Joe the Plumber Reports From Israel

Yeah, we passed through the looking glass long ago. Anything goes.

Joe trades wrench for reporter’s notepad in Israel

By AMY TEIBEL Associated Press

Jan. 11, 2009, 1:33PM

SDEROT, Israel — Joe the Plumber has set aside his wrenches to become a rookie war correspondent, covering Israel’s side of its two-week-old military offensive in Gaza.

The Ohio man, who rocketed to fame during the U.S. presidential campaign for asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, was in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Sunday to tell readers of the conservative pjtv.com Web site about the rockets that rain down from the neighboring Gaza Strip.

The people of Sderot “can’t do normal things day to day” like get soap in their eyes in the shower, for fear of rockets, said America’s most famous plumber, who’s real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher.

“I’m sure they’re taking quick showers,” he said. “I know I would.”

Wurzelbacher’s status as a rookie was evident when he stood in front of a pile of spent rockets and said: “I have thousands of questions but I can’t think of the right one.”

What he could summon was contempt for Israel’s critics, who are outraged by the more than 870 Palestinians killed in Israel’s bruising air and ground onslaught against Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers. Thirteen Israelis have also died since the operation began, including four killed by the rocket fire that touched off the war in the first place.

“Why hasn’t Israel acted sooner?” Wurzelbacher asked. “I know if I were a citizen here, I’d be damned upset.”

He described himself as a “peaceloving man,” but added, “when someone hits me, I’m going to unload on the boy. And if the rest of the world doesn’t understand that, then I’m sorry.”

Wurzelbacher, who underwent intense media scrutiny during the campaign, said he was enlisted to cover Israel because he’s “an expert on media bias.”

“I was on the short end of the stick,” like Israel is now, he said.

When Wurzelbacher joined Republican Sen. John McCain on the campaign trail, he agreed with a supporter who asked if he thought “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel.”

Wurzelbacher said the full story of Israel’s campaign against Hamas isn’t coming out on mainstream news outlets. He said they are demonizing Israel instead of recognizing it as the victim of Gaza militants who have fired thousands of rockets at Israel over the past eight years.

“It’s asinine when someone is firing upon you and the world is coming down on you,” he said. “Common sense has gone out the window.”

“Hamas hides among its own people,” causing civilian casualties, he added. “But I hear no cry out from the international community.”

That’s the Israeli government’s position, too. And though foreign reporters normally have to provide proof of experience to receive government authorization to report from Israel, Wurzelbacher was being escorted Sunday on his first reporting gig ever by the head of the Government Press Office, Danny Seaman, and a press office photographer.

Wurzelbacher said he’s been “embraced” by the people of Israel because “they know I have no agenda but the truth.” But his arrival in a busy cafe elicited no overt signs of recognition. He appeared to cause more of a stir among the press there.

This is his first trip to Israel, and he pronounced himself “happy to be here.”

But war correspondent or not, Wurzelbacher won’t get to Gaza: Israel has barred access to foreign journalists.

“If he wants to put on an Israeli military uniform and go in as a volunteer, maybe,” Seaman quipped. “Nobody goes in.”

Original is here.

I want to laugh, but....

Oh, please go in, Joe.

Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal

Just finished reading Paul Krugman's excellent book, The Conscience of a Liberal, published 2007. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a relatively open mind and can think, and that unfortunately will exclude many conservatives. The Guardian has a good review of the book, and here is a snip:

His latest book-length polemic, The Conscience of a Liberal, lacks something of the bite one gets in the columns; but it remains a valuable and thoughtful study that puts a good deal of political and economic history into perspective. It offers considerable hope to those who, like myself, would like to see changes occur in the US, including a reduction in drastic income disparities, the implementation of a national healthcare system, an end to racial divisions and a foreign policy that moves beyond "shoot now, pay later".

That review is here.

To quote from Salon's review, Paul gives "a history of the political economy of the United States from the beginning of the 20th century to the present."

Another quote from Salon, "If one sentence could sum up "Conscience" it might be: "Republicans increase economic inequality, Democrats decrease it, and so, politics matter."

The entire Salon review is here.

