Does this really need to be explained on a liberal dem discussion site? yep.

[ellennelle]

94. how old are you?

because apparently you need some things explained to you.

first, social security cuts have been part of the "legitimate" public debate for oh, about four decades or so. no one dared actually go there, hence the 'third rail' moniker.

nevertheless, the debate has raged on. and on and on and on.

no one daring to take the plunge. and paul ryan does not count; if you know your hand will never win, you just bluff. ryan bluffed loudly, but badly.

because, second, did you not notice what obama was doing here? he only offered to entertain cuts to the cost-of-living increases, but this was coupled with changes in how the wealthy receive their payments (later, less, no ceiling on the taxes, etc.).

he extended these as discussion points. and did you notice what happened? the public reamed the GOP a new one!

the public spoke. obama listened. the gop? crickets.

possibly because they never intended to take obama up on this offer in the first place. obama knew this. he knew the not only would not, they could not! the public had already made it perfectly clear back when bush made his big 60 day push for privatization right after his (faux) reelection. big stink bomb. duh.

the GOP know all this. they were not going to be the ones to craft such a SS cutback plan, only to be left holding the bag o' poop; they knew the dems would vote against it and fire up the tire necklace come campaign time.

again, duh.

third, the outcome on this is actually two-fold. not only did obama give the public yet another opportunity to weigh in loud and clear on their feelings about messing with their SS - which the GOP got but already knew, but how nice to get the media broadcasting the reality of it all, including all those GOPers stuttering their confusion about which way to think on it. in addition to that? obama gets to point to this as yet another example of how he has bent over backward to have reasonable discussions with the opposition, but they insist on being the party of NO!

hey, listen; i share your feelings that SS should be sacrosanct. but we can't take our ideologies so seriously and so extremely to the hilt that we can't see the chess board for the pieces. in this case, what little obama offered was a scruffy little pawn, merely a discussion about some aspects that might be considered, just to get the discussion going; they could not even do that much, cowards.

he is fully aware SS is not going anywhere; the public will not allow it, pure and simple. he knows how high the cost would be to anyone really seriously planning to do that, which is why he can afford to play the blustering GOP like a damn fiddle.

but the opportunity to allow the public to voice this allegiance, and force the GOP to hear it and scramble to make sense of their heartless, greedy, and stupid intentions?

priceless.