Remember this?

President Obama claims that he likes to take his time and check his facts before making public statements.

So why did he lie about Social Security to promote his tax giveaway to the wealthy?

President Barack Obama rewrote the history of the Social Security system during a Dec. 7 press conference, claiming that only widows and orphans originally benefited from the program.

…

But the president’s claim is not true. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, benefits were not originally intended just for widows and orphans. From the SSA’s own historical page:

SSA: The two major provisions relating to the elderly were Title I- Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance, which supported state welfare programs for the aged, and Title II-Federal Old-Age Benefits. It was Title II that was the new social insurance program we now think of as Social Security. In the original Act benefits were to be paid only to the primary worker when he/she retired at age 65. Benefits were to be based on payroll tax contributions that the worker made during his/her working life. Taxes would first be collected in 1937 and monthly benefits would begin in 1942. (Under amendments passed in 1939, payments were advanced to 1940.)

*cue sad trumpets*

In fact, Obama has it precisely backward; Social Security advanced its most critical, longest-lasting and core benefits FIRST, then expanded to cover widows and orphans, not the other way around.

This is important because it counteracts the core of his ‘point’; in Obama’s world, Good Moderate Centrist Ideas Advance Incrementally. There’s no goal that you can’t advance in tiny bits and pieces to make compromises and everyone feel all warm and fuzzy.

The real world doesn’t work that way; sometimes a compromise is worse than no policy at all, like with his ‘health care reform’, which delivers the citizens into serfdom to line Wellpoint’s pockets.

It’s true that Social Security advanced over time, but that’s because its core, critical, initial function was solidly designed and wildly popular. You can build, but you need to build on success, on a solid foundation, a well-executed central portion of your plan. Obama doesn’t believe that because it means there’s not always room to bargain with his friends across the aisle, so he twists the facts about the single most immensely successful Progressive program of all time to fit his pet political theories.

Think it’s a casual slip-up? Well, if it is, then he’s about as incurious and ill-educated as our last Commander in Chief, because he’s been peddling this revisionist history (also known as a ‘lie’) despite being called on it, for months:

This isn’t the first time the president has made the error when discussing Social Security’s origins. The conservative Media Research Center’s Newsbusters.org found the president made a similar claim during an interview with Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart back in October of this year.

When the hacks at Newsbusters are better scholars of Progressive history than you are, you have a serious problem.

For the last two agonizing years, the existence of the filibuster in the Senate has been the excuse of excuses to prevent any wildly popular progressive legislation or mildly progressive changes from being enacted.

Public option overwhelmingly popular? Too bad; the filibuster.

Wall Street regulation overwhelmingly popular? Too bad; the filibuster.

Immigration reform? Filibuster.

Ending the wars? Filibuster.

Climate change work? Filibuster.

Actual liberal nominees for the courts? Filibuster. (Sotomayor is a fine choice based on her body of work experience, especially vital trial judge work, but not exactly a liberal firebrand. Kagan’s grossly unqualified and her presence on the Supreme Court is a disgrace to the legal profession.)

So, now that the lower House is in Republican hands, and the Senate likely to fall in 2012, what do the Dems in the Senate finally want to get around to doing?

Removing the filibuster. Aka, the only tool that liberals have to even slow the Tea Party infused Conservative juggernaut down.

Naturally.

Greg Sargent reports that Harry Reid will respond to the call of his entire caucus and devise rules to reform the Senate rules.

At a caucus meeting this week attended only by Senators and no staff, Reid and fellow Dems devoted a significant chunk of time to a discussion about specific ideas on how to proceed, the aide says [...]

“They are already talking it through and devising a plan,” the aide said of Reid and fellow Dems, adding that Reid is having “conversations” with other members of the caucus “about the best way to move forward.”

Let me spell this out so that any of my fellow travelers on the Left who haven’t caught on to the scam:

This was the plan all along.

No, it’s not an elaborate conspiracy of every single Democrat in the Senate to disenfranchise liberals. Quite the contrary; the scam lies in disreputable centrist hacks like Reid knowing full well that, given a bit of good governance, Civics 101 rhetoric at the right moment, Progressives will shoot their agenda, their power, and their constituents squarely in the face to do The Right Thing for Democracy.

Like this:

The decision to reform the Senate rules has engendered some controversy among the progressive community. They question whether the timing is right, with a Republican majority in the House and the Senate likely to tip to Republicans in 2012, to make this reform. I wonder why they think that Republicans haven’t considered abolishing the filibuster rules outright the moment they get into power, but OK.

My position is that democracy can only work with a functioning legislature. If the people of the United States choose a Republican government, they endorsed Republican solutions to the nation’s problems. Those solutions should be advanced for the nation to endure. That’s the only way accountability in government can occur. This kabuki dance, where one party or another takes power and then laments the rules from stopping them from action, does not serve the public.

Why don’t I think the Republicans will do that? I’m not sure if they will or won’t. They didn’t previously, largely because Senate Republicans would be making the call, and as much as they love their agenda, they love their sense of self-importance more. That might hold true again, or not. But regardless, it wouldn’t happen for TWO MORE YEARS.

