mark. It is true that the New Deal didn't really end the depression but that was because the stimulus was half hearted due to rightist influence. When there was real stimulus via military spending the economy recovered. Of course some regulations are bad, some are good, some hurt a little, some help a lot and everything in between, it all depends on the specifics. Allie I'm not sure that all the leaders know they are lying, (obviously they don't care to find out). The right wing has their own educational system now so some of the leaders are as fanatically ignorant as the followers.

but obviously it would be a lot better for the long term if you could get the same amount of economic stimulus via money that is being spent on things that will provide benefit in the future which military spending generally does not (other than the benefit of not losing the war, not a small thing in the case of Hitler). The problem, other than figuring out what these public investments should be, is that people with money are willing to cough it up for defense when they feel threatened in a way that they are not at other times, and often when a govt. has the ability to overcome this resistance it is totalitarian and unaccountable and because of this will never end up doing the right thing.

the rest of the world won't and so the US, if it wishes to continue to function in the world, will be/would be forced to govern itself by something other than wingnuttery in spite of itself.

gee, I wonder why wingnuts don't get the respect hearing that they think their "ideas" deserve.

(you can be certain that if a bunch of leftists had engaged in equivalent behavior THEY certainly would have been) we would have been spared the worst president in our history.

It took a year of govt inaction in the face of a collapsed financial system for the real economy to be destroyed. My grandmother was born in 1930 maybe THAT is what REALLY brought on the depression. Fortunately/unfortunately (I'm really not sure which) modern Republicans have no intention of doing nothing since it would insure they would never be elected to anything for decades. The trick for them is how to actually do what govt. must do in this situation without compromising their ability to win office by selling right wing fantasies. I guess what they could try and do to preserve their position is to do what is necessary to save the system but be sure to waste as much money as possible doing so and see to it that only the rich see any benefit.

facts, logic, evidence, experience mean nothing. The other half of the Republican coalition, the fundies, has the same attitude towards "family values" vs abortion and gays; one is God the other is the devil and nothing else matters. Bush obviously was the perfect representative of this coalition.

It forces people, through taxes or borrowling, to spend money. In a market people will only spend money voluntarily. Of course this won't work as a permanent solution in the long run but when everyone stops spending money doing this can get things and keep things moving temporarily.

and the only way that the fighting will ever stop is when Israel trades land and the Palestinians trade peace, neither of which is likely to ever happen without US guarantees/pressure.

No it doesn't, sometimes it comes at the expense of private sector hoarding and waste. It bear repeating only if you are trying to make people stupid.

they must really be worried.

Because, for one thing, as everyone admits, public spending on WW2 got us out of the depression. Obviously that isn't the preferred way of doing it but it worked in the sense that it got the economy moving when the private sector could not. If Republicans, and Roosevelts own conservatism, hadn't interefered in the 30s a more robust govt. effort might have made more improvement sooner.

resulted in a severe downtown. You wingnuts should like Roosevelt more than you do, in addition to the new deals timidity in many areas he allowed your traditional southern lynching values to remain sacred and untouched, while at the same time investing many northern dollars in the improvment of life for southern whites.

the govt can make sure this doesn't happen, or doesn't keep happening.

this is an unusually honest statement of republican principles. It's rare to see that.

hanging on to cash in tough times may be smart individually but it has problematic collective effects, that is kind of the whole point of all this.

this of course IS the traditional belief of laissez faire theology and the total disconnection of this belief system from reality is why nobody takes it seriously.

which is why no socieity has ever been run, at least not for long, according to it's principles.

principles

the only answer that makes any sense is that republicans plan to play a totally obstructionist role in the belief that their best political chance is to combine total economic disaster with blockage of all democratic initiatives.

Since it all apparently went away then why has the right wing been hyprventilating about it for the past 70 years

turns out it wasn't. Obviously that didn't solve the problem and I don't know how quickly a passive defense can be developed, but I wonder if something more active i.e a system which automatically returns fire to the source of a launch quickly enough to do any good is more technically possible

have you been taking logic lessons from Rush?

that the right wing, with it's own media, it's own schools and the backing of the richest groups in the country can generate it's own political and cultural realities, at least to a point. If stupidity were self correcting we wouldn't be where we are.

are all republican politicians liars