A few interesting snips from the book that I found:

"So the difference between the parties is not an illusion. Republicans cut taxes on the rich and try to shrink government benefits and undermine the welfare state. Democrats raise taxes on the rich while trying to expand government benefits and strengthen the welfare state."

snip

"...the right-wing takeover of the GOP is the underlying cause of today's bitter partisanship."

snip

"Bitter partisanship has become the rule because the Republicans have moved right, and the GOP has moved right because it was taken over my movement conservatives." "...public opinion, unlike the Republican Party, hasn't shifted sharply to the right."

snip

"But with the coming of the New Deal, the rich started to face taxes that were not only vastly higher than those of the twenties, but high by today's standards. The top income tax rate (currently only 35 %) rose to 63% during the first FDR term, and 79% by the second. By the mid-fifties, as the United States faced the expenses of the Cold War, it had risen to 91%."

Now, even for me, a 91% top tax rate is a bit too high. And 35% is too low. Seems we could easily have middle ground of 40%? Maybe 45%? Maybe even 50%. I hear people saying that we need a "new" New Deal these days, but I hope they don't mean tax rates upwards of 91% again. That's just far too high.

snip

"But as so often happens when we look closely at the real political history of this country, it's far from clear that what everyone knows is true."

Which is another way of saying that you cannot believe everything you learn in textbooks, and that history has undergone many revisions over time, in addition to a whole lot of it just simply being left out of our history books.

"What made the New Deal's influence so enduring was the fact that FDR provided answers to inequality and economic insecurity." "If everyone is entitled to health insurance, there's no need to screen people to eliminate high-risk clients. If a government agency provides insurance, there's no need to fight over who pays for a medical procedure: If it's a covered procedure the government pays. As a result government health insurance programs are much less bureaucratic and spend much less on administration than do private insurers. For example, Medicare spends only about 2 percent of its funds on administration; for private insurers the figure is about 15 percent.

Among Krugman's rather simple prescriptions to reduce income inequality and put a little fairness back in society are:

"higher taxes on the well off."

"undoing many of the tax cuts for the wealthy that movement conservatives have pushed through since 1980."

"closing some of the obvious loopholes in the U.S. system. These include eliminating the rule that allows hedge fund managers to classify their earnings as capital gains, taxed at a 15 percent rate rather than as income, at 35 percent. Also, closing loopholes that let corporations, drug companies in particular, shift recorded profits to low-tax jurisdictions overseas, costing billions."

"taxing capital gains as ordinary income."

"an end to the thirty-year tilt of government policy against unions."

As Salon said in their review, there might not be a whole lot of groundbreaking material in this book that liberals do not already know, but he writes in a very clear way that helps to reinforce what you do know. And we know that repetition is a key to learning.

Rockets in San Diego

If I've heard this question once, I've heard it 20 times: "Well, if they were shooting rockets into San Diego (or Seattle, or any border city), what would we do?" As if the two situations could be identical.

There is a long history over there between the Israelis and the Palestinians. They've been ... "unfriendly" ... for quite some time now. How many hundreds, thousands of years?

At this point in time, the Israelis have the Palestinians rather penned up in Gaza. Israel (and Egypt) have been blockading Gaza for over 18 months now, controlling every thing and every person coming and going. It's almost like a huge concentration camp. Gazans have been running out of food, water, electricity, all strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt.

Under the circumstances, I would not be surprised if they dug tunnels under the borders. We frequently discover tunnels from Mexico and Canada into the U.S.

But wee have not been fighting the Mexicans across San Diego for centuries. Likewise, we haven't been fighting with, or blockading Canada to our north. So it is very unlikely that Mexico would launch rockets into San Diego or El Paso. We don't have the same history. To transfer actions over there - that have quite a lot of history - over here, to justify what Israel is doing, is quite the rhetorical stretch. But I hear it, almost every day.

As if the Israelis have done absolutely nothing to provoke, in any way, any Palestinians. As if Israel is an innocent bystander in the conflict. It is certainly not right for anyone to fire rockets at any other people. It is also not right to strangle a whole people, or to bomb them when they are trapped in a cage, like the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

Someday, maybe, both sides will learn to live together. Not this day. And not tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath.

Bill Moyers covered the situation pretty well in this past Friday's Journal on PBS.

Another 524,000 jobs lost

For the entire 2008 year, the U.S. shed 2.8 MILLION jobs.

But hey, don't you worry about ol' Bushie. He still has "joy" in his heart. No, nothing as trivial as unemployment skyrocketing to 7.2% or the worldwide economy tanking is going to dampen his joy. I'm sure glad that he isn't troubled in the least about the economy or anything else. Why would he be? He'll have a cushy pension for the rest of his life, along with a contingent of secret service at his beck and call. Where he actually belongs is in jail.

