That may or may not be true, especially the alleged decline and inevitable disappearance of the budget deficit you allude to. That's a new one on me, although no doubt TB will be able to conjure up some figures somewhere that will prove it, at least to his satisfaction. But it's a moot point anyway. What really matters is the problem we have right now, that it happened at the end of a long conservative regime, and that the only way we seem to be able to correct it is to massively subsidize the very corporals of industry who caused it and profited by it.

Frankly, I don't presume to know how to get out of this mess, but I do know one thing, savings gained by tax cuts, wage reductions and benefit cuts are not invested in rebuilding American industrial capacity or infrastructure. If they were, there might be some merit in your proposals. But recent experience has made it pretty clear that the proceeds are outsourced, invested overseas, or used to purchase foreign goods and pay foreign workers. Only the middleman's and marketeer's profit stays here, and it gets invested in get-rich-quick Wall Street schemes and pissed away.

There is one good thing you can say about good ole American pork barrel spending, even if it is squandered, inefficient, unnecessary and expensive. After it's all over, at least you have something left over to show for it, even if it is a bridge to Nowhere or a Naval Shipyard in Utah. And the money spent on it goes to American workers and American businesses who spend it on more American workers and American businesses. And they all pay American taxes. And they leave behind factories, machinery, skilled workers and entrepreneurs (real ones, not blow-dried wimp Wall Street business majors) ready and eager to work some more. There are structures built during the New Deal that have payed for themselves many times over and are still earning their keep.

I have no illusions that the Liberals are going to straighten out this economy, either in the short term or ever. Not only has the Right left them a hell of a mess to clean up, but the Left doesn't seem to be coming up with too many ideas of its own; it may be too much to hope that Obama is another Roosevelt, or even if that is enough. But I know for a fact the current philosophy of government and economics simply cannot be allowed to stay in place any longer.

I think we're in for a very rough next few years, and even if we get through them I suspect things will never be quite the same again. But I can at least look forward to one thing, watching the Right spin events and try to make the case that things were going just fine and if they had just been left alone, everything would be wonderful.