Here’s how this has gone, will probably play out, and keep in mind, this is The Plan:

-For two years, Republicans block all vaguely progressive legislation, ‘forcing’ Obama, Reid and Pelosi to tack to the right and give quasi-fascistic policies on everything.
-This serves the corporations well, weakens Dem support, and the Republicans can frame it to their base as, paradoxically, ‘socialism’.
-Then after the election, Dems disassemble the filibuster.
-Now, the Republicans in the House can ‘force’ Obama to…. tack to the right and give quasi-fascistic policies on everything.

It’s all about which corporate interests they needed to serve. In the first two years, we got massive bailouts of Healthcare and Finance, lobbies traditionally either friendly to Dems, or not actively unfriendly. (Witness how New York is very solidly blue, and yet very solidly in bed with Wall Street).

In the second two years of the Obama term, we’ll get bailouts of more traditionally Red corporate interests. The prisons, the military, Big Ag, Resource Extraction, Fossil Fuels, etc. Your full gamut of Captain Planet Dystopian villainy.

We needed Dem majorities to pass the first bailouts; we need unopposed Republicans for the second batch.

This is the plan. But ‘plan’ could be a misleading word. Perhaps it’s just the natural behavior of a captured system, a sort of emergent phenomenon. The most powerful interests acted first, and acted through Dems until they got worn out; now other interests will act through Republicans. Beyond a few truly monstrous cynics like Obama and Reid, who only care for their own power and prospects, who knows if it rises to a conscious level.

With Obama though, I’d certainly wager it does. All he cares about is the chance to make bold compromises so that he can try and buy his father’s love and approval via Republican proxy. It’s a fixation. This setup gives him another glorious two years of hippie-punching therapy.

That won’t stop some, like Mr. Dayen here, regrettably, from hoping desperately for a different future:

On key economic issues, one suspects that Democrats, nominally the party of the people, have no interest in living up to their rhetoric on the campaign trail. In this reading, they hide behind the Senate’s rules to confirm their inability to get anything done. Limiting the rules obstacles would kick the legs out from that excuse. In the words of this commenter, “The rule change issue will either save the Democratic Party or expose it as a corporate tool with a smiley face. Either outcome is a step ahead of where we are now.”

Sigh. Expose them, really? No, no, no. They already have a better excuse waiting: ‘The Constitution says all spending bills have to originate in the House. The Tea Partiers now control our budget. We’re helpless! Again!’

If the filibuster was intact, Dem voters might see through the con, and expect their Senators to, you know, filibuster. Hence it’s got to go. The ultimate goal for the Democratic Party is to appear helpless at all times, so that it can be blameless for all woe.

Hope, as they say, springs eternal.

This means, of course, that it is next to worthless. Enjoy the new Republican era, brought to you by the Democratic Party.

PS: Just earlier today, Dayen wrote this:

Regardless of whether filibuster rules change or not, political progress from the left in the next two years borders on the impossible. If we make it to 2012 unscathed with nothing more than gridlock it’ll be a miracle.

If gridlock is the best outcome, why the hell would you want to grease the skids? Oh, right. Hopeful idealism.

*rolls eyes*

I read this NYT piece myself early today and it’s making the rounds in the not-totally-corrupted side of the liberal blogosphere. Excerpt:

TRUCKEE, Calif. — When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.

When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.

The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand.

The piece goes on to outline several cases, including one where the guy didn’t even have a mortgage (yet again) and the bank stole the house anyway:

In Texas, for example, Bank of America had the locks changed and the electricity shut off last year at Alan Schroit’s second home in Galveston, according to court papers. Mr. Schroit, who had paid off the house, had stored 75 pounds of salmon and halibut in his refrigerator and freezer, caught during a recent Alaskan fishing vacation.

“Lacking power, the freezer’s contents melted, spoiled and reeking melt water spread through the property and leaked through the flooring into joists and lower areas,” the lawsuit says. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

So to get this straight: banks will break into your home whether entitled to or not, whether you have a mortgage or not, and steal any and all of its contents as they see fit, including HUMAN REMAINS.

But we don’t need a foreclosure moratorium, right John Cole?

Schmucks.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s not only continues to do nothing, but allows the Fed (Bernanke was his choice, don’t forget) to block meaningful action to protect homeowners from thieves who are literally looting the dead:

Top policymakers at the Federal Reserve are fighting efforts to rein in widely reported bank abuses, sparking an inter-agency feud with the FDIC and the Treasury Department. The Fed, along with the more bank-friendly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is resisting moves to craft rules cracking down on banks that charge illegal fees and carry out improper foreclosures. The FDIC supports such rules, according to an FDIC official involved in the dispute.

But we don’t need a national moratorium. I mean, they’re only stealing houses and dead husbands, right? Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Remember this from Mr. Balloon Juice himself, John Cole?

I’m not siding with the banksters, I just don’t understand what good would come from a national moratorium. Forty state AG’s are on the ball, what exactly could a national moratorium do? The idea is to stop the bad foreclosures, not grind every single transaction in this sector to a damned halt.

You aren’t hurting the banksters when you do something like that. You’re hurting every single buyer and seller in the market. It would be catastrophic.

Yeah I bet he’s hoping we’ll all forget it too. Though maybe, years after the all the ruined lives and stolen homes, we can get another wonderfully contrite apology which supposedly restores all his credibility. (Much like it brings back the dead from a needless war based on transparent lies)

After all, we can’t have the catastrophe of an insolvent bank eating some of their losses. Stealing a woman’s dead spouse is a small price to pay to keep this wonderful mortgage market going full speed.