Thanks Jon, this is so true.

We need to fight back. Medicare For All. Remove The Cap And Increase SS Benefits.

Hear hear.

I second that motion.

Congress needs to stop passing legislation with the idea no one will actually use it as passed. Both Sequestration and the AUMF were passed with the idea they were just threats to influence a situation.

In the case of the AUMF, Congress got behind it because George and Dick promised they wouldn’t use it except as a last resort. When, in fact, it is what they wanted and immediately upon passage started their march to war with Iraq.

With Sequestration, it was supposed to be a kick-the-can-down the road thing, when in fact, it is exactly what the Neo-liberals in the Administration wanted; savage cuts and no new revenue.

Yes, absolutely. DING DING

One of the very times that Obama does not lie is when he’s crowing almightily about cutting Soc Sec & Medicare. Obama has been totally up front and transpaarent about how he is itching to RIP OFF the middle & working class to enure to the benefit of his “class,” which is the 1%.

Obama loves him some Sequester. Even though the Sequester really does not mean that Soc Sec & Medicare “need” to be cut, that will be the “excuse” that’s used.

And citizens, including the Tea Party & Obamabots, will bend over & take it. No one will be “out in the streets.” Guaranteed.

We need a plan of action and it needs to include not just Democrats but Republicans. For the most part Republican constituents ALSO do not want cuts to Social Security.

99% screwed today, 1% it’s all their way.

Make the 1%ers pay for the WAR bill that’s come due , they are the ones that profited .

The poster I saw on Facebook comes to mind: They aren’t coming for your guns, they are coming for your Social Security! Pay attention!

Not sure why this is even news. FDL’ers have been pointing this out for months.

Reports elsewhere sugggest that the general public is taking the sequester cuts in stride and simply tuning out much of Washington noise machine. If one accepts that cuts are necessary, an across the board approach seems reasonable to many. It is going to be very hard to sell an exchange of the cuts in place for cuts to entitlements. And it seems to me that the longer it takes, the harder it will become.

Voters very much understand that they are or will become eligible for SS and Medicare. Many have parents already dependent on these earned benefits. For the majority of us, the cuts on the table affect others and it is difficult to see how the ripples eventually get to us.

There is no one left to make them pay but you and me. FDR had the Leftists and unions behind him when he forced the rich and corps to pay back what they had stolen, but they have been systematically eliminated.

And yet progressives still support Obama. We should be treating him as just as much of an enemy as Bush and fighting him just as strongly.

Boxturtle (He tries to cancel the evil he does by doing good elsewhere)

I think O will still get what he wants, minus the tax increase. The Rs want more defense spending. so exchange that for entitlement cuts, easy deal.

But Rs will vote for them in congress in even greater numbers than the dems. Our reps really don’t care much of what you say. They know best. It’s the deficit and debt you know.

Make the 1%ers pay for the WAR bill that’s come due , they are the ones that profited .

About time, those slackers need to clear their bar bill.

Remember the line from “Dune”–”the spice is the worm?”

I’m beginning to think–”the Tea Party is the Bots.”

It’s good to know who your friends ain’t.

Not me coach Bill. Hey you are a coach, right? Me to for years….. As well as a player. If you are a coach, what player, any player for you could waste 80 percent of his potential energy on the grid iron, hoop court, ice rink, soccer field and expect to compete, let alone win? Answer: None. They would die.

So America wasted 1.2 billion dollars out our tailpipes just today, using gasoline? Over half a trillion dollars in a years time between gasoline and diesel fuel? NO servitude here Mr. Walker Aye????

So lets talk Sequestration, chained CPI, (energy calculated in that equation?) and the sodomization of this republic by corporate sodomites and their monopolies?

Sequestration? Yes the sequestration of Americans buried six feet under fucked by monopoly in commerce, un-sequestering, putting back into the atmosphere what earth, sequestered eons ago, while squandering 1.2 billion dollars???

These fuckers are just like Big Tobacco. They don’t care who they fuck or kill as long as they get their fix. Like drug addicts or pathological hoarders, sick SOBs.

“Reports elsewhere sugggest that the general public is taking the sequester cuts in stride and simply tuning out much of Washington noise machine.”

We are dealing with corporate fascists here.

What has sometimes been viewed as incompetence on the part of Obama during negotiations is actually Obama trying to weaken Democrats’ hand to “force” them to accept entitlement cuts while being able to blame it on the mean Republicans.

Exactly right! There was a time when we debated whether Obama’s ineptitude was incompetence or design, but Obama’s “weakness” has happened too many times–and the crises have been set up by him–for it to plausibly be anything but malicious, duplicitous design.

Obama is a Republican mole. That is not hyperbole. That is how he acts. I don’t think he is a mole as part of a Republican conspiracy, but out of a unilateral choice. If Obama had first run for political office in a district with a Republican majority, he’d have run as a Republican and would have been completely comfortable with that.

