Conservatives' newest talking point -- designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package -- is breathtaking.
By David Sirota
If you're like me, for instance, you were dumbfounded when "Forrest Gump" beat out "Pulp Fiction" for best picture; when HBO's "Sopranos" received more accolades than "The Wire"; and when George W. Bush insisted Iraqi airplanes were about to drop WMD on American cities.
So if you're like me, you probably understand why I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.
Of course, I had recently heard snippets of this silly argument; right-wing pundits are repeating it everywhere these days. But I had never heard it articulated in such preposterous terms, so my initial reaction was paralysis, the mouth-agape, deer-in-the-headlights kind. Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression.
Afterward, suffering pangs of self-doubt, I wondered whether I and most of the country were the crazy ones. Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"
Ummm ... no.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/02/sirota_fdr_depression/
It looks like Bill Kristol may be making good on 
New satellite data presented by NASA scientists shows the loss of an estimated 2 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, the Antarctic and the North Poll: proof positive of global warming's dramatic effects, they claimed. 
Escalation goes on, more Israeli air raids kill more civilians
This probably won't come as a surprise. But some of the major culprits in the financial crash -- former CEOs or top execs at banks whose billion-dollar losses helped precipitate the turmoil -- don't seem to be paying much of a price for their catastrophic mismanagement.
by 
![[Alberto Gonzales]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tuK0DvxP4rEPypKjwBxWyPE1981GLFKFaqI97oHMh6tvbL5y_qHvgDAjTsQZzUBtmefeFz1toM6x1Up9HrzGXpWuomcwF0vbXbfU8S1s0AZhI4weMMjuASAOn7tqGi-BPaPXyO3gnImFTRWwZgvfI=s0-d)
WASHINGTON -- Alberto Gonzales, who has kept a low profile since resigning as attorney general nearly 16 months ago, said he is writing a book to set the record straight about his controversial tenure as a senior official in the Bush administration.
ABHAY ASHTEKAR
Estimates for the amount of thick sludge that gushed from a Tennessee coal plant last week have tripled to more than a billion gallons, as cleanup crews try to remove the goop from homes and railroads and halt its oozing into an adjacent river.
