Fuck Obama

[Jeff]

And then there's this:

In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts

By Lori Montgomery, Wednesday, July 6



President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

...

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ ... story.html

[Nordic]

http://davidswanson.org/content/killing ... esponsible

Killing Old People Is Fiscally Responsible

By davidswanson - Posted on 07 July 2011

"The fiscal good has to outweigh the pain," a nameless Democrat told the Washington Post regarding President Obama's latest proposal to massively cut Social Security, against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans, in order to fund a military 670% larger than the next largest in the world, keep in place tax cuts for billionaires, fail to tax corporations or estates or investments or carbon, and balance a budget that nobody gives a rat's ass about balancing when Wall Street comes asking for handouts.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. President, but fuck your fiscal good. Whose fiscal good is it? And whose pain? Last week the New York Times said you hoped by hacking away at Medicare to inflict some pain on your base. That way, supposedly, the Republicans would inflict some pain on their base. Then we'd all feel better. Assuming we're all Wall Street banksters. But what if we're actually, almost all of us, the people you criminals call your bases? You, Captain Peace Prize, propose slashing Medicare and Social Security. And, in exchange, according to the Washington Post, Eric Cantor has proposed more tax cuts for free loaders who don't work for a living. What a deal!

Let's face it: any bargain seems to look good to you, as long as it kills people. That makes you tough, I guess. You have a list of Americans to assassinate. You have six wars going, and more in the pipeline. You've made clear that Israel murdering unarmed aid workers trying to reach Gaza would be A-OK with you. And "pain" is just the price that other people will have to pay to do without healthcare, food, a roof, a coat, or -- for that matter -- hope. Of all your slogans, we seem to be left with Audacity alone, standing by itself among the ruins.

Who wasn't touched on Wednesday during your Twitter Townhall when you described your hard times paying off your student loans. I got the impression you might have even had to glance at the prices on a menu once or twice before ordering. Am I overstating it? The point is, you suffered horribly, just not quite as horribly as the people you are now trying to reduce to eating catfood, performing their own medical procedures, and condemning their children to lives worse -- not better -- than their own.

I'm sure you'll get a humanitarian award for this from some prison corporation or health insurance lobby group, but even people stuck in the camp of your idolaters up through Tuesday are just not impressed. Even people who've recently grown fed up with your constant caving in to the bad guys have suddenly figured out that you're not caving in. You are the bad guys. You're a heartless, murderous, plutocratic power-monger trying to please the Washington-Wall Street establishment despite being the goddamned president of the United States. That's not secondary with you. That's all there is to you. You're not the inverse of Nixon going to China. You're Nixon going to a Grover Norquist meeting. Except that Nixon wasn't as evil as you are.

Please bear in mind three things, Mr. President.

1. You will be primaried from the left:
http://warisacrime.org/primary

2. A nonviolent movement will shut down Washington in October:
http://october2011.org

3. On your death bed, perhaps many many years from now, the horror of the pain you inflicted will cause you to scream out in bitter agony: "Fuck the fiscal good! The human good! What about the human good!"

Of course it will be too late, and few of the plutocrats whom you served will pay the slightest attention to your death.

[2012 Countdown]

This fucker is unbelievable. And I voted for this double crossing, lying, corporate stooge piece of shit.

[NeonLX]

If I see one more Subaru Outback wagon sporting "Obama-Biden" and "Give Peace a Chance" bumper stickers, I shall likely sing my lunch.

[2012 Countdown]

Talks: Inflation change could cut Social Security
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER Associated Press The Associated Press
Thursday, July 7, 2011 6:53 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Once considered untouchable, Social Security is now in play in the debt-ceiling negotiations. And that could mean higher income taxes for many U.S. families in addition to shaved benefits for tens of millions of retirees as they age.

Social Security became part of the private discussions between President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner on coming up with "something big" to reduce deficits by $2 trillion to $4 trillion over the next decade. One option includes a new inflation measure for Social Security that could produce savings close to $200 billion through a combination of reduced benefits and higher taxes, White House officials said Thursday.

Low- and middle-income families could be hit.

The proposal would represent a reversal for Obama. In contrast to his pledge to target tax increases at the wealthy, high-income families would largely be spared from tax increases that would result from changing the way inflation is measured. And until now, the administration has been adamant that Social Security does not add to the deficit and should not be a part of deficit reduction talks.

