So instead of having a Triple Hazelnut Sugar Free Venti Soy Iced No Foam Stirred Latte on a daily basis, people are going to the movies every couple of weeks (some who have not gone in more than 2 years).

Oh and how about this:

A poll conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO found that 49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday's voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley. The poll conducted by Hart Research Associates surveyed 810 voters.

And, if you are a Republican, not only do you get to see your crappy policies implemented, but when things go to hell in a handbasket, you get to blame it on the Democrats, and ensure that you will quickly and easily regain the majority and the presidency!  

Now, that's some 11-dimensional chess for you...

At a time when unemployment is high, people have been forced out of their homes, health care is more expensive than ever, jobs are few and far between, it escapes me how cutting domestic spending when people need it the most makes any sense at all.

A White House official said Tuesday that liberal critics of President Barack Obama's proposed discretionary spending freeze will be "muted" once they are fully rolled out.

Rob Nabors, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), emphasized to reporters that the spending freeze will not affect all agencies and that the White House is still committing to accomplishing its goals.

"The liberal crtiics will be somehwat muted when they see the details of what we are proposing," he said on a conference call with reporters. "People are all afraid that their favorite program is getting gutted."

The administration's announcement Tuesday that it will take on the $1.4 trillion deficit by freezing discretionary spending has already earned criticism from both liberals and conservatives, but has been praised by centrist Democrats who are concerned about the ballooning deficit.

The administation will unveil the new budget next week, Nabors said.

Liberals, along with many House Democrats, are concerned that a spending freeze will hamper the government's ability to stimulate the economy that is still stuck in a recession.

"It is a top line freeze, it is not a freeze on every agency," Nabors countered.

But Nabors admitted that the freeze and cuts will likely "lengthen the amount of time" it will take for Obama to accomplish his domestic agenda.

"We were looking to accomplish things in four or five years that will perhaps take us six or seven years now," he said.

He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, "This is it. No changes. Don't give me that bulls$it. We have a national emergency." Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

Barack Obama flatly rejected an across-the-board spending freeze when John McCain advanced the idea during the last debate of 2008 held at Long Island's Hofstra University.

Times have changed -- the October debate came in the midst of the financial crisis -- but Obama rejected the idea, which he now sees as a first step to fiscal discipline, as a fiscal "hatchet."

MCCAIN: OK, what -- what would I cut? I would have, first of all, across-the-board spending freeze, OK? Some people say that's a hatchet. That's a hatchet, and then I would get out a scalpel, OK?

Because we've got -- we have presided over the largest increase -- we've got to have a new direction for this country. We have presided over the largest increase in government since the Great Society.

Government spending has gone completely out of control; $10 trillion dollar debt we're giving to our kids, a half-a-trillion dollars we owe China. [snip]

OBAMA: Well, look, I think that we do have a disagreement about an across-the-board spending freeze. It sounds good. It's proposed periodically. It doesn't happen.

And, in fact, an across-the-board spending freeze is a hatchet, and we do need a scalpel, because there are some programs that don't work at all. There are some programs that are underfunded. And I want to make sure that we are focused on those programs that work.

Plouffe is using their email lists to try to get the bunker-dwellers together to watch the Wed night and be heartened.

First year was for getting the hang of things and for cleaning up after Bush. No wonder folks are still mad...at Bush.

When Dems lose seats or governorships it isn't because voters are mad at Dems or, heaven forbid, you know who, it's because they're angry at Bush.

So they throw the Dem out. By the way, did I mention I want to be a good one-term president. I'd rather not be elected. That's why I got into politics. Did I mention I won the Nobel. True. And Chicago would have gotten Olympics if only..

And also Ezra makes a good point:  

But you can't look at this as anything less than a tremendous defeat for the Obama administration. It's not the policy itself. The freeze locks in a post-stimulus, and potentially post-jobs-bill, level of spending. It's not terribly onerous. But it's also the administration's white flag on the argument that the deficit must be understood as a health-care reform problem rather than a taxes and spending problem. This was their most audacious effort to change the way Americans think, and it didn't work. For all the effort Democrats put into building a health-care bill that cuts the deficit, a full 60 percent of Americans think (pdf) the legislation increases the deficit. Only 15 percent think it's a deficit reducer.

The argument (right or wrong) against a jobs bill is, we can't afford it. So, how do you do stuff you need to do but you can't afford? You find the money for it elsewhere. Think of it as cutting the cable bill to make the roof repairs easier to swallow.

Seriously, the logic is that simple. People will get it. Progressives are way over-thinking this one, obsessing over "framing" and what McCain said vs what Obama said. No one will say "but you cut the cable bill and now you want to repair the roof? Why, you're a hypocrite!".

The Congressional Budget Office hiked its forecast Tuesday for how much the stimulus bill will add to the nation's deficit, raising its estimate by $75 billion to $862 billion.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009, was initially believed to have a price tag of $787 billion. With the glaring exception of skyrocketing unemployment compensation costs, the CBO said the Recovery Act's effects on government spending and revenues have closely followed its initial estimate for 2009 and 2010.

The vast majority of the increased deficit impact is linked to anticipated spending in 2011 to 2019. It now appears to the Budget Office that stimulus will have a larger impact on the deficit in the years to come based on changing economic factors since the bill was signed into law 11 months ago.