Crossposted from the PeoplesView
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President Obama commits political suicide
In a surprising and totally unexpected move today, President Obama declared his intention to commit political suicide. According to the President he has chosen Social Security and Medicare cuts as his preferred method of accomplishing this [refer to the NY Times Article below].
NY Times:
Mr. Obama, who is to meet at the White House with the bipartisan leadership of Congress in an effort to work out an agreement to raise the federal debt limit, wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade, Democratic officials briefed on the negotiations said Wednesday.
The president’s renewed efforts follow what knowledgeable officials said was an overture from Mr. Boehner, who met secretly with Mr. Obama last weekend, to consider as much as $1 trillion in unspecified new revenues as part of an overhaul of tax laws in exchange for an agreement that made substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.
Wait a second? It sounds like a nice rumor mill but did President Obama actually say he is cutting SS and Medicare?
Forget about the President, did anyone from his Administration dealing with the debt ceiling negotiation say he is cutting SS and Madicare? If so, please somebody, anybody, name names?
HuffPost apparently had gotten an email from the White House as it reports:
The Obama administration is pushing back against a Wednesday night report that the president is prepared to offer cuts to Social Security as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
"The story overshoots the runway," said a senior administration official. "The President said in the State of the Union that he wanted a bipartisan process to strengthen Social Security in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn't slash benefits."
"While it is definitely not a driver of the deficit," the official added, "it does need to be strengthened."
The response, sent via email to The Huffington Post, provides a measure of assurance to Democrats who were taken aback by the abrupt news, broken by the Washington Post, that Social Security reform was now on the debt-ceiling table. Still, the devil is in the details, and the idea of "strengthening" the entitlement program remains the vague standard for reform.
Here are some of the comments about all this manufactured outrage and how folks amongst some so called progressives are using it to take the usual unnecessary shots:
I have had serious doubts about President Obama's commitment to the basic principles of the Democratic Party for quite a while now
Obama has been rolled by the Republicans. He will get his incrementalism, but lose the future of the country.
Well, good to see the deluded still sticking to the "stfu Obama's got this" party line. Got to admire the tenacity. I am beginning to wonder what it will take to convince the can do no wrong crowd that he is not that bothered about our interests, just our votes.
If Obama cuts Social Security then I will vote for Michelle Bachtard and let the world burn!
Everything he does makes perfect sense if you assume that he's actually a Republican.
Is anyone really surprised? Obama wins we lose When Obama deals, we the people always comes out on the losing end.
What is wrong with this picture you ask? Well, Dilbert can answer that for you:
Here is the thing though. It does not really matter what President Obama does. In the end, we have and we will have the same groups of people who had never liked the President ridicule him regardless. This is just a great opportunity to piss on the President while they know it is a rumor. They make Politico look like an angel with this manufactured outrage eating this crap like an "all you can eat" sushi but they are getting fed bullshit.
The disappointing thing is we have a great man who works day and night to reverse the damage done in the last half century but they just can't stand him. They dislike Obama as much as the Republicans, you have to admit that is pretty strange.
But, after all Obama is a gentle man, he will stop their cries like this: