Oh, wait, Clinton already did that. The right wing meme Obama just validated is that social security needs reforming, and that it needs reforming now. Great.

The Dems have validated just about every right wing meme lately, so they might as well cop to being terrorist loving traitors while they are at it, to make the surrender complete.

Let's get a couple things straight: SS is not in crisis, and what funding problems SS has can be fixed with tweaks in twenty years. So, there is nothing to fix. Obama nevertheless just validated the lie.

Just as he recently validated the $70 union wage lie.

The real irony is that there is literally nothing to fix in SS that helps the deficit or the stimulous. Currently, SS has nothing to do with the deficit, as it is in surplus, and it in fact loans money to the general fund. So I have to say Obama's plan to fix SS goes down as his biggest true whopper of a lie so far.

As for Medicare, this program is indeed in crisis, the irony being that the crisis here is mostly due to exponential increases in health care costs, not the benefit side. So if by fixing Medicare he means to reform the health care system, then more power to him. Truth is, he means nothing of the sort.

So I have to say, this is Obama's first truly massive load of bullshit, diverting attention to things that don't solve the problem he is claiming to solve, validating right wing memes, and in the end desotrying another piece of the progressive legacy.

All of it on the heels of validating tax cuts as stimulous policy.

Nice going Mr Change.

Away back when I started saying he talks a wonderful good game but where's the beef? Ahh well...It's too late now...rather than criticize him I guess I'm on the Obama-wagon hoping like hell that he has a least one or two clues and that he can get 5 to 10 percent of his promised agenda accomplished.

he was not going to be as bad a trojan horse for the right as Clinton was, to being pretty sure he'll be worse. Clinton merely started the ball rolling on validating right wing memes and doing their work for them, Obama shows every indication now of finishing the job.

There is zero indication that he will defend or advance progressive principles on ANY front, that he will seize the opportunity to restore the balance of power between capital/labor or middle class/elite, that he will roll back our adventurism and permanent bases in the ME, resist Israel's terrorism, go after Bush's war and constituional crimes, go after economic criminals, truly reform economic regulation, fight right wing memes, or even roll back much of the Bush national police state.

I am beginning to think that the true manchurian candidate is upon us now. The corporatist one.

Many include medicare in social security as a generic topic. Obama may have done the same thing.

It seems like what you're really criticizing the Dems for is their desire to get re-elected. The memes you talk about are not just republican ones, they are american ones. You'd find it hard to get elected if you completely ignored the things that americans (half of them, at least) profess to care about. Hence why Kucinich is not president.

I suppose Obama could have pulled the ol' switcheroo on america, but that would have guaranteed the dems stay out of the white house for white some time.

Like some sort of Bushism perhaps?

Oops, I confused two very different mutli trillion dollar programs.....

I though Obama was the smart one.

the supposedly liberal president's job is to disabuse them of the lies, not validate them.

Union workers don't earn $70 per hour and Social Security ain't near broke. Obama has now bent over for both.

Along with extending tax cuts for the rich. I suppose America cares about all the lies about taxes too.

some typos are quite funny!

As I recall, government accounting lumps the two together. I agree that it shouldn't. I don't see anything wrong with being generous as we await the specifics. When they emerge, it's time for evaluation and complaint, if appropriate.

That's what it is. Here we spend all day trying to find clever ways to hammer words together and we're bested by a moment of fat-fingered sub-consciousness.

Life is not fair.

As you may recall (or not!), I myownself have been critical of Obama uncritically "validating" (as you aptly put it) "right wing meme[s]", in this case, of a SocSec "crisis".

But there's pretty good reason to conclude that this particular instance may in fact be a case of journamalist projection misrepresenting what Obama actually said.

As Somerby points out (previous link), NYT's "reporting" of Obama's purported "promise" to "overhaul" SocSec doesn't hold up especially well to factual scrutiny. Note WaPo's (caveat: no general endorsement implied! WaPo's frequently awful, too!) very different version of same presser (emph. added and again h/t Somerby):

Obama once again declined to say how he plans to eliminate the growing budget gap, which is projected to narrow somewhat as the economy improves but explode again as the retiring baby boom generation sends the cost of the entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare -- skyrocketing. Obama said he will offer "very specific outlines" for addressing short- and long-term deficits when he submits his first budget proposal to Congress next month.

"We are beginning consultations with members of Congress around how we expect to approach the deficit," Obama said. "We expect that discussion around entitlements [note: not, specifically, SocSec which, as you rightly note is a minor, if any, part of the problem] will be a part, a central part, of those plans." [note, as Somerby also points out, the 3 underlined words are NYT's only direct quote of Obama]

So far, however, Conrad said Obama's team has been cool to requests to establish a bipartisan task force that would reexamine the entitlement programs, as well as the nation's tax system, and develop a long-term plan for bringing costs and revenue in line.

Suggests to me the more appropriate response than yours would be to echo Brad DeLong's frequent refrain of "why, oh why can't we have a better press corps?" (or words to that effect, i.e., I may be paraphrasing). This looks to me like Conrad/Spratt bending a "reporter"'s ear with their pet concerns, and the malleable "reporter" framing the story to conform, distorting Obama's message in the process.