Adopting a new inflation measure would allow policymakers to gradually cut benefits and increase taxes in a way that might not be readily apparent to most Americans. The inflation measure under consideration is called the Chained Consumer Price Index. On average, the measure shows a lower level of inflation than the more widely used CPI.

full-
http://home.suddenlink.net/news/read.ph ... lar_viewed
====

Just look at that corporate piece of shit. Over half the Dems as well. We are truly fucked and all thats left is, well...


Tick-fucking-tock.

[Nordic]

i said it here, and i could look it up to prove it. this "debt ceiling crisis" will be used to rape and pillage and loot social security and other retirement funds.

the wall street/congressional complex never met a big pile of money it didn't want to steal.

[The Consul]

Sounds like Obummer must think he can put his tongue all the way up Wall Street's ass now. He has lost almost all the energy that he had from his base and is doubling down on just buying the horse. His counting on the hold your nose vote strategy is a disgusting cynical shame.

Maybe the only hope is a president Bachmann. If he loses to her perhaps it will destroy both parties.

[Nordic]

funny you should mention that. i'm about to go balls-out for bachman. i hope she wins because when we have a true idiot in the white house people actually wake up a little bit!

go bachman!!!!!

[The Consul]

I had a dream that she was elected and appointed her husband surgeon general and he ordered all the gays in the military who would not convert to straightism to form the vanguard that will march down that glorious road to Damascus, a favorite button the batshitters love to push. We are but Rapture fodder.
It is weird tho....it's like when W was selected, the day after I woke up thinking it was a bad dream. I venture to guess quite a few people are waking up these mornings with a similar pit in their dream pans, the oh shit this can't be happening, you can't be serious syndrome.
But hey, it looks like she is owning the whole sex appeal thing...can that be a glimmer of hope?

[RocketMan]

link

This morning's New York Times article similarly makes clear that it is the President who is demanding an even larger "deficit reduction" package than has previously been discussed. Headlined "Obama to Push for Wider Deal With G.O.P. on Deficit Cuts," the article reports that "President Obama has raised his sights and wants to strike a far-reaching agreement on cutting the federal deficit" and that he "wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade." This is all in pursuit of "an agreement that ma[kes] substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security -- programs that had been off the table." The President, as part of the package, is reportedly seeking some elimination of modest tax "loopholes" that benefit wealthy Americans to claim, absurdly, that there is "balanced" sacrifice.

It's true that these articles rely upon anonymous sources, though multiple such sources close to the negotiations -- from both parties -- are cited in consensus about what is taking place, and there are numerous other reports entirely consistent with these. It's been bleedingly obvious for some time that the bipartisan D.C. political class and the economic factions that own it have been intent on massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare -- see George Carlin's 2007 video explanation below -- but the combination of deficit hysteria (repeatedly bolstered by Obama) and the manufactured debt ceiling deadline has, by design, created the perfect pretext to enable this now. As one "Democratic official" told the Post: "These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by." Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is not a GOP-exclusive dynamic.

How many people who voted for Obama in 2008 would have expected a headline like this a short two-and-a-half years later? Many more than should have. As Matt Taibbi explains in trumpeting Frank Rich's superb new New York article detailing Obama's subservience to Wall Street:

Throughout 2008, it was hard to shake the feeling that this was a politician whose legacy could still go either way. There were an awful lot of troubling signs on the horizon in Obama’s campaign, not the least of which being the enthusiastic support he was receiving from Wall Street.

Obama in part ran a very slightly economically populist campaign, but the tens of millions pouring into his campaign coffers from the very rich (and specifically from hedge funds) told all of us that we probably shouldn’t expect those promises to come off. For a piece I wrote that summer, I asked people in Washington why Wall Street would be throwing money at a guy who was out there on the stump pledging to reach into their pockets:

"Sadly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be that Obama is, well, full of shit. . . . These populist pledges sound good, but many business moguls appear to be betting that the tax policies, like Obama himself, are only that: something that sounds good. 'I think we don't want to make too much of his promises on taxes,' says Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. 'Not all of these things will happen.' Noting the overwhelming amount of Wall Street money pouring into Obama's campaign, even elitist fuckwad David Brooks was recently moved to write, "Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that capital-gains tax hike."

Disgustingly, Brooks turned out to be right, and the narrative of the Obama presidency did end up turning sour, on that front anyway.

