wants or DOESN’T want.
Hence, the new and improved catfood commission, now known as the gang of 12.

The usually middle-of-the-road (MOTR, where you only see yellow lines & dead Armadillos– h/t TX Ag. Commr. ) Center on Budget & Policy Priorities said this about the planned austerity cuts slashing $1.5 Trillion out of federal spending:

The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

If you buy CBPP’s analysis, like I do (even though they were weak on Obama’s corrupt action to extend the Shrub tax cuts last December), then all urban dwellers gonna be livin’ in war zones, and all rich suburbanites gonna hafta live in gated communities with armed guards to keep out the starving angry mobs.

Joe Walsh [R-ILL] being sued for unpaid child support, over $100 thousand.

Deadbeat dad. The perfect metaphor for the Republicans/Tea Goopers.

So will the Good Dad Dems keep the food on the family table and a roof over America’s head? Or will they keep trying to appease the monster at the door with more and more?

Linky

62 percent of the country wants no reductions to Social Security and 59 percent wants to see no reductions in Medicare spending.

Which, of course, is exactly why Obama is so determined to do it – shared sacrifice, after all; leadership is about making the tough choices that people don’t want, you know. It’s an odd world-view, but I’ve run into that sort of thing before. Working where I do, I’ve encountered any number of highly-educated, intelligent idiots. The sort of people who can take a useful guideline and turn it into a Rule. So, if you can make both sides hate it, you must be right! Context, content, who cares. Hey, it’s easier than thinking.

My guess is that if more Americans realized what a huge percentage of Medicaid funds are spent on seniors in nursing homes, Medicaid would fare better in the polls. Few politicians are willing to educate the public about for fear of seeming to support the poor, or people of color, or undocumented immigrants.

Some huge percentage of folks in nursing homes are on Medicaid (means-tested just to get approved): 74% maybe?

Thanks for the diary, Jon.

Rest assured my fellow plebs, Barack Obama and other sociopathic politicians, who are being hired by the plutocratic power structure within our too-big-to-fail-’n'-jail banking system to give us plebs massive doses of a neoliberal form of shock therapy, will make certain that the holes in the social safety net are just small enough to prevent the fat cats on Wall Street from falling through it:

http://www.otherwords.org/media/safety_net

And this cartoon by the masterful Mr. Fish depicts Obama and his reverse-Robin Hood agenda to a T:

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/obamahood_20110727/

We don’t live in a Democracy anymore, so this point is moot. What people want doesn’t matter.

Thanks for the poll though, Jon. It’s nice to know that the majority in this country is still semi-sane.

Crucial point. Thank you. We can’t abandon Medicaid in our direct action demands, just cuz the Kaiser poll showed the public thinks of it as the weak step-child.

from Fractal’s link to the evaluation of the Boehner Republican plan:
“To secure $1.5 trillion in entitlement savings over the next ten years would require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties (including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan) have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years.”

CBPP statement: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3548

Democracy is dead. Until the beltway pundits begin suffering real consequences for opposing the will of the people they’ll continue to be the stooges of the oligarchy.

When it costs $80,000 a year for a bed in a nursing home, in a room with lots of others, and Medicare doesn’t pay a dime, you have to spend every penny until your last $2,000, and then they take your monthly Medicare and put you on Medicaid. You are left with $30 a month for your “bad habits.”

It is a horrible deal, and that’s where most of us will end up – miserable, alone, in poverty, drugged up, waiting to die. And that’s before they reduce “benefits.”

This might be one of the falsehoods you are disgusted about:

The Reid plan does not call for spending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and other entitlements. That’s a fair political trade-off given that Republicans have refused to accept tax increases. But until both sides are able to put tax increases and entitlements on the table, there will be no lasting deficit reduction.

New York Times editorial webdated July 26.

Seems to me NYT has swallowed the austerity Kool-Aid. We don’t need no fucking “entitlement cuts” all we need to do is cancel all of Shrub’s tax cuts. All of them. Plus, NYT just blatantly ignored that Reid’s bill includes Catfood Commission II, just like Boehner’s bill does. WTF?

None of which they support, incidentally. I.e., CBPP listed three horrifying options, all of which it opposes.

I do not want these cuts. I also do not want to hang too much on the wishes of the majority. A big problem in California is that it is governed by referendum and proposition. The majority can vote on the civil rights of others, like gay marriage, at least until the courts sort it out. We are still in a mess because of Proposition 13. If a majority of Americans were tricked into wanting austerity, I still would not want it.

Obama and all the Congresspeople are set for life. They don’t need no f-ing Social Security or Medicare. They don’t give a shit what we regular people need.

They don’t dare inform the unwashed masses that their collective throats are about to be cut.

Damn the corporate media! Those are PUBLIC airwaves supposedly used for the PUBLIC good!

Sorry to yell. I am so pissed.

This is why it is so necessary that it be done on a “bipartisan” basis, where both sides cover each other from blame, and the electorate has nowhere to go.Its a genius move, led by our genius bipartisan president who plays the key role in the whole scam.

Welcome fractal; I wrote about it recently, just couldn’t remember the numbers very well.

Majority Wants Someone Else To Pick Up The Tab.

Duh!

“Majority Opposes Any Cuts to Medicare or Social Security”

And the majority (whoever they are) contributes how much to congressional campaigns?

Or, more to the Point, are you willing to make the “tough choice” to cut SS and Medicare, perhaps deeply, to offset these additional corporate tax cuts we have stashed under the podium here?

May I point out that for YEARS, the majority have been opposed to increasing our presence overseas, and for getting the hell out of Afghanistan. But nevermind all that. The majority have been for doing something about global warming and all sorts of yes let’s say the dirty word-liberal hippy shit. Doesn’t matter what you WANT Amerikay-you been had. And by a nice looking black man with a D behind his name to boot. Let’s listen to “both sides” and the utter tripe about what a conservative country this is. All they have been doing since 1969 is trying to destroy every progressive gain ever made. There are not two sides. There is the bullshit propaganda and a tiny voice of truth-oh wait, they canned Cenk and Olbermann. WHY oh WHY?

AND YES, Andrea Mitchell, and Chris Matthews and insert any beltway hack pundit’s name HERE….will never need social security or medicare or unemployment or any damn thing. Nice that they shill for compromise and killing old people. They are as bad or worse than any politician. And I couldn’t even think of most of the hacks names, hey what b.s. propaganda has Brian Williams and Katie Couric shilled in their day? THEY MAKE MILLIONS.

It obviously matters little what the “rest” of us want anymore does it?

I agree 110%

The only thing that is secure from all these wars is the fat contractors and thier DC croneys!

I agree, seaglass. It doesn’t matter what the “American people” think. They can be 90% in agreement and it wouldn’t mean shit. It only matters what the real owners of the country want. Those are the unpatriotic rich people who have bought the politicians in both parties.