It struck me, in the few minutes of one of the Obama/McCain debates last year, that Obama would be a Republican in the America I grew up in. I remarked that he was just another Republican, in my rude fashion, to my couchmates at the time.

So today, Firedog lake diarist DeanBaker reports that Obman is thinking of "restructuring" Social Security and Medicare to bring it in line with our national debt. In other words, he's long bought into the myth that Social Security and Medicare is bankrupt.

Recall that the Social Security trust fund was supercharged with increased taxes in the early Eighties for the sole purpose of being fully capable of handling the Baby Boomers in the 21st century. And that the fund was stolen - "borrowed" - in 1985 by Reagan and a compliant Congress to assuage the deficit and increasing national debt brought on by the supply-side tax cuts that have crippled us and the world.

The "restructuring, as DeanBaker reminds us, is a robbery of the trust fund's IOU's, a default on repayment on the loans made to the Greed is Gooders of the Eighties. Even tho it was long shown that the SS killers' arguments were based on incredibly manipulated data - see Krugman for details - Obama has bought into the rightist screed. We have another Republican, ladies and germs.