That’s one reason why I’ve been passing this around:

http://action.ourfuture.org/p/dia/action/public/index.sjs?action_KEY=189

From the link:

The economy shrank for the first time in 30 months. Why? Because of an unexpected drop in government spending. Yet the “sequester” – automatic across-the-board spending cuts – are scheduled to bring the hammer down on the economy on March 1. This is a ticking austerity bomb. We must disarm it. Use the form below to tell your representatives in Washington: Disarm the Austerity Bomb. Repeal the Sequester.

No worries.

Obama can cut all he wants.

Then he just has to do an encore of his inauguration speech and the PINOs (progressives in name only) will fall in love with him all over again.

Obama really wants to cut Social Security and he wants to make sure everyone knows it.

Yes, rest assured, that if Obama’s promising to whop austerity on the @ss of the 99%, it’s one of the few times he ain’t lying.

Obama’s been *promising* to cut Soc Sec & Medicare since he first got into office in 2009. He *promised* very forthrightly to cut Soc Sec (at least) during the second campaign speech this last fall.

I never “got” why anyone voted for Obama bc allegedly ONLY Obama was going to “save” Soc Sec from cuts.

No. Emphatically not. Obama has actually BEEN pretty transparent about his stated GOAL to CUT Soc Security & Medicare. I simply do not understand how or why anyone is/was/could be confused about this.

Thanks for the post. Not the first time this info has been posted here.

I don’t think so . Those pretty words done left the stage. Gonna take a little more.

Yes, you are completely correct, Jon.

“Obama really wants to cut Social Security and he wants to make sure everyone knows it.”

At some point, that sentence will cease to be “news”.

However, given the “leak” of the “White Paper”, that “legal finding” which everyone with a functioning moral compass and an actual conscience is talking about, is concerned about, is seeking SOME way to do something about …

Well, in your last post, “What Should Progressives Root For in the Sequestration Fight”, your last sentence is this: “At the moment there seems to be no good plausible outcomes, just a plethora of ‘least worse ones’.”

Might it be that “the lesser evil” ain’t so lesser?

And, if that is so, then when might it be prudent of “the people” AND political analysts to seriously consider that NEITHER of the two (count ‘em”) legacy political parties intends to do a damned thing … except more of the same?

Such prudent perception then ought, so it seems, to lead to the inescapable conclusion that “the people”, hoi paloi, NEED, rather desperately, to NOT do more of the same … to cease making excuses, to shake off the howling partisans and their attempts to silence rightful and proper criticisms as “hating”, and to look to other possibilities, to seek other means of politically and socially organizing themselves to stand against the lock-step march to austerity and the loud-mouthed parade of those who extoll perpetual war and the use of drone assassination … even of citizens of this nation, without due process, without the advice and consent of Congress, and without any meaningful input from the Judicial “branch” about the bi-partisan practice of hiding everything under the cloak of “secrecy” and “national security”. Of course, Jon, certain someones will say, “Hey! There are more important things to think and talk about, to do, than this old shit, things that matter, and what is …IS, so just shut the eff up, after all, most people don’t care about any of these stupid things, because they know that President Obama wants to do the right thing but those mean old Republicans, whose base are too stupid to breathe, just won’t let him.”

When, Jon, is enough … MORE than enough?

You appear to try to engage us in thinking about how dreadfully screwed up everything is … yet do not, apparently, realize that the current political class, that “politics” as it is “played” today, right now, right here, is dead set (no pun intended) on pursuing what cannot be understood as anything else but an appalling effort, of many year’s duration, of intentional planning, and cynical implementation, to gut this nation of any common wealth and moral principle that might yet remain.

Have you noticed this “pattern”

If you have, then precisely what do you, as a political analyst suggest that actual flesh and blood human beings, right now, might do to change anything?

This lesser evil crap is NOT going to make ANYTHING any better, it is DESIGNED to make everything worse for the many and damned nice for the few.

Barack Obama is, for all “pragmatic” intents and purposes, the leader of the Democratic party.

How would you rate his leadership?

How do you imagine, you as a political analyst, given what we face, right now, today, that without some VERY substantial change IN the people, BY the people, and FOR the people … anything is going to be or become better, tomorrow?

How serious do you actually consider our common plight to be?

And what do you consider will be required to bring about “something” a good deal better?

Now, you might answer as a political analyst, however, unless you expect to live happily among the wealthy and above-the-law powerful elite, you might consider, as a human being, in a world run quite amok with greed and violence, how to ponder these questions and what sort of answers are, without reasonable doubt, now called for.

