You Know The Real Reason Why Time Mag Is Going Down the Drain? The Content!

For all the tears that get shed over the beginning of the middle of the end for Mr. Luce's mag and newsweeklies in general, one obvious explanation generally gets glossed over: They are mostly written by conventional-wisdom mongerers who can barely finish shipping an issue of "Why Dinosaurs Believed in God" and "The Mother Mary Holy Water Diet" before rushing out something like this time-waster by esteemed historian David M. Kennedy.

Sample verbiage:

It's old news that F.D.R.'s New Deal did not end the Depression….F.D.R. appreciated the irony that it was the Depression that made it possible for him to realize those larger objectives. It would be too much to say that he deliberately prolonged the crisis to preserve the possibilities for reform. But he candidly acknowledged the relationship between peril and progress in his second Inaugural Address, on Jan. 20, 1937….

President Obama knows this. Asked by PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer in February if he did not feel burdened by the several crises now besetting the country, Obama noted that the moment "is full of peril but full of possibility" and that such times are "when the political system starts to move effectively."

Roosevelt could not have said it better. F.D.R. championed a long-deferred reform agenda that put security at its core. Obama wants to advance another set of reforms that have long been stalled.

Whole rendezvous with declining circulation here.

Hat tip: Roger L. Simon.

Given that it's such old news that the New Deal was an economic flopperoo and that President Obama is pushing a New Dealish-like economic stimulus package, you'd think that maybe Time would be interested in engaging the whys and wherefores of such things. Or in anything like a critical analysis of FDR and BHO. It needn't be negative or libertarian, but something other than idle idol worship might actually pull some eyeballs.

Check out Radley Balko and Jeff Winkler's great social-panic stories from the past four decades of Time here. But don't try satanism at home, kids!

In any case, what can Obama learn from FDR? Plenty. Especially what not to do during an economic downturn. Just watch below.

Comments

[jayjayhawker]

Every time I go to my moms house I see the latest issue of Time on the table, I then have the urge go to build a time machine so I can go back and my grandmother an abortion.

[R C Dean]

That picture of FDR has those eyes that follow you around the room.

That is all.

[ClubMedSux]

That reminds me of an absolutely God-awful special I saw on the History Channel last weekend. It was comparing our current situation to the Great Depression and talking about all the great things FDR did and why Obama's doing the same. I swear they had one of Obama's economic advisers write the damn thing...

[Rich]

IOW, because people are getting bored with the red outline.

[Kevin]

Does this count as an Obama cover, considering it has his name but not his picture? For those of us keeping score at home.

[Steve Smith]

If the New Deal was such a "flopperoo," how did FDR win a record four-terms in office, and simply raising the spectre of a return to Hoover-Coolidge economics was enough for Harry Truman to win a fifth? Clearly, the policies helped someone....

[Invisible Finger]

how did FDR win a record four-terms in office,

He ended Prohibition.

[SugarFree]

OH, GOD! On Steve's Earth, World War II never happened!

I warned them that alternate timeline comment bleed-through was a danger of this new quantum blogging software, but those reckless fools at Reason wouldn't listen to me.

Soon the timelines will cross more and more and the multiblogoverse will collapse into a sinlge timeline. Golden Age Episiarch will cease to exist. All the different Warty's will become one, with an overcomplicated continuity. I'll be replaced by my evil 25th century arch-nemesis, Reverse SugarFree.

We're doomed! DOOMED!

Welch, Gillespie, Mangu-Ward... your names will mean death for a thousand centuries!

[Silentz]

SF, does your alternate universe self know how to post links correctly?

[Paul]

President Obama is pushing a New Dealish-like economic stimulus package, you'd think that maybe Time would be interested in engaging the whys and wherefores of such things. Or in anything like a critical analysis of FDR and BHO.