US unemployment surges as 524,000 jobs lost

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US employers shed a massive 524,000 jobs in December, capping a yearly loss of 2.8 million, as a deepening recession pushed unemployment to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent, official data showed Friday.

The staggering job losses in the Labor Department report heightened a sense of urgency for president-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress to agree on swift economic stimulus plan, analysts said.

The job losses over the course of 2008 were the most in a year since 1945, the Labor Department said in its monthly update. Some 1.9 million were lost in the past four months.

The agency also revised up the number of job losses for the prior two months. The October figure was changed to show a loss of 423,000 jobs from 320,000 and November's data to a loss of 584,000 from 533,000.

The jobless rate, calculated on a separate household survey, climbed to 7.2 percent, the highest since January 1993, from 6.8 percent a month earlier.

The brutal acceleration of job losses suggested a vicious downward cycle for the world's biggest economy, analysts said.

The report "suggests that both the US economy and job market fell off a cliff" at the end of 2008, said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

Behravesh said he expects "the jobs hemorrhage to continue through much of 2009" at a heavy pace and to ease if a large economic stimulus package can be enacted quickly.

"Nevertheless, the current pace of job losses means that the unemployment rate will rise into the 9.0 to 9.5 percent range at a minimum before leveling off," he said.

Yet some economists said the report showed the pace of job losses may have peaked as companies retrench and cut as much as possible.

Some analysts had expected a far worse figure after a survey by payrolls firm ADP showing the private sector lost 693,000 jobs in December.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid said lawmakers need to move quickly on a plan to revive the economy.

The number of unemployed rose to 11.1 million in December, the data showed.

The figures come as the US economy is gripped by the worst recession in decades, which began in December 2007 after a collapse of a house bubble and massive financial sector losses that led to a credit crunch.

In December, a large portion of the losses came in manufacturing, which shed 149,000 in the month and 791,000 in the year, with the auto sector hard hit.

But the service sector, which accounts for some 80 percent of employment, fared even worse, with 273,000 jobs lost in the month.

The original story is here.

A month or two ago, my company issued a statement saying that our goal was to cut all costs by 10% by the end of 2010, and that all of the savings could be accomplished by attrition and people retiring.

That was then.

Just yesterday, they revised that, saying that we needed to cut that 10% by the end of 2009, AND another 10% by the end of 2010. And the real kicker was that "a reduction in headcount can no longer be considered to be 'off the table." Great. We had three spectacular quarters in 2008, but one (modestly worse) 4th quarter and it's alarm-bell city.

Bush, may you and the anti-regulation conservative zealots rot in hell. But I'd be quite satisfied with Bush rotting in a cell in the Hague.

Will Pitt on Bush

I'm feeling a bit at a loss for words lately. Not sure why. I'm giving Obama some slack, even though he has chosen some pretty questionable people to serve with him. I guess that's all part of his bringing people together. So why is it that only Democrats seem to want to do that, and Republicans want to slam the door on anything Democratic?

So, for now, I'll let others speak for me. Will Pitt has always done a good job in that regard. I didn't realize that he and I were at the same rally in D.C. back in May of 2001. Before 9/11/01, we actually felt like there was some momentum against Bush. When 9/11 came along, everybody tucked their tails. And we see where that got us.

The Greatest Greatness of George W. Bush

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t Columnist

Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave ...

- The Rolling Stones


To: George W. Bush
From: Your biggest fan
Re: Your imminent unemployment

Greetings, Mr. Bush.

I was sorry to hear about the passing of your cat, India. Eighteen years is a long time for a cat - my mother has one that's 20 and still going strong, if you can believe it - and I'm sure India had a comfortable, caring life with your family.

I got to spend part of last weekend with an old friend of mine. He's a bit older than 18, and he's also a troop who recently rotated back from a tour in Falluja. He just had a baby daughter, and he will be sent to Afghanistan before too much longer. He did his duty in Iraq, dealt his share of death and saw his friends die or be ripped to shreds right in front of him.

He was hollow in a lot of places that had been full before he went to Iraq. He was not the same man we'd said farewell to. But he was alive, and if he survives his upcoming Afghanistan tour, maybe he will get the chance to have a long, comfortable, caring life with his family, just like little India.