[RocketMan]

Double post. Sorry.

[Nordic]

If the Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Paid Taxes Like You and Me, We'd Cut 44 Billion of the National Deficit

Page one:

To see where the Republicans' priorities are, just look at how they treat 25 people--the top 25 hedge fund managers in the country.

June 30, 2011 |

Republicans are perpetrating a fraud. They say they're concerned about reducing government deficits. But you don't need to look at how they treat all of the country's biggest corporations (which is extremely well) or even how they kowtow to its richest 400 families, who now have 6900 times as much income as the average household.

You only need to look at the way they treat 25 people.

The top 25 hedge fund managers in the United States collectively earned $22 billion last year, and yet they have their own cushy set of tax rules. If they operated under the same rules that apply to other people -- police officers, for example, or teachers -- the country could cut its national deficit by as much as $44 billion in the next ten years.

We're not talking about "raising taxes on the rich," either -- although that's an excellent idea. (There's an automated petition here that will encourage your representative to do just that.) This money could be raised simply by removing a tax loophole that protects hedge fund managers. And that's not counting all the other people who run hedge funds. We'd get that $44 billion from just 25 people. They can certainly afford it, and at least one of them (George Soros, #2 on the list) undoubtedly would approve.

But they won't do it. Instead of taking a simple step that could net as much as $4.4 billion per year, House Republicans have passed a budget that cuts $30 million for flood control and emergency funds that would help people avoid being hurt or killed in storms like the ones we've seen in New Orleans, Birmingham, the Midwest, and all across the country. They voted to cut $336 million from the National Oceanographic and Aeronautical Administration to track and predict violent storms.

You could call their bill the "Tony Montana budget," too, since it cuts funds from all the law enforcement activities that Al Pacino's character in Scarface loathed and feared: $74 million from the FBI. $256 million from "State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance." $600 million from COPS, another program that gives grants for state and local policing. More than half a billion from the IRS, which is a giveaway to tax cheats that also reduces future collections -- which will make the deficit worse.

They even want to cut $330 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, a self-sustaining program that administers all the assets seized by U.S. Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, and the Coast Guard. Tony Montana would approve.

Oh -- they want to cut the budget for "food safety and inspection services," too. You could pay for all these cuts by just eliminating a tax loophole for these hedge fund managers -- and you'd still have more than $2 billion left over. And that's everyyear.

From 25 people.

Now the Republicans are going after Social Security and Medicare. Their new budget eliminates Medicare (yes, it does) and replaces it with vouchers that will only cover a fraction of their medical costs. The Congressional Budget Office reports that people who reach Medicare age in 2030 will have to pay twenty thousand dollars more per person as a result. Know how many of those people could get the oldMedicare coverage if you taxed those 25 hedge fund managers the same way everybody else is taxed?

All of them.

These programs are unsustainable, they say. Well, the runaway costs in our health system are unsustainable, but controlling them would force the country to confront the greed motive in US healthcare. So that's off the table for the Republicans, too. And Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit at all -- they just don't like it.

http://www.alternet.org/story/151479/if ... b&rd=1&t=5


But Barack O'Bummer would rather stick it to the poor working bastards who have paid in to SS all these years.

Fuck Obama.

[NeonLX]

funny you should mention that. i'm about to go balls-out for bachman. i hope she wins because when we have a true idiot in the white house people actually wake up a little bit!

I dunno...I think people (at least the U.S. variety) are in such a deep coma that they may not be able to awaken at all.

[crikkett]

I heard an opinion (not mine) that the Obama admin, by even allowing the suggestion that Medicaid and SS would be 'on the table', actually forced R's to demonstrate their obstructionist attitudes and out themselves as unwilling to cooperate on the debt ceiling issue at all.

[justdrew]

I heard an opinion (not mine) that the Obama admin, by even allowing the suggestion that Medicaid and SS would be 'on the table', actually forced R's to demonstrate their obstructionist attitudes and out themselves as unwilling to cooperate on the debt ceiling issue at all.

well, maybe

I think they're going to have to declare an emergency or something. the republican party has shown itself willing to completely wreck the US and world economy, they ARE enemy combatants and should be treated as such. Let their states governors send replacements that are willing to do their job.

I've said it many times before the Republican party is the greatest threat to human life liberty and decency the world has ever faced. DESTROYING THAT PARTY COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY is job #1