Matthew Yglesias is over at www.talkingpointsmemo.com which doesn't allow comments.
This post is excellent, as usual. It demonstrates that with the analytic skills of his BA in philosophy, Yglesias can find the needle of valid argument in the haystack of economic theory (re moral hazard) He also has a good argument in political science as to why when George Allen proposs to let people do whatever they please with 4 % of payroll taxes he is saying "the future is now" just like his dad.

However Matt mixes up medicaid and medicare while being brilliantly snarky as usual

This suggests some intriguing new spin possibilities. Why do Republicans want to cut Medicare and food stamps? To save poor people from the trouble of going to the grocery store and taking kids to the doctor!

Remember John DiIulio the first of the Bush advisors who resigned in shrill uholy madness ? The thing that flipped him out was senior advisors (cough cough Rove) usind "medicare" to mean medicaid or vice versa.

Republicans are cutting medicaid (for the poor) not medicare (for the old the program they expanded). It is obvious that they are cutting programs for the poor not the old. Old people are numerous, turn out to vote and have time to find out which politicians are trying to cut their benefits and end their careers (third rail remember). Clinton and Gingrich each tried to touch medicare and remember what happened next.

It's easy really. republicans want to cut anything with "aid" in the name (foreign aid, aid to families with dependent children, and medicaid).