Dear Mr. President: Don't You Dare Cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

[delrem]

39. Unlike you I distinguish between the connectors 'and' and 'or'.

It isn't the kind of distinction that I'm going to allow some coyness about fudging 'to make a point'.

I do hope that Pres. Obama doesn't sign onto some damned Republican cuts to what the Republicans call "entitlements", for the sake of what bought and paid for politicians and pundits call "bipartisanship" and "moderation", however the cuts are named and packaged.

I haven't the perspective that you have, Drunken Irishman. For one thing, I'm a Canadian and haven't the intimate understanding of US social issues that Americans have, or *should* have. For example, I'm astounded beyond anything I could possibly have imagined before it happened that the US would cut the food stamp program -- because the US food stamp program is *already* totally backward (not even in the same ballpark) as compared to minimum annual income type programs being developed in enlightened parts of the world. Likewise "Obamacare" is *already* totally backward compared to any of a variety of single-payer programs already implemented and continuously being developed in enlightened parts of the world (note that these single-payer programs are *all* steps in advancing a minimum annual income policy). I don't see *any* advantage to be had for either Democrats or Americans as a whole from the DLC/third-way strategy of "triangulating" in order to fight for the votes of so-called Republican "moderates". In fact I can't see how such triangulation is anything but suicidal for reasonable, progressive and enlightened people, because such triangulation doesn't appeal to reason. That kind of DLC/third-way type strategy of triangulating against the Republican extreme (or rather, the right-wing corporatist extreme) is pure corporatism, plain and simple.