The reviews are in!

The long promised, billion-dollar backed project is now out.  From Cult of St. Barack Productions, Safety Net Scissorhands.




And the reviews are in . . .


--  He always planned to gut Social Security.  I just, wrongly, thought we'd have enough decency to stop him.  Clearly I was over-estimated us.  Go to In These Times, go to ZNet, go to . . .  Oh, hell.  Maybe their silence is better off.  Matthew Rothschild minces at The Progressive: [. . .] Look, you stupid idiot, he's doing what he planned to do.  Take responsibility for supporting him, you dumb ass, you Cult of St. Barack, you idiot who are harming the entire country by whoring for Barack on a daily basis. -- Trina, Trina's Kitchen, "Catfood Meat Loaf in the Kitchen?"


Paul Krugman is having a hard time facing the reality Barack Obama IS the real-life Manchurian candidate and Trojan horse of right-wing, billionaire and bankster, interests.  That "D" after Obama's name has inoculated him from much-deserved criticism and investigation as to who was backing him when he first ran for president in 2007 despite having very little national political experience.  -- Susan, On the Edge, "A 'Democrat' Tries to Destroy the Legacies of FDR and LBJ."


The Obama Hangover has begun. The drunken delirium that descended on Black America after the pale Democratic caucuses of Iowa endorsed a brown-skinned corporatist just after New Years Day, 2008 – conveying white "viability" on a Great Black Hope – is definitively over. It's the morning-after in Black America, a scene of economic and political ruin bathed in the searing daylight of Obama's second term and umpteenth betrayal. It would be easy to say that the Great Nausea of 2013 was occasioned by Obama's blunt object assault on Social Security and the whole array of entitlements. However, the First Black President's obituary is not written in his budget. The onset of post-Obamaism has more to do with the calendar than anything else. Since Election Day, November 6, Black folks have been forced to come to grips with the finality of Obama's second term – the impending emergence from the dream. There is the sound of a finger snapping. “In a few moments, you will wake up."  -- Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report, "The Big Nausea: Waking Up With an Obama-Ache."





Unfortunately, President Obama has accepted the agenda of the Washington elite, putting cuts to Social Security and Medicare at the center of his budget and offering little that will help to speed the growth of the economy and create jobs. -- Dean Baker, US News and World Reports, "Obama Accepts the Agenda of Misguided Washington Elites."



Obama’s move to cut Social Security is certainly outrageous, and it’s encouraging that a wide range of progressive groups are steamed at Obama as never before. But this kind of outrage should have reached a “boiling point” a long time ago. The administration’s undermining of civil liberties, scant action on climate change, huge escalation of war in Afghanistan, expansion of drone warfare, austerity policies serving Wall Street and shafting Main Street, vast deference to corporate power. . . The list is long and chilling.  -- Norman Solomon, Common Dreams,  "Time To Bell The Obama Cat."

Just last week, Obama offered as his opening position in negotiations with Republicans, the chaining of social security and all other federal benefits to the consumer price index --- a monstrous betrayal that will reduce social security benefits by as much as $100 monthly by a decade from now. It wasn't anything he had been cornered into by Republicans. It was the point from which Barack Obama decided to start. That's continuity. Only a Republican president, like Richard Nixon, could go to China in the 1970s. Only a black Democrat can break his promises to labor on championing a card check law, refute his commitments to a just and fair media with network neutrality, and do nothing to roll back the prison state which has engulfed black and brown youth. Only a black Democrat could deport more Latinos than all the last three Republicans together, in his first term alone.  -- Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report, "Is This Barack Obama's 2nd Term? Is it Bill Clinton's 3rd? Or Is It Ronald Reagan's 9th?"

With the formal publication of Obama’s budget this week, Obama’s left apologists will be called on to diffuse the vast political opposition to cuts in Social Security and Medicare. But despite their best efforts, the administration’s assault on the most basic social rights of the US population must inevitably lead to mass opposition and social upheavals. -- Andre Damon, WSWS, "Obama defends plan to cut Medicare and Social Security."


Yes Virginia, there is a class war going on in America.  There always has been, and the tide for working people ebbs and flows depending upon their own level of activism, world events, or economic conditions.  For the past several decades working people have been losing and by growing margins with every successive presidential administration.  -- Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report, "Obama and the Class War."


This week, President Obama birthed a still-born budget that Herbert Hoover could have loved. With little surprise but much fanfare, Barack Obama unveiled his new call for austerity in the midst of a near-jobless recovery. The budget does nothing for the bulk of working Americans— who endured a 2 percent Social Security tax hike as the price of not tumbling over the fiscal cliff—except, of course, leaves a tax increase in place that will cost a family making $40,000 a year an extra $800 in payroll taxes.  -- Lloyd Green, The Daily Beast, "Barack Obama's Herbert Hoover Budget a Political Boon for Republicans."


What will happen to our Social Security benefits? This question is being asked by the program’s 56 million recipients in response to the Obama administration’s proposal to cut the annual cost-of-living raise for all who receive these monthly checks, as part of his 2014 budget.  This scheme, which is being cheered by financial barons and many politicians and pundits, is an assault on the most vital and popular federal program, which most workers contribute to throughout their years of employment. It is a historic, frontal attack on the working class, which boldly fought for, won and has paid into the Social Security program for nearly eight decades.  -- Kathy Durkin, Workers World, "Social Security belongs to the workers."