Make the 1%ers pay for the WAR bill that’s come due , they are the ones that profited.

No one in government is going to do that. And no one else can do it.

Yes! The tyranny of the 1 percent, the monied interests which leverage government as they leverage people, to protect their monopolies, while fucking America?

Corporate Sodomites are looking for some divine intervention? We need a flood……..

That’s a novel approach.

I just LOVE how you always think outside the box.

Now, if you and I could just find a genie in a bottle on a beach somewhere.

Great post. I’ve always believed that the sequester was the fault of both Obama and the GOP, but that Obama really wanted it to use as leverage to force a “grand bargain” (I’m starting to hate those words) and force the Dems to accept SS and Medicare cuts, and he’s been doing it for the whole time he’s been in office.

It seems that Obama has a one track mind when it comes to this crap. Nothing else seems to matter to him. He must be a complete bore to be around, obsessing about the deficit 24 hours a day.

I think it was Greenwald that said Obama deliberately humilates himself in the public eye (the incompetence charge, the charge of kowtowing to the GOP) in order to get what he wants, and all he seems to want out of his presidency are SS cuts. I believe Greenwald to some degree. This stuff happens too often. Obama is doing this deliberately for that stupid bargain.

Ironically, since the GOP knows how desperate he wants it, they won’t give it to him.

Apparently it is sound fiscal policy to put a trillion dollar War on the credit card but not Grammie’s hip surgery.

Agree with your rant (much needed) but remember in the history of mankind Fascism has always run its course. Be ready to fill the void when it ends.

Ironically enough, it’s the Democratic Party faithful that got us to where we are today. They are the ones responsible for the second term of Obama and the entitlement cuts he is proposing because voting for an alternative was pie in the sky idealism or would have resulted in a Republican win.

Supposedly they’re holding Obama’s feet to the fire though so no worries. Heh.

It takes a lot of hubris to insist that granny pay for that war and forgo the hip surgery now that she has gotten older. And a lot of hubris is EXACTLY what we have in DC.

IMO, the trick is not paying attention. The trick is knowing what to do about it. Something that actually works, that is.

Supposedly they’re holding Obama’s feet to the fire though so no worries.

People who voted for Obama in 2012 have been holding his feet to the fire?

Thanks. I’ve been posting here for a bit, reading one aggravating story about BHO after another. I was due for a good laugh.

This nothing new from Obama from day one back in 09 he said he wants to gut SS and Medicare and yet it seems people still wnat to believe he is on their side, How many times does this guy need to “bitch slap” people before they understand that he does not care about anyone but the money people. I vote 3rd party and refuse to vote major party candidates at the state and local levels.

This is a global issue and just look at Europe my company just let go a large number of employees in Europe due to govt cuts

Allot of hubris and a even greater part of evil.

from Nancy Altman and Eric Kingston

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-altman/cancel-the-sequester-its_b_2781578.html

It’s time for a grand bargain of our own that unites leftists (not progressives as that is another word for liberal which I consider the Kumbaya party) with the f’n Tea Party. we both have great disdain for the man sitting in the WH and we both depend on our earned benefits; though the baggers never admit as much they do want to keep it. At the least the baggers will make noise and can be useful to get the ear of the pols on the hill. “the enemy of my enemy …” The Democrats lost there way when they became too involved in the cultural wars and alienated Joe Lunchbox. The Dems lost their muscle and became a party totally reflective as if evey issue had multiple causes and a myraid of possible outcomes; not a terrible trait to have when speaking in small committees but useless when trying to legislate, or drive public opinion. Bottom line is we need the fighters and the baggers are the ones that can accomplish that.

So over at HuffPo the discussion about these emails is dominated by the drama of Woodward claims he was “threatened.”

In one article I commented and said this, “As usual the media misses the main point. The main point isn’t how Woodward responded or if Sperling was nice or mean. The main point is that an Obama aid admitted that Obama has played us all and is using all this to try to cut Social Security benefits.”

I got the following responses:

“WHAT??”

“I dont think thats the case because social security is exempt from the sequester.”

“rotflmao, that was quite the bagger spin there, did you get whiplash?”

I responded to the last with:

“No, but you might when you realize what was left out of the quote. Here’s some of the email that this article signified with ‘…’ :

“I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bargain with a mix of ENTITLEMENTS and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by ENTITLEMENTS and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)” (emphasis added)

When Sperling referred to ‘entitlements’ he means cutting Social Security benefits. The specific cuts are most likely cutting the COLA and increasing the qualifying age. But the point that Sperling was making to Woodward was that the Obama plan from the start was to get these benefit cuts to Social Security.”

The commenter responded to that with, ““rotflmao.”

That commenter has 4609 fans and has the tag line, “the President is black, deal with it.”

