I never voted GOP in my life, but after the Dems' mewling pants-pissing post-Martha meltdown I've re-registering here in MA as independent and will never give another dime or minute to any more worthless politicians.

And yeah, at least with a Rethug I already know I'm fucked. I'll probably never vote for one unless they get off their bullshit moral and anti-intellectual crusades. Both parties were respectable, once.

"The freeze would not apply to defense or foreign aid or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans."

Only applies to domestic aid...

Now it's time for neo-liberal austerity measures.

Would we be any better off with McCain? No -- he would simply have directed the taxpayer largesse at his own cronies.
Not that knowing he would have behaved the same way makes things any better.
From now on, I will be voting straight Green or Socialist -- if I can even be bothered to vote for any of these no-account assclowns...

"I shall continue to be an impossible person as long as those who are now possible remain possible."

-- Mikhail Bakunin

McCandidate.
Three "party colors": red, blue, green
Speaks Liberal, Conservative, or Moderate
Programmed to say EXACTLY what you want to hear

Obama is quite likely the first of the McCandidates. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, there will be many more coming down the pipeline.

What flavor of Goldman-Sachs/Big Oil do you like?

Rather than suffer a self-inflicted wound of budget freezes and cutbacks, I thought Obama would be forced into something like this by the bond market vigilantes. At some point the bond market cannot ignore a leap in the annual budget financing needs from $400 billion to $1.9 trillion. In the bond market we began to notice long bond rates creeping up in the fall, just at the time the Chinese capped their monthly investment in Treasuries and stepped away completely from buying agencies. Rates began to inch up to 4.85%, the previous high from 2008. They've stalled since then because the bond market has two competing forces that drag rates down: the fear of recession or even depression, and the rush into Treasury safety if it looks likes the banks are in trouble again.

What we seem to have is an economic team left over from the Clinton era still living in fear of the bond market vigilantes, and therefore telling Obama he needs to preempt them by instituting this freeze. The freeze is like antimatter to the stimulus package of last year, and this doesn't seem to concern the White House. Which tells me that Summers, who is probably calling the shots here with Geithner egging him on, firmly believes the recession is over, the stimulus can be removed (which the administration has already begun to do in the housing market), and a reflated economy can now stand on its own.

It is easy to see how this will play out, and the pattern is sadly all of a piece with an economy whose real problem is deflation and debt deleveraging, not inflation (other than the asset bubble kind). This budget freeze will hurt the economy in the worst possible spot, at the consumer level. It will drive possibly millions of Americans to the brink, at the very moment most of the large states have run out of money for unemployment insurance and are borrowing from the federal government to keep these programs going. The housing market will slip back into decline, retailers of all sorts will throw in the towel and file for bankruptcy, several municipalities and states will also head to the bankruptcy courts, and the credit crisis in the financial industry will return once everyone realizes the banks are in the early stages of losses from credit card, auto loan, HELOC and other losses. The carnage will be much worse than what we saw in 2008, and is consistent with much of the market technical work I've seen which suggests we are heading into the real stock market crash that will herald the arrival of the depression.

I've also thought that the timing of this crash and depression could be deferred several years if the government successfully kept up its stimulus programs and propped up the consumer as the main focus of these programs. But now you have to wonder if this delay is even possible, when the government is not willing to tackle the burden of military costs, including generous pensions for generals and admirals and billions wasted in consulting contracts, but is willing to impose real pain on the average citizen.

This is much like a Kabuki drama where the players act out their assigned roles. Obama seems condemned from the start to drown in the depression that is unfolding and to do whatever possible to hasten its arrival.

The empire is arriving at its final destination. We can outsource the whole federal government thru privaten Pentagon und Heimat Sicherheitdienst contracts. Get rid of Agriculture, Interior, Education,etc...and the rest of the discretionary spending departments. The Pentagon planners will know best and how to administer the no bid contracts.
And Social Security is already being taken care of with fiddling the CPI parameters. The field hospitals the military is setting up in Haiti will be the new Medicare/Medicaid model. Described on NPR this morning as MASH type field hospitals. All the retiring Boomers loved MASH didn't they?
All our problems solved.
Freedom's not free. Now, where are we going for lunch?

It is pretty amazing how conservative ideas still rein supreme. O has already declared all defense or security cuts off limits from the get-go just to prevent the red meat crowd from declaring him a cowardly wimp. How is this nation going to correct itself if it cannot even begin to discuss rationale solutions?

Why the rush to desert Obama just because he's not doing things the way you think he should? (Not to mean I agree with this so-called 'freeze.' It sounds more like shifting funds/money.)