Because that's not the purpose of the piece. These articles are US! or Entertainment Weekly for the serious crowd. Who cares if it doesn't 'work'. Let's get inside Obama's head, try to understand Him, the man, the legend. What makes Him tick? What motivates Him? Can He do it? Can He accomplish His goals? How will He handle the crisis? insert black and white pictures of Obama in the Thinking Man's pose, serious look on his countenance

[Steve Smith]

Sorry SugarFree, but the only one of the five elections that took place during the time the US was fighting WW2 was 1944. Each of the other elections came while the US was at peace, and at a time when the Keynesian boost the war gave the economy didn't exist. Moreover, none of FDR's four elections were even close, and Truman's election was only close because he was kept off the ballot in a half-dozen southern states. The American people clearly and eloquently rendered their judgment on the New Deal at the time.

[Paul]

The American people clearly and eloquently rendered their judgment on the New Deal at the time.

Fixed.

Democracy got us two terms of George W. Bush, term limits got him out. That is all.

[J sub D]

Sorry SugarFree, but the only one of the five elections that took place during the time the US was fighting WW2 was 1944. Each of the other elections came while the US was at peace, and at a time when the Keynesian boost the war gave the economy didn't exist. Moreover, none of FDR's four elections were even close, and Truman's election was only close because he was kept off the ballot in a half-dozen southern states. The American people clearly and eloquently rendered their judgment on the New Deal at the time.

You may not have noticed this but I have. The American people are fucking stupid. They approved of Bush the retarded son's Iraq adventure and spend-a-thon so much they re-elected him in 2004 with GOP majorities in both houses.

Pure fucking geniuses they be, huh?

[Invisible Finger]

FDR let us drink, let us smoke, AND let us drive. This is what Americans wanted. The rest was meaningless.

[Warty]

There's more than one of me?

[Rich]

Yep, it's Warties all the way down!

[tekende]

"Hoover-Coolidge economics"

No such thing. The two presidents had very different views on the economy.

[SugarFree]

In Steve's timeline no one had even heard of this Hitler fella until 1941! Amazing!

In our timeline there was a national debate about boycotting the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Where was your Olympics held that year, Steve? Was it on the moon?

[SugarFree]

Well, there was Golden Age Warty, who carried and gun and beat up union organizers. And the Silver Age Warty with the crew cut and the embarrassing racist caricature sidekick. The disco-era Warty with the bellbottoms and "enchanted afro." There was that brief period of time when you were a herald of Galactus. The late-80s half-cyborg Warty. The horrible dark-age Warty Image reboot with all the black leather and sex midgets. And we won't even talk about what Grant Morrison did to you, what with the evil twin you ate in the womb who manifested himself when you touched your magic tattoo.

To all tomorrow's Warties...

[BakedPenguin]

Clearly, the policies helped someone....

Steve, did you notice that that's different than "the policies ended the depression"?

[Naga Sadow]

More importantly, does this alternate SugarFree have the same blog?

[BakedPenguin]

Naga - the arch nemesis SugarFree is known as SugarFull. He has a lizard-tail-like pancreas that regrows if it breaks, hates science fiction, and has taken over both DailyKos and Little Green Footballs (and merged them) in a violent coup d'blog.

[SugarFree]

Naga,

Yes, but it's all clean stories about puppies and rainbows. I hate that fucker.

Oh, and Reverse SugarFree can be easily spotted: he can do html links correctly, but never to anything funny. And he's a gender studies professor.

[SugarFree]

and has taken over both DailyKos and Little Green Footballs (and merged them) in a violent coup d'blog.

Yes. Li'lKos Greenballs. Don't go there, I beg you. It's one big bipartisan fingerbang.

[JB]

FDR was an incompetent, cripple, war criminal.

Screw him and screw socialist Obama.

[mark]

God, imagine if Barack spouted this Stalinist nonsense at his first inaugural:

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts... Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failures and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money.

Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored conditions. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.

They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.

The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit...

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.

It can be accompanied in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our national resources.

Hand in hand with this, we must frankly recognize the over-balance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land...

Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are, to point in time and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.

I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment...

We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possibly a leadership which aims at a larger good.

This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will hind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people, dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems...

