I believe that now is a good time to have a national conversation about who we are as a country . In otherwords how we treat the least among us says it all . I like Dan Rather's program where he asks some of these questions . We can pull together in these times or we can tear ourselves apart . I defer to Lincolns words paraphrasing here "let us apeal to our better angels" .

I bet most of them believe that medicaid is only for the lazy too. I didn't realize that nursing home and in home assistance is paid for by medicaid.The states want to cut the meals on wheels programs. Now tell me how cutting out the one meal a day some elderly people get is worth cutting.  In California some of the hospitals were caught dumping patients on the streets in the middle of the night. I do believe there needs to be more oversight on what gets paid but they need to hire more people. Which then will be considered big government. I am glad Cantor left that means they must want like you stated to actually want to raise the tax line on Social Security. They stated there are 2 trillion in debt cut. But now it is time to raise the rates on the wealthy.

I keep trying to figure out why Republicans, and I don't just mean the idiots in Congress, but rank and file working class and middle class people, are against marginal tax increases for the wealthy.  They ignore that everyone else has had to struggle or lost a ton of money say in real estate, but the wealthy have the fattest cash balance sheets ever.  I think they believe they will suddenly start hiring and trickling it down, but that is not happening and never has.  All I hear is Obama is a muslim or is arrogant or all we need to do is cut spending for lazy people. How do we get through that thick skull barrier?