hasn't given up:

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama told congressional Democrats on Thursday he is willing to agree to a "big deal" with Congress on spending cuts and tax reforms to end the fiscal uncertainty over the U.S. deficit, but insisted that new revenues be part of the package.

"I am prepared, eager and anxious to do a big deal, a big package, that ends this governance by crisis where every two weeks, or every two months, or every six months, we are threatening this hard-won recovery," Obama told House of Representatives Democrats attending a three-day retreat.

I don't even think the president believes what he says anymore, because his rationale for the Grand Bargain keeps changing. He wants his Social Security and Medicare cuts, and he will always find a reason he can use to justify it. Remember, he's been talking about this since before he was elected. Don't believe any of it.

But this rationale is especially insulting to our intelligence. Let's be real: Every single time Obama has placated the Republican extremists, it's only emboldened them to come back for more.

And let's not forget when we hear talk about "shared" sacrifice -- we're done sacrificing:

So it turns out that 43% of the projected Social Security shortfall is due to …. income inequality!

Let that sink in. This is yet another way that the looters want the victims to pay for their victimhood and hold the looters lossless. The CEO class has worked for three decades to create an economy where working people have a far less share of the economic growth than they used to have. One of the results of that inequity was an unexpected shortfall in the income collected by Social Security.