Of COURSE Obama's going to throw you under the bus on Medicare and Social Security

Still slogging through Matt Bai:

That night, [White House operatives] Jackson and Loper sent over a three-page proposal based on the discussions; in exchange for agreeing to the $800 billion in additional revenue, they asked for more than $450 billion in combined cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next decade alone, as well as a series of changes to Social Security, including a new formula for calculating benefits and a higher retirement age.

Of course, some blogs knew this was coming as soon as they heard Obama's Inaugural. But it was obvious from Obama's actions to anybody who hadn't gone on a Kool-Aid blinder: $700 billion to the banksters in TARP that never would have passed in October 2008 if President-elect Barack Obama hadn't whipped the CBC to pass it; and trillions to the banksters before January 20, 2009 and trillions after: Every no-questions-asked, no-strings-attached Bush giveaway to the banksters was normalized and legitimized by Obama. And then, in the inaugural, that asshole had the nerve to talk about sacrificing.

We've done our sacrificing. It's time for others to start doing some sacrificing. I nominate Obama's owners in the 1%. They might start by sacrificing some ideology and recognizing that Teh Debt, with the economy so far below its productive capacity, really does not matter. Bring out the helicopters for the 99%!

NOTE Politics being about values and interests, combined with the 1% going after Social Security and Medicare because "that's where the money is," mean that programs with a readily available inter-generational warfare frame ("Boomers suck") are under assault. When the legacy parties introduce a tiered system that grandfathers Social Security above a cutoff limit, and guts it for the youth, it's going to be important for all of us to say that social insurance (not "entitlements") are for everybody, equally.

UPDATE Still slogging:

On entitlements too they had moved closer to a final deal. The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.

And in a move certain to provoke [another kabuki] rebellion in the Democratic ranks, Obama was willing to apply a new, less generous formula for calculating Social Security benefits, which would start in 2015. (The White House had rejected Boehner’s bid to raise the retirement age.)

So, despite all the crap ObamaCare apologists are pushing about Medicaid coverage, it's on the chopping block. Shocker.