I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis... broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

[mark]

This is not to say that some of the "bold action" taken by FDR was not necessary. Stabilizing the banking system was pretty important (though almost inconceivable that he had to confiscate gold in order to do it). Looking at a Wikipedia, it would seem that most of the damage FDR did came after the first 100 days, with the exception of his agriculture programs. I'm thinking particularly about the NIRA, passed in June 1933. Thankfully the SCOTUS ended that horrible program in 1935 before it could completely enslave the country. Imagine if we were still living with it today!

[Episiarch]

All of my incarnations are Golden Age, NutraSweet. Each and every one.

[Ratdog]

Time Magazines cover man of the year 1943 Joseph Stalin. Old Joe Stalin was a nice man, look at all the lovely things he did for his people. Stalin, FDR, Obama, Time sure knows how to pick them. If there is one thing a Liberal (capital L) is certain to refuse to tolerate it is liberty (outside that required to copulate with horses and other farm animals and participate in acts designed to deny others of their liberties and so forth, of course).

[John C. Randolph]

If the New Deal was such a "flopperoo," how did FDR win a record four-terms in office

He had the most effective propaganda apparatus of any president in our history, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln (posthumously).

-jcr

[John C. Randolph]

almost inconceivable that he had to confiscate gold

Sorry, I have to object to the term "confiscate" here. Confiscation is taking property with legal authority to do so. What FDR did was fucking STEAL the gold. There is no constitutional authority for any such action.

-jcr

[John C. Randolph]

He ended Prohibition.

No, the congress and the states ended prohibition. FDR just took the credit for ending prohibition.

-jcr

[Brett Stevens]

Media has dumbed itself down to the point that it's not worth reading. It's drivel like blogs.

[johnny john john]

Wow. Just wow. I can't believe some people on Reason are sucking up this propaganda. There are no reasonable arguments against FDR at all in the video or in the posts, just that "some economist thinks FDR should've done something else during the Great Depression."

Does no one here not realize that WWII was the biggest entrenchment against libertarian beliefs and policies, where Americans were drafted into war, the government spent massive amounts of money in war production, and that this production and the war ultimately got us out of the Depression?? These are things that are in direct opposition to libertarian philosophy, and they worked.

We can all rewrite history however we want; FDR may have made it worse, he may have made it better. We all really don't know. My point is, there's no evidence to say market forces would have solved all America's Depression problems, just economic theories, which tend to predict things terribly (Fuck, scientific theories can barely predict the weather up to 5 days. How can these economic theories predict years ahead??). However, we do know that FDR's policies worked well enough for our country to exist until today.

If Reason wants to bring the debate on Big Government spending, don't show some retarded video like this. Show us some good evidence and some good analysis. You're convincing no one with this crap.

I always like to link to Wikipedia about random topics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

[Suck it, Time]

Time Magazines cover man of the year 1943 Joseph Stalin. Old Joe Stalin was a nice man, look at all the lovely things he did for his people. Stalin, FDR, Obama, Time sure knows how to pick them. If there is one thing a Liberal (capital L) is certain to refuse to tolerate it is liberty (outside that required to copulate with horses and other farm animals and participate in acts designed to deny others of their liberties and so forth, of course).

I've pointed this out before and I'll point it out again: Time's "man of the year" declaration (now the "person of the year") is always supposed to go to the most influential person, not the most beneficial. If somebody starves your entire family to death as part of his program to collectivize farming such that you end up resorting to cannibalism to stay alive, I think you'd have to agree he's had a very powerful influence on you. Hitler likewise rated a "man of the year" from Time for the influence he exerted over tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions or even billions of lives. It is this kind of influence that makes such "great" men such objects of horror to us all to this day.

That said, Time is still in the toilet tank for 0bama and the dumbocrats and therefore still sucks major donkey balls. Its being flushed away once and for all can't come a day too soon and is already decades too late.

[Jim]

When TIME stopped even printing letters that disagreed with its increasingly-liberal stance, I stopped subscribing.

And it's funny how the "Americans are stupid" was once (and still) used by liberals to explain Bush; now it's used by conservatives to explain Obama. Which must mean it's true?

