First things first: I am not at all shocked or surprised by the stupidity flowing from the White House. If you are, you have not been paying attention for the past 5-6 years, or you’ve engaged in willful denial. But, the moronic, and immoral, proposals on Social Security do give us a wonderful moment of clarity about politics and the press.

In my second edition of “It’s Not Raining, We’re Being Peed On”, I devote a chapter to the incompetence of the traditional media’s coverage — if you can even give it credit for “coverage” — of the phony debt and deficit crisis. One of the most incompetent journalists is Jackie Calmes of The New York Times. I honestly can’t tell if she is just straight out dumb, lazy or just blind to the ideological box she is stuck in. Whatever the reason, she is just pure awful.

And she gives us another installment of incompetence today, with help from the POTUS. And it’s a lesson of how badly the people are being served by elected leaders and the press. So, let’s go…

You’ve heard by now — A Democratic president wants to be remembered for screwing seniors, for undoing the basic social compact the country established under FDR:

President Obama’s new budget has opened a debate over what it means to be a progressive Democrat in an age of austerity and defines him as a president willing to take on the two pillars of his party — Medicare and Social Security — created by Democratic presidents.

By his gamble on Wednesday in proposing budgetary concessions to Republicans on Social Security, the 1935 creation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Medicare, the legacy of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Obama has provoked angry supporters on his left to ask whether he is a progressive at all.

…But to Mr. Obama, cost-saving changes in the nation’s fastest-growing domestic programs are more progressive than simply allowing the entitlement programs for older Americans to overwhelm the rest of the budget in future years.

Okay, here’s a test — what is the dumbest part of what she wrote? Time’s up.

SOCIAL SECURITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DEFICIT OR DEBT.

Now, Calmes is not the only fool who keeps regurgitating utter nonsense. But, it is particularly egregious that this foolishness is high up in a lead story in a newspaper that…oh, right, I forgot — a newspaper that advocated for the Iraq War. How silly of me to think we’d actually count on the Times to be accurate and deal with the facts.

SOCIAL SECURITY DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE A SINGLE DIME — NOT ONE DIME — TO THE DEFICIT OR DEBT.

Now, foolish parts #2 and #3  of this little snippet are connected. And it’s an insidious frame.

The point is not really whether the president is progressive or not, or has “provoked angry supporters” to question his progressive credentials. If you ignored reality of the past 5-6 years, then, sure, you can live in a fantasy world where that debate is even worth having.

But, “anger” blinds us by laying out an emotion  that clouds the most important point: whether this debate is even FACTUAL. I don’t give a fuck whether you call the president progressive.

BUT CAN WE DEAL WITH THE REAL WORLD???

It isn’t progressive to seek “cost savings” because there is not crisis. It’s entirely made up.

The benefits earned by seniors are not the problem.

Social Security is not the problem. It is fully funded for years to come.

It’s the health care system — a system this president, and need I remind everyone, the Democratic president who preceded him, were unwilling to change because it would anger the drug companies and insurance companies (and so those “liberals” and even “progressives” who are fantasizing about a second Clinton reign, keep that in mind).

On to the other snippet that follows — and, then, folks, I give up because the rest of the article is just as stupid and, you know, I have other things to do. But:

The president’s views put him at the head of a small but growing faction of liberals and moderate Democrats who began arguing several years ago that unless the party agrees to changes in the entitlement benefit programs — which are growing unsustainably as baby boomers age and medical prices rise — the programs’ costs will overwhelm all other domestic spending to help the poor, the working class and children.

“The math on entitlements is just not sustainable,” said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, one of the few Democrats to unequivocally endorse Mr. Obama’s budget. “And if you’re not finding ways to reform, where do you squeeze? Well, then you squeeze early-childhood programs, you squeeze Head Start, you squeeze education and veterans.”

“There’s nothing progressive about — and no business argument for — a business or any other enterprise to invest less than 5 percent of its revenues on the education of its work force, its infrastructure and its R & D,” Mr. Warner added. “And that’s what we’re doing.”

So, here is the easiest way to understand why the above hand-wringing about sustainability is bullshit — though coming from the mouth of a guy who hasn’t met a business tax cut he didn’t like it’s not really surprising:

• The age of baby boomers is entirely irrelevant. It’s the corrupt health care system.
• When the “left” rejoices about restoring the top tax rate to 39.5 percent to people making over $400,000, well…I want to be a Frenchman — because the French tax their wealthiest at 45 percent and “wealthy” there is above $198,000. That”s the math we should focus on, not the age of baby boomers.
• And, if Sen. Warner wants to use a business analogy — one that is erroneous (but that’s another story) — how about a “business” that identifies the wrong crisis (as Warner has — he’s part of the debt-mongering) and cuts billions of dollars from its budget rather than invest in creating jobs.

There is only one bottom line here, a take away lesson: people need to stop wasting their time whining about whether the president is a progressive. The only challenge is: how does a movement get built that makes it impossible for this shit to even be proposed? How does a movement rise up that demands a debate on the FACTS, not a debate based in stupidity?