At present, my friend's life is the polar opposite of comfortable, and he still has Kabul waiting for him just over the horizon. His life is the way it is because of you, Mr. Bush. You have been the single greatest influence upon his time in this world; you put him over there and hollowed him out, and because of you, it's about to happen again. You were the single biggest influence upon the lives of every person he knew over there, every person he saw over there, and every person he killed over there.

It's funny. I was thinking the other day about when I marched in one of the first large-scale post-inauguration protests against you in Washington, DC. It was May of 2001, it was The Voter's Rights March to Restore Democracy, and it was a few thousand people shouting down the unutterably ruinous Supreme Court decision which unleashed, just as we then feared, everything that has since come to pass. "Not my president!" we bellowed. "Not my president!"

It's funny because that memory seems so very quaint to me now. A stolen election? Pfff. To paraphrase a different president, Americans get scarier stuff than that free with their breakfast cereal nowadays. Thanks to you, governor.

My All-Time-Grand-Prize-Bull-Goose-Gold-Medal-Winning Top Five list of what you've done, in no particular order, and in my own humble opinion:

1. You were warned by the outgoing administration when you first took office. You were warned by the Russians. You were warned by the Israelis. You were warned by the Germans. You were warned in a memo given to you by your own National Security Adviser. You were warned by men like Richard Clarke. You were warned all those times that Osama bin Laden intended to strike the United States, and still the Towers came down.

(All those people working on that Legacy Project of yours should go back to bed, by the way; they are trying to salvage the unsalvageable. You protected us, they claim? Ha. You're 0-1 on terrorism and 0-2 on war)

2. Less than a month after those Towers came down, a reporter asked what you thought we should do. "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer," you replied, "by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." I happened to be watching television and heard you say that live into a camera. The only reason I didn't throw up on myself is because my teeth were clenched too tightly for the vomit to pass my lips. I swallowed hard, grabbed a pen, and wrote down what you said and when you said it. It was October 4, 2001, just after nine in the morning. You'd like people to remember you standing on that pile of rubble in Manhattan, you with the bullhorn and the heroic pose. I, however, will always remember you pitching tax cuts to a devastated nation while a pall of poison smoke still hung in the air over Ground Zero.

3. A few years later, you wanted hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from other areas of the federal budget and into your war in Iraq. You took more than $70 billion out of the budget used by the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana to fund the repair and maintenance of the New Orleans levee system. Katrina struck not long after you took that money and poured it into the sand, and the levees failed for lack of funded upkeep. Through this, along with your disinterested disinclination to help your own countrymen in their hour of darkest need, you played the very last note for that old, sad, lost American city. Reflected in those actions are the same budgetary priorities that motivated you to turn Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the hospital where I was born, into an abattoir of suffering and neglect for the wounded soldiers you tore apart for a lie.

4. You let Dick "Crazy-Eyes" Cheney do whatever the hell he wanted to whomever he wanted whenever and wherever he wanted, and be damned to the damned old Constitution anyway. Cheney once said the vice president's office was not part of the same branch of government as the president's office, and he said it with his bare face hanging out the whole time. Why? He didn't want to give any of his official papers over to the National Archives, as mandated by at least two federal laws. Nope, he said, my office is in Congress today, sorry about that, but be sure to come on back after you drop dead. Or words to that effect. That's about one zillionth of a percent of what he did, because you let him pick himself to be your boss.

5. On July 19, 2006, you vetoed H.R. 810. On June 20, 2007, you vetoed S. 5. Both vetoes killed legislation aimed at funding and vastly enhancing the reach and scope of stem cell research in America. The father of someone I know died of bone marrow cancer just after that first veto; he was adopted, no family could be located, so no donor match for a bone marrow transplant could be found. With stem cell therapy, doctors could have taken his own marrow and grown enough healthy, matching marrow to save his life. Two other people I know have diabetes, like millions of Americans. Stem cell research could offer them a cure. Someone else I know has multiple sclerosis, and stem cell research could very well help her, too. She'd write you a thank-you note for those vetoes, but her right hand doesn't work so well anymore. She's getting better with her left hand, so maybe that note can get written next year.