[Mike G]

I read a great story once (I think Gore Vidal told it) about the magazine publisher/arty pornographer Ralph Ginzburg, who was big in the 60s and 70s. He was starting a magazine and the first issue had this amazing lineup of talent of the day-- Norman Mailer, Archibald Macleish, whoever-- which he obviously couldn't afford at going rates. His ingenious way of attracting them was... he invited them to bitch about how they'd been treated by the Time-Life empire. With the instincts of the true pornographer, he knew that they'd all had some experience, lured by the infinite wealth of the company, but then surely pissed off by the experience of having their prose beat into middlebrow Time-ese, and would not be able to resist the invitation to slag on Luce in his magazine, no matter how low the pay...

[Pink Pig]

I notice that Time carefully removed the melanoma over FDR's left eyebrow, not to mention the prominent bags under his eyes.

[Pat]

To johnny john john: FDR's policies turned a recession into a depression, and World War II did not end that depression. It only disguised its effects for a few years by forcing the men into working for the military, and putting the women to work in the factories, which were fired up again, but only to make things that were immediately destroyed. If ever there were a chance to prove that the steaming pile of BS that is Keynesian economics worked, it would be WWII, but it didn't work. As soon as the men all came home, the women returned to the kitchens and the factories went off their wartime footing, the economy started to slump again, unemployment rose again, and all we had to show for Keynesian stimulus was a staggering national debt. What finally ended the Depression was the Republicans taking majorities in both the House and Senate in 1946 and at last killing off FDR's budget-busting, commerce-killing New Deal programs. That was like finally removing the giant tapeworm that had been infesting the economy for 13 years.

[Don Meaker]

FDR was reelected because of political corruption in the Racist Democratic Jim Crow South.

His policies paid white land owners to not grow crops, throwing black sharecroppers out of work. White share croppers benefited from public works programs which hired white union members, and didn't hire blacks. That started black flight to the cities, where many blacks faced with no alternative, took jobs as servants.

That is why Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican.

[Mark]

I remember saving the Time picture of Sputnik when I was 5 years old and subscribed for about 40 years but cancelled my subscription when they put Obama on the cover too many times last year. Sad. Could have been a good magazine if they gave us news and not opinion. But whenever I wrote to complain about bias they wrote back and said it was Luce's dream to use the magazine to make America better. HA!

[BellaMia]

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work ... After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, commenting on the failures of the New Deal after two terms of FDR

And one more quote from Hillary's favorite PROGRESSIVE:

"We want fewer and better children . . . and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us."
Margaret Sanger

"The 20th-century reproductive-rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Progressives. Aren't they charming?

[Al Sharpton]

Referring to our President as BHO is racist.

[Isaac Bartram]

FDR's policies turned a recession into a depression,...

No, Pat.

Hoover's policies turned a recession into a depression.

FDR's policies kept the depression going.

The rest of your post is on target, though.

[tsol]

Where it all will end, knows God!

[Bill]

"The American people are fucking stupid..." AMEN! Bush1, Clintonn Bush 2, Obama...4 fucking idiots in a row. Who is pulling the strings?

[kjl291]

So WWII cot us out of the depression? Could anybody give me a reasoned economic explanation of that miracle? What, the stimulus touched off by the massive gov't spending and wartime production?

Well, if that's true, then we already have the massive gov't stimulus spending. Now we just need to commandeer all the factories, produce a bunch planes, tanks, and bombs, and perhaps go drop the bombs into the middle of the Atlantic. Maybe for good measure we could take a few million of our most productive men and women and remove them from the domestic economy and station them in Europe and Asia for several years for them to simply consume resources...

There's your economic miracle!

[Fen]

"The American people are fucking stupid. They approved of Bush the retarded son's Iraq adventure"

Ironic. Yes, Bush is a horrible communicator. You think that means he's stupid, which says more about your intelligence than his.

[tsotha]

My point is, there's no evidence to say market forces would have solved all America's Depression problems, just economic theories, which tend to predict things terribly (Fuck, scientific theories can barely predict the weather up to 5 days.