People, we’re facing such major misdirection here that the response of the Obamabots is laughter when we tell them the truth.

Bush had his 20% and it appears that Obama will have his.

We have to work around them.

Who elected you the person who gets to define what the left is?

I’m a liberal(it’s actually defined by the ability to be open minded by the way). I dare anyone to tell me I am a member of the Kumbaya party.

I’m not going to “unite” with any group that mischarecterizes who I am and treats me like a caricature. I have more self esteem than that.

The best you can hope on that front is that like the Tea Party I’ll be more than willing to tell the President to kiss my backside. He doesn’t get to cut the benefits of people like me so he can continue to feed billionaires like Peterson my tax money. As for anything else, I reserve the right to look objectively at information and form my own opinion. I’m certainly not going to bleat “death panels” for the political convenience of the Tea Party or any group for that matter.

No doubt you all saw this: http://my.firedoglake.com/nsolomon/2013/02/27/three-quarters-of-progressive-caucus-taking-a-dive-on-social-security-medicare-and-medicaid/, along with the suggestion that we contact our wayward “progressive” congresscritters.

Mine is Jared Polis. I tried to email him but couldn’t tell if his website email link worked. Here’s my message to him:

“I appreciate your genuinely progressive stands on US foreign policy, civil rights, and education. I especially appreciate your willingness to confront the Obama administration on policy issues when you feel it is appropriate.

I am puzzled, therefore, at your reluctance as a member of the Progressive Caucus to sign the letter initiated by Reps Grayson and Takano: “We write to affirm our vigorous opposition to cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits. . . . We urge you to reject any proposals to cut benefits.”

As the “sequester” takes effect, an important question is, “Why do this? Austerity does not increase economic growth, in fact, it hurts growth according to the IMF – Greece and the United Kingdom are proving the point rather completely. So why?”

The answer is obvious to me and millions of other Americans. It is a deliberate attempt to create an economic crisis that will be felt by Americans. An attempt to use that artificial crisis to empower the austerians like Bowles and Simpson to make cuts in social insurance programs.

The real tell here is that Social Security is included. As you well know, the SS Trust Fund is able to pay full benefits for at least 20 years. There is absolutely no crisis within any reasonable planning or budgeting horizon. A realistic fix would be to lift the cap, not impoverish already hard-hit seniors. It is amusing that the same radical austerians who are calling for reduced gov’t spending to appease the invisible bond vigilantes, want to call the bonds held by the Trust Fund a fiction. But they are real US Govt bonds. Full faith and credit or not. The hypocrisy is almost overwhelming.

Please consider signing the Grayson Tankano letter to let the President know that the Progressive Coalition will stand strong on this issue.”

No response yet, but if he didn’t get it, he can read it here.

…X 2

… X 2 as well

In 2012 WH election O/D zealots wanted Obama back in the WH and now Obama is.

The shameless politics the O/D zealots chose/wanted to go with in 2012 WH election that let Obama skate on Obama’s dismal 2009-2012 output–

>>> doing Bush/Cheney GWOT 2.0

>>> AHIP ACA sellout

>>> not doing anything to Wall St./Too Big Banks while Obama conducted DOJ went MIA/AWOL

>>> Obama WH decided B.Manning needed to be jailed and WikiLeaks done in but not anyone else

>>> the nonstop Obama WH goal to cut/gut SS and maim MC

O/D zealots now seem to now be all about pointless beating up on the GOPs while talking/acting about how Obama isn’t so bad and besides IOKIYAAD so shut up about the junk Obama keeps doing. Calling BS on O/D zealots.

To see some O/D zealots now talking and acting like it was not them doing 2012 WH election bullying and We Like Obama Because Obama Is LO2E BS is galling.

O/D zealots?

Contemptible.

In all ways.

Cut the Ds loose. D’s not doing good politics. O/D zealots showed in 2012 why they need to be cut loose. The GOPs? bad politicians…OK… got it … the D’s ? just doing sell out politics while letting Obama be a closet GOP time and time again. Done with the Ds.

Also, none of us knows which posters are being paid or by whom.

The Teabaggers tried that when they first started.

“Oh, gee, it’s just all us little taxpaying folk getting our liberties crushed.”

But, it’s also the Theocrats, the gun nuts who want to “exercise their second amendment rights” if they lose at the ballot box and the racists.

If you have an affinity with them, good luck. I want no part of them.

Besides, as your own post suggests, it’s hard enough to unite the 4027 factions of people to the left of Obama.

My recommendation would be to focus on uniting those to the left of Obama first. If that proves possible, then worry about bringing in (ugh) Teabaggers.

shoot, you are preaching to the choir. I did not vote for Obama–and I say that with great relief and pride.

The enemy of Social Security and Medicare is not any card-carrying Republican. It’s the Wall Street lapdog in Democratic clothing sitting in the Oval Office.