Frankly, Jon, I do not expect you to answer, yet I do sincerely hope that you might consider the issues and the reality which I have placed before you … and any others who might just chance to read this post.

DW

O is back to be butt-luved by the Reaganites. Someone ought to fill his pie-hole with santorum.

Who is he pleasin’ since it’s clearly not the public? He can’t leave well enough alone; must he try to get the love of the 1%?

Obama might try to get the love of the 1% but he never will. They have used him as their tool and will toss him aside when he is out of office like a used tissue. No dinners at Jamie Dimon’s penthouse. Obama will never be a member of their “club.”

Unfortunately that’s the date that a series of harmful automatic cuts to job-creating investments in defense spending also known as the sequester, are scheduled to take effect

Cutting defense cuts jobs, Cutting SS & Medicare does not?

Money is fungible.

There are few “investments” in defense, investments require some return and there is little in the majority of defense spending. Infrastructure is investing, defense is an expense.

Obama has been thoughtful enough to plainly tell us that he’s coming after Social Security and Medicare again.

How can we most effectively oppose him?

I wish Obysmal would explain, or be asked, why he thinks SS is a deficit problem, given its separate funding.

The man is either mendacious, or stupid………. or both.

Both.

Great comment DW (as usual).

I have to tell you about a series of comments I read here at The Lake a few weeks ago because it’s also about the LOTE thing you mention.

I don’t remember the commenter’s name (and wouldn’t say it even if I did but I really don’t) but these two were basically having a conversation in the comments section and this poster had said yes, of course, she had voted for Obama. He was horribe too, but of course he was the LOTE, and Romney would have absolutely been worse.

Then the conversation turned to local politicians and about how none of the Democratic politicians act like real Democrats anymore, and this poster had the audactiy to say, I shit you not, something along the lines of this:

“Yes, none of these Democrats represent my views. It’s so frustrating, I never get anyone that represents my views in office.”

My mouth just dropped open. You vote for someone who doesn’t represent your views and then lament the fact that no one ever gets elected that represents your views???? Unbelievable.

Because the money lent to the Gov in Bonds paid for by SS contributions will have to be repaid.

That will leave less money for foreign adventures.

On a cash flow basis it will contribute to the deficit.

” You vote for someone who doesn’t represent your views and then lament the fact that no one ever gets elected that represents your views?”

I think many democratic voters cling to a nostalgic view that the Democratic Party actually stands for something. It is not clear to me that the democratic party has any principles let alone any idea what they might be.

Democratic candidates work hard to get elected but seem clueless about what to do when they get there beyond collecting their fat salaries and showing up for the occasional Sunday morning TV show.

I would pay to see Obysmal trying to explain that somewhat profound conundrum to the great unwashed (not his base). ‘No more fcuking up the rest of the world (sob!). Oh the humanity!’. (Exit Stage Right)

Jon has gone, and so has FDL, that they don’t take sides, they just present the evidence.

I wouldn’t be so hasty to shoot the danged messenger, hoss.

NONE of us has the answer to your questions, cuz there ARE none. NONE.

Within the system, it’s gamed purely to the 1% advantage top to bottom.

NO ONE is channelling the system from within the system cuz it’s lose/lose, and challengers disappear or their brakes fail on a hill, or a plane crashes.

And so far, aside from Occupy, no one is channelling the system from outside the system.

It will either collapse of its own girth and greed, as all empires do, or the citizens will revolt, and this system is well primed to handle any kinds of revolt or dissent if it has to.

Oh, mama nature may intervene on the empire, as well.

So ya got 3 very unappealing means of change available to yas.

I don’t see anything changing for the better soon. Not in MY lifetime, and I might have 25 years left. With NO hope of a pleasant senior life (just turned 60).

But the least we can do is thank the messengers who even DARE to inform us, increasingly more and more likely to be at their own peril.

He don’t need the 1% love, he’s been paid and bought to be elected to do what he’s doing for the 1%.

Let’s not confuse this with any false memes about Obama being a champion of the people, he’s full on for the 1% and his record proves it to date.

Is this the changed Obama many were absolutely raving about in his great progressive speech in January on MLK day?? I think this and the white paper release should clear any lingering misconceptions for any remaining obamabot.

He’s already IN their club. It’s how he got elected, he joined the club. Look at his FIRST admin’s cabinet picks . . . and now this term’s. Pure giveaway, he IS one of ‘them’, thru and thru.