The Great Depression was, at the time, only the latest in a long line of depressions. It was different only in degree, not in kind. Even at the time there were old people arguing times were worse after the Panic of 1873 during the Long Depression (1873-1879), so it may not have been the worst depression.

There are those who say we would have had a communist revolution without the New Deal. I doubt it, but that's a more serious contention than the one that says somehow the economy would never have righted itself without government intervention, even though it had already done so several times in the past.

[robert]

sounds reasonable

[Toads]

The American people are getting what they deserve. Why is Obama's approval rating still 54%?

The dumb public is getting what they deserve.

Black people in particular. They voted 95% for Obama, and will vote 95% for Obama again, no matter what he does. Even if he eats black children, blacks will vote 95% for him.

Blacks have a resentful need to punish whites and Asians. They are getting their wish.

[roger]

I can speak with some authority on Time's decline, as I worked there as a reporter in the mid Eighties, when the legend lingered while the rot was running riot. Apart from the smug, Ivy-educated ambience, there was a real ethics problem. Example: for some entirely forgotten story I once had to call Henry Kissinger for comment. I did the interview, took the notes, wrote the file -- then copped a stern rebuke from the New York bureau chief, who explained that "Henry" was permitted to vet and polish his quotes, a courtesy not extended to lesser mortals.

So I rang him back, read him his quotes, then took stenography from his secretary about an hour later as she dictated what he really meant to say. The substance was the same, but the turns of phrase so much more eloquent.

Another time I spent a week in Philly researching and writing files for a planned cover story on literacy in America. It never ran and the reason, I was told, had to do with illiterate ghetto youth being of minimal interest to Time's audience. Meanwhile, the covers included a multi-page splash on America's health-club craze.

All this happened 20 years ago, and I have no doubt they are still calling back Kissinger and others to have their quotes presented in the most favourable light. These days, I wonder if anyone other than PR types actually bother to return a Time reporter's calls.

[johnny john john]

Pat: You just proved my point. The entire purpose of the stimulus bill is to reduce the negative effects of a recession and to pass those effects to better times when the economy is better prepared to deal with it.

WWII indeed did put off the effects of the recession, just like you said. We've had debt for many years now, and as long as the economy grows at a rate faster than the debt, we are OK (which is why the national debt is an issue right now, because debt is growing disturbingly quickly).

[Sean W. Malone]

Good lord John, you really are ignorant aren't you.

FFS man... The economy *doesn't* remotely grow at a rate faster than the debt, and it really never has. And that's not counting unfunded liabilities.

Secondly, there's ample historical evidence to the contrary of what you said. Start with the 1920 recession that you've probably never heard of. Though it had a much worse drop than the 1929 crash - the government at the time had neither the power nor inclination to do much about it... And guess what, it was all over in about a year.

Tom Woods - Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920

Further, and possibly ironically, I noticed that you complained about economists making bad predictions. I agree, but "predicting" is a main feature only of the neoclassical, Keynesian realm of thought - the same realm that is leading this country into amazing failure right now... The irony is that the Austrians, who kind of eschew the very notion that prediction should be a major focus of the study, historically have done a masterful job predicting... Check out George Reisman and Peter Schiff, for example.

But, *gasp*, they're as hard core free market guys as you'll find. They're also better historians than you 😛

ANNNNNNNDDDD.... No, WWII didn't put off the "effects" of the recession - unless you think that rationing, shortages and millions of people dying is somehow a step up. That's really all just broken window fallacy talk.

[Sean W. Malone]

Is Toad racist or was he just being ironic?

[Osamas Pajamas]

If Time Mag is headed for the dustbin of history, then there is a spark of hope for all of us. As it is a propaganda organ for the OhBummer Gang, Time Mag's demise can't come too soon.

Yi Ha ***
Minister of Information
Peoples' Capitalist Republic of Whizbangistan

*** Pronounced "YEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"

[JohnnyComeLatte]

Um, this may be a side point but if the above article snip is correct then the "historian" David Kennedy doesn't know that FDR's second inauguration was *March 4, 1937*. The change to January 20 as the start/end date for presidential terms did not occur until the end of Truman's first term in 1949. Apparently the Time 'fact-checkers' missed it also. So yes, it is the content of Time that is in question.

