The "Fiscal Cliff" vote is over, did we cut Social Security?

[JoePhilly]

40. And during that DADT effort ... there was a loud group on DU claiming

Obama has absolutely no intent to end DADT. They claimed he was secretly against ending it. When congress repealed it, they said he would not sign it. After he signed it, they said he didn't really want to and that he'd find a way to let the military ignore it. Then when that was wrong, they said he was going to let the military slow walk it for years and years.

I have no problem with the debate or the criticism of things he actually does. But as I have said many times, we've seen DU burst into flames with endless haironfire threads claiming that Obama plans to cut social security and medicare. Not just that he might make a concession of some kind, but that his actual goal is to significantly cut and weaken those programs because he's really a republican, or a secret corporatist plutocrat.

In contrast, these claims can not be disproved because unlike DADT, Obama was able to act and prove the haironfire folks wrong. Here, the only way Obama can prove he has no such secret evil plan, is to leave his second term without having performed the evil acts that have been endlessly predicted.

We've been through 6 or 7 bouts of "Obama is about to slash Social Security and Medicare". "He hates us" on and on. And when it doesn't happen what do they say "Well, just cause he didn't do it, doesn't mean I'm wrong about his evil plan", or "He only didn't do it because we were screaming."

That last version is a neat coping maneuver. Not only is the person who make the prediction about Obama's evil plan not wrong, they in fact become the hero who saved the day.

I don't expect the haironfire folks to change. In fact, my prediction is that they will again flip out in a few months. After all, that's been the pattern going back at least three years.

Ironically, if Obama had lost in 2012, those making those predictions would have been wrong. With Obama winning, they get 4 more years to scream and holler. And I have every expectation that they will do so.