Yes, defense spending, OUR tax dollars, is purely for greed for the 1%.

To cut defense spending and invest it into rebuilding jobs for the masses would be a HUGE investment resulting in billions of extra tax dollars raised.

But that ain’t the plan, as we all know. ;-)

Thank you for your point, wish folks would GET that, and keep it top of mind.

Totally believable. Ever hear of a condition called anosognosia? A person can literally be completely blind and truly believe they can still see. When presented with incontrovertable evidence that they can’t see, their brain kind of shuts down and they go into divide by zero mode.

Ironic – the country has been divided and incapacitated by O.

Anosognosia. Look it up. Collectively, that’s the condition those people have.

Like a cheap whore, he’s been offering it every day since day one.

Mass job strikes and mass boycotts.

N then, martial law is imposed and the military that’s been trained despite Posse Commitatus, Yes, THIS Military to act upon US Citizens on US Soil will round us up to the Hallybutt Farms that have been built . . . . it could all happen within a few weeks time.

Only the right trigger point is waiting to occur . . . I’m sure the 1% would prefer that we lie like sheep as they wage class war upon us, but make no mistake, the provisions to deal with the masses if they DON’T herd up nice like is already in place.

He is NOT stupid, he’s fully in the pay and fealty to the 1% and has been since day one.

Why people refuse to accept this fact given his record is beyond me.

Thank you. And I don’t see Wall St giving back the commissions on the trading done lo these decades around arms development stocks. ;-)

I voted for a progressive candidate in the last two presidential elections. That was certainly not Obama.

Why not just raise Medicare to 90 instead and be done with it.

Your wrong. He’s certainly progressively worse as time goes on.

Of course, I meant the term as a noun, and not as you gratuitously use it as an adjective. This clouds its usage.

He was bad before the 2008 election.

Larue, my concern is simply that, so long as it is held that ONLY the two legacy parties are “legitimate”, that ONLY the two legacy parties can garner the votes, can gain the attention of a deliberately misinformed public, then … there CAN BE NO way that people may even imagine a better possibility.

Until this common refrain, “If America does it, then it’s okay” … good, pure, and righteously right … whether it be health care INSURANCE, determined behind closed doors or perpetual WAR, or drone assassination, secretly justified, or torture … is successfully challenged, then there will be more of the same, harder and more heartless.

Not only are “the people” being robbed of their common wealth, they are having all moral principle torn viciously and violently away from them.

I do not blame or slander Jon Walker, I merely ask him if, were other candidates put forth, were other ideas shared and extolled, might there then be some useful enlightenment possible?

I assure you that I see quite as grim a future as do you … unless, the enforced bemusement, the inculcated patriotic narcolepsy, to be blunt, the breathless pronouncement that what is, in terms of political “choice” … is ALL that there is … such a “viewpoint, is itself, part and parcel of the confusion, the dreadful acceptance of appearance rather than substance … thus, to simply “report” the “approved” news is not to question very deeply, and as Howard Zinn once rather eloquently pointed out, you can’t be neutral on a moving train …

Either one identifies evil and destruction FOR what it is, or one pretends that it is not, or one defends and applauds the destruction of civil society, the Rule of Law, and embraces the tyranny as “all” there “is”.

Frankly, Larue, I doubt that I’ve even twenty years left, however my children do, they have decades left, as will their children.

My obligation is not to say, “Oh look, here is the evidence, but we must choose sides.” My responsibility, my purpose, in the time I might have left me, is to stand against the destruction, to stand against those who agree with it, who see nothing wrong, or not seriously wrong.

I rather doubt that Jane Hamsher is among those who see nothing wrong, who applaud what is going on in all of our names. I doubt that Jon Walker, or fatster, or Dan Wright, or Kevin Gosztola, or very many of those who comment here, including yourself, do not choose, deliberately and intentionally, to stand against what is, secretly, as well as blatantly, being done in ALL our names …

As Martin Luther King once said: “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”

DW

Sons of bitches just won’t cut the Little Guy a break, will they?

Terrific points – worth front page of FDL

I do not blame or slander Jon Walker, I merely ask him if, were other candidates put forth, were other ideas shared and extolled, might there then be some useful enlightenment possible?

Please DW, you and I and all long time FiwerPuppers know there ARE no other candidates. Witness, please, for the 100th time, Kuch on Public Option. One plane ride, he comes down and Public Option is dead. Never mind single payer.

So, as long as we ALL know there are NO politicians erected anywhere, that are NOT part of the 1%, THEN we can begin to get pissed off at NO choices, NONE.