Sigh.

[johnny john john]

Sean W. Malone:

1. "FFS man... The economy *doesn't* remotely grow at a rate faster than the debt, and it really never has. And that's not counting unfunded liabilities."

Not true. There have been decades when the economy grew faster than debt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_debt

2. I hadn't heard of the 20's depression. USA has suffered through quite a bit of them.

"The recession was caused by the end of wartime production, along with an influx of labour from returning troops causing high unemployment."

The causes of this recession were much more different than those of the 30's. It almost seems to me that the 20's recession was created "artificially" by WWI. Which goes to another point: What worked in the 20's may not work in the future.

And you have to admit that in WWII, US production soared and unemployment plummeted for USA, despite the millions killed.

I don't claim that big spending is always the answer, and I concede that the free market is extremely useful for many situations. However, you have to also see that other economic philosophies exist and may be useful in certain situations. There's more than one way to control the economy.

Oh and check out this employment plot (excluding farms and WPA). Looks like something is keeping Americans employed in the 30's, and it seems like it happens right after FDR is elected...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Employment_Graph_-_1920_to_1940.svg

In engineering control theory (I'm going to try to make an analogy), mathematics is used to describe "controllers" and their abilities to "track" a desired "signal". The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect controller. Different controllers are used for different situations. Just like the control system of a Boeing 747 is suited to control large transport vehicles, the control system of a F-22 raptor is used for high manueverability and supersonic operations. And just as the F-22 raptor is suited for combat and poorly suited for transport like the 747. There is no "best aircraft", there are many aircraft with different roles, and many tradeoffs. Another funny thing about many modern aircraft is that they're all fly-by-wire, meaning that the control systems are designed to automatically adjust themselves to the desired "signal" or flight path angle, using a computer. No human-being can fly an F-16 or F-22 by their hands alone, the crafts are so unstable that humans will quickly crash it.

I extend this analogy to an economic system. There is no "best system", but there are some systems better suited for particular situations than other systems. Extending this analogy, sometimes adjustment by a "higher power" (say the gov't) may be beneficial. This is how I relate government intervention to the economy. Maybe the government economic control system isn't all that great right now. But who's to say it can't get better? We certainly have improved our control systems for airplanes over the ages (as we have been improving technology over the ages). Why is the government the exception to technological improvement? One more analogy, pertaining to economists making terrible predictions. We can't predict the weather very well either past a couple of days, but we build airplanes to try to handle as many weather conditions as possible (it doesn't always work as the recent Airbus crash suggests). Maybe the free market is the best system for this (maybe it will crash it), but is it absurd for people to try to think up of an even better system?

Rather than thinking the Obama administration is made up of a bunch of stuck up elitist assholes, maybe they're actually people who have studied economics and are really trying to make things better. Maybe the theories that have been improving since the 30's have gotten a tiny bit better to handle recessions. Maybe it'll make it a whole lot shittier. But I'm not going to criticize their system until I see the results. We'll see how Americans think of him and his policies in the 2012 elections.

I'll admit that I'm ignorant. But I doubt you know much more than me.

[SIV]

Heh, Ann Coulter linked to Gillespie's piece...

[Michael Ejercito]

Blacks have a resentful need to punish whites and Asians.

Why would most of them have this need? Are most black people motivated to vote based on whom they hate, not because of whom they like?

[DanD]

If Time magazine stopped publication tomorrow I wouldn't bat an eyelash.

It can go down the drain and take the recently putrefied Atlantic Monthly with it.

[John]

I think that Newsweek has had more pictures of the favored one (BHO)than Time magazine...

[VinceP1974]

World War II did not the depression.

If anything, the gov's intervention into the economic sphere became near total during the war. (I'm not complaining.. I'm just saying)

It was the return to civilian life after the war and the fact that FDR was thankfully dead and his meddling was therefore over.

The people, now unecumbered by an unpredictable, power hunger megalomaniac could be confident that their economic risk taking might actually bring them a profit.