Also, you defied lawfully issued subpoenas and potentially set a precedent that could shatter the separation of powers. You told the American people Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al-Qaeda connections and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program, even though all of that was a lie. You made a joking video about not being able to find any of it. You outed a deep-cover CIA agent who was running a network designed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, and you did so because her ambassador husband told the truth about you in the public prints.

You gave away our right to privacy by sending the NSA to spy on us. You turned us all into torturers and butchers in the eyes of the world with your decision to use Abu Ghraib prison the same way Saddam Hussein once did. You tried to appoint Henry Kissinger to lead the investigation into 9/11. You turned the entire Justice Department into a carnival of political hackery. You championed the economic policies and deregulation fantasies that have left the financial stability of millions in ashes. You used the threat of terrorism against your own people in order to give yourself political cover. You killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who did you nor us no harm.

You did all this, and so much more.

From a certain perspective, one could argue that you have been the most successful president the country has ever seen. Think about it, because according to your definition of "success," it's true. You came into office looking to make your friends richer, and to fulfill as best you could your most overriding personal belief: that government is the problem, so government must be damaged and denuded to the point of impotence. Through your tax cuts and your two vastly expensive boondoggle wars, you made your friends rich. By unleashing Mr. Cheney and your other minions, you tore the Constitution to shreds and tatters. You have achieved both goals in smashing style, so from that certain perspective, you have triumphed.

Could you also, from the proper perspective, be considered our greatest president?

Perhaps, someday, if we make it so.

It will be in the best interests of many powerful people if we as a nation simply dismiss you and forget you ever happened. A lot of news media people want us to forget you, because in forgetting you, we would forget the media's vast complicity in your actions and misdeeds. A lot of rich people making new fortunes from war profiteering and defense contracts want us to forget they and you even exist, as it would make it possible for them to do it all again someday. A lot of politicians who stapled themselves to you would simply adore it if we forgot about you. The Republican Party would be forever in our debt if we forgot about you.

No. We will not forget you. We will remember.

We the people are going to save you from ignominious oblivion. We will remember. You could be the president who doomed America, the worst president of all time, but we must not, will not let that happen. You will be remembered differently, because we will hold the memory of you high, and behold you, and say, "Never, never, never again." We have tasted the soot and smelled the blood on the wind; we have seen how fragile our way of government is when placed in the hands of low men such as you, and because of that, you will be remembered for all time.

Your greatness will be defined by how we rise to overcome and undo what you have done. Your greatness will stand forever if we never, ever forget the hard, bitter lessons you taught us. We are responsible for this republic, for our Constitution, and for each other. We are our brother's keeper. You taught us that by becoming our Cain. You nearly slew us, but here we stand, and we defy the place in history you would relegate us to. We defy you, and by doing so, we rise.

Something like you must never again be allowed to happen to this country, and if we save ourselves by preventing you from ever happening again, your greatness is assured. You are the tallest of all possible warnings, and a promise all of us must solemnly and stalwartly keep. If we can damn you to the past, we will save our own future.

May you live forever, you son of a bitch.

The original is here. Toss a few bucks to Truthout now and then.

The New Deal failed?

Wow, I had no idea that "everyone agrees" that the New Deal failed. And here I thought that FDR was responsible for helping to pull America out of the Great Depression by employing millions of people, and producing the "Great Compression." And Social Security has been nothing but a disaster too. Silly me.

I get so tired of all the right-wing hatemongers constantly spewing bile and bullshit, regardless of the consequences. It's a real disgrace that we have so many people in this country who care not a whit for those less fortunate than they are, and actively seek ways to keep people down and advantage themselves over everyone else. It's still a free country, I guess. You are free to be a total asshole and lie all you want, especially if you're employed by FOX NEWS.

Here's another head-shaking article from Media Matters for America (MMFA).

Asserting FDR "waged ... a jihad against private enterprise," Hume falsely claimed "everybody agrees ... that the New Deal failed"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200901080005

Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume joined the ranks of conservative media figures attacking President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression as a failure that worsened the economic crisis of the 1930s, asserting on the January 7 edition of Fox News' Your World that "the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed. The debate is over why it failed." He later asserted that "President Roosevelt waged what could only be called a jihad against private enterprise." However, Hume's assertion that "the New Deal failed" has been flatly rejected by some prominent economists, including Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, who has said that Roosevelt did not go far enough to end the crisis and that his attempts to balance the budget hindered recovery.