But sadly, apologetic comments and opinions thru out our nation continue to discount the fully endemic corrupt corporate fascist nature of our system.

And that obviates any REAL focus of if nothing, then WHAT to do?

Cuz I gar en TEE it, once the masses realize there is NOTHING for them, the dynamic shifts dramatically.

But that point, even given the military ready to round us up, is far, far away at this point. So far, the sheeple continue to deny, obfuscate and refuse to acknowledge how fully this corporate fascist system owns every facet of their lives.

What happens first? Do they wake? As I said and you concurred with, no they don’t.

So we’re left with empire fail, or mama nature.

Either, at this point, are likely inevitable, but perhaps not in our lifetime. Sad to say, I’d LIKE to at least be able to curse the gods on my last breaths, after praising my wife, upon my demise . . . if I saw the empire falling. ;-)

Walker IS front page FDL, it’s what he does. *facepalm*

You use too many words, cut to the shit man, we’re screwed unless the masses rise up hard.

Of COURSE I don’t equate Jon Walker or Jane Hamsher or many Pups with those who don’t know or care . . . that stuff’s redundant.

As to our place in this mess of shit? I do what I can do in my daily public life, I suffer no man or woman’s abuse of others or of the truth.

I can’t change this shit. I can stop SOMETHING when it happens in front of me, and that ain’t often.

I don’t have children, this is the last of our clan. My wife tho, has sisters with kids and grand kids, so, I grok.

Tough stuff. Get ‘em when ya can DW, I will to. To our ends, we should enjoy every sammich as Zevon would tell us to do. ;-)

Class war baby, not politics. No, they won’t cut us no slack. We’re on our own.

All the gains of the 20′s thru 60′s are being eroded fast.

Soon, it will be just like history never happened, and the gains of civil rights and human existence never happened.

O has never made any secret of what he intends to do, has he? That’s how much undisguised contempt he has for his starry-eyed groupies: he knows that no matter how ugly his agenda gets, they’ll line up around the block to spin it, rationalize it, defend it and call it the greatest, wisest, most eleventh dimensional chess-y thing ever.

B.H.Obama wants to maim / cut / gut SS/MC ? … imagine that…

“Good thing Mitt lost isn’t it!?”( the punch line )

The Hope and Change You And Me Won’t Be Seeing

2012 WH election was last chance to stop Obama… Obama was not stopped … too bad…too late now…

Yippee!! H. Clinton likely coming in 2016!! Same D junk!! Yippee!!

D zealots will happily then get in line again to back H.Clinton…sheesh.

Why should Obama and Clinton change? D zealots show up anyway…simpleton D zealots.

B.H.Obama meanwhile post 2016 will be on EZ St. taking in post WH plush and posh. SS/MC cuts will not be touching B.H.Obama. Obama being on post POTUS DeLuxeRetiredObamaCare of a sort we capitalist serfs will not see after Obama has maimed SS / MC and given us AHIP-PROFITCARE.

Fugettabout Obama. He’s a lost cause. The emphasis needs to be on holding the line with the Democrats in Congress(in particular in the Senate.)

The “reform” from the insiders made their gamble and said they’d apply ample pressure. Everybody better hope that they can manage because the Senate Democrats are pretty much all that stands between handing over the retirements of average Americans to let the very wealthy and influential off the hook for things like war.

Meh, I suspect with the health problems that Clinton has had lately that Clinton will not be the choice of the 1% for kabuki master for the Democratic Party.

Wow, lucky us!

Obama’s determined to gut the most successful government program ever, Social Security, which by law has never contributed one cent to Federal debt.

And now we hear Medicare’s too expensive, well, it’s only the least expensive health care program in America. And most of are now stuck in the American Health Care Industrial complex thanks to Obama passing a law that forced us there. Too bad we couldn’t just pass Medicare for All and then fix Medicare by enacting the same methods for cost control used by the rest of the civilized world.

Thank God we’ve got a President that spent trillions to bail out the crooks on Wall St that blew up the world’s economy, and then has to slash the programs that are helping so many Americans in misery from that very same smashed economy.

Face it, the American public was just screwed by a President by the rich, for the rich and (shortly) of the rich. And that after Americans voted him to office TWICE to make real change.

What suckers we are!

“must he try to get the love of the 1%?” Exactly. It’s an integral part of his psychological makeup. Something he no doubt learned at the Punahou School. Suck up to the headmaster and all will be well for you.