In a November 10, 2008, New York Times column, Krugman wrote that Roosevelt's policies included "long-run achievements" that "remain the bedrock of our nation's economic stability" and that Roosevelt's short-term successes were constrained because "his economic policies were too cautious."

Krugman further wrote:

Now, there's a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it's important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.
[...]
F.D.R. wasn't just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion -- he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate
back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.

During a roundtable discussion on ABC's This Week on November 16, responding to Washington Post columnist George Will's assertion that "the first New Deal didn't work," Krugman stated, in part: "Roosevelt got the economy moving somewhat. By 1937, things were a lot better than they were in 1933." He continued, "Then he was persuaded to balance the budget, or try to, and he raised taxes and cut spending and the economy went back down again. And it took an enormous public works program known as World War II to bring the economy out of the Depression."

Similarly, in a January 6 column, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote: "In reality, any careful reading showed that the New Deal policies substantially ameliorated the effects of the Great Depression for tens of millions of people. The major economic failing of the New Deal was that President Roosevelt was not prepared to push the policies as far as necessary to fully lift the economy out of the Great Depression." Baker continued:

Roosevelt was too worried about the whining of the anti-stimulus crowd that he confronted. He remained concerned about balancing the budget when the proper goal of fiscal policy should have been large deficits to stimulate the economy. Roosevelt's policies substantially reduced the unemployment rate from the 25 percent peak when he first took office, but they did not get the unemployment rate back into single digits.

Further, in a November 17 post on his personal blog, University of California-Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong wrote, "Private investment recovered in a very healthy fashion as Roosevelt's New Deal policies took effect. The interruption of the Roosevelt Recovery in 1937-1938 is, I think, wel [sic] understood: Roosevelt's decision to adopt more 'orthodox' economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance and the Federal Reserve's decision to contract the money supply by raising bank reserve requirements provide ample explanation of that downturn."

Progressive economists are not alone in crediting Roosevelt's policies for easing the economic crisis. As Newsweek senior editor Daniel Gross noted on his blog on January 4, 2007, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke -- appointed by President George W. Bush -- wrote in his Essays on the Great Depression, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression."

As noted in County Fair, during the "Mythbuster" segment on the January 7 edition of MSNBC's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, host David Shuster highlighted Fox News' role in spreading the myth that Roosevelt's New Deal worsened the Great Depression.

From the January 7 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:

NEIL CAVUTO (host): I'm wondering, too -- there is another argument, not advanced by too many economists these days, but a lot of economists missed the slowdown anyway -- but who have said we've thrown a lot of money at this through the Fed, and what -- it's backing up the banking system, et cetera, and the money it's been flushing the system with to help banks and financial institutions, period.

And we're already seeing the fruits of that. Whether you agree or disagree with the wisdom of this sort of thing, we might already be
seeing that, so why pile more on to this? I know that is a key Republican
argument, but where does this whole debate stand?

HUME: Well, I think that this debate fits in with the debate that's been raging sort of below the radar for decades now, really more than a half-century -- has been the debate over why the New Deal failed to lift the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. It didn't come out, Neil, as you well know, until we had the massive deficit spending that accompanied the second World War. And that finally --

CAVUTO: That's right. Eight years later. Eight years after that New Deal. Right.

HUME: That's right. Well, then, the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I
think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed. The debate is over why it failed. People on the left believe it failed because Roosevelt, at the end of the day, really didn't do enough spending, that it simply wasn't spending -- he was not spending, whether deficit spending or not, on a scale grand enough to lift the damaged U.S. economy out of that depression.

There are people on the other side of the spectrum who would say, maybe, but look at this as well. President Roosevelt waged what could only be called a jihad against private enterprise. He prosecuted leading figures in it, Andrew Mellon being a conspicuous example. He prosecuted little companies, butcher shops in New York, as has been laid out in Amity Shlaes' book about the new -- book about the history of the Great Depression.

It created a very uncertain, even poisonous atmosphere for business. That is not the atmosphere that you want, and I'm bound to say, Neil, that I don't think that's the atmosphere the Obama administration is seeking to create. The Obama administration is not showing any signs it wanted to wage the kind of war on private business that Roosevelt waged. The question, of course, still is whether the spending on the scale that we're seeing will end up doing more harm than good --

CAVUTO: Or that it would tantamount to that, anyway. And that gets us back to the spending that is planned and waking up after the party of that spending.