No Jeff, not blind - they know they can count on the public being apathetic, ignorant, and alzheimered.

...except that the stimulus was the right thing to do (as that link shows), in fact we need another one.

With what money?? There is nothing left to tax..

Just bizarre!

It's not just bizarre at all.

This is why God created deficit spending. It really works. The economy will pick up and we'll be better off in the long run.

Right now is not the time to worry about the deficit.

It's not like I'm not alone on this - some pretty heavy-duty economists are saying this, and it really does make sense. You have to look at the national debt as a percentage of GNP. If the GNP goes up, the percentage goes down while the tax base goes up.

Meanwhile the human costs of mass unemployment are horrendous.

But it's not possible to convince conservatives of that. They just oppose oppose oppose.

Yes, I vehemently oppose this! (among other things)

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Then where were you for the past 8 years when this debt was being rung up?

Kecinzer, that is the Republican hype. There's a huge difference between government spending when nobody else is spending and government spending when they are. Right now we need the spending we're doing - and more. The first stimulus wasn't big enough, so we need another one. Hopefully it will be targeted well, but it is necessary.

And this not the sudden emergency the Republicans are screaming about any more than the Iraq war was.

And by the way, why is it that the same people who are opposed to spending to keep the economy afloat are opposed to raising the marginal tax rates back to where they were before the Bush tax cuts? That and the two wars is responsible for a lot of the debt.

But I have to repeat, the numbers look frightening until you look at the payment amount vs. our GNP. $800B debt service in order to avoid a lost generation isn't bad when we have a $14 trillion economy. The debt was much higher after the Great Depression, yet we had decades of incredible growth.

What's really at the root of this is that conservatives want a world in which it's okay for other people to suffer as long as they're okay. I hear the responses to that, but that's what it comes down to.

How much are these wars costing per day again? Where is that money coming from? And how come every time there is a photo of our troops in Afghanistan, there is never an enemy in the photo? Why are we there again? WMDs? Al Quaeda? Taliban now? Training? Hmmm.

Those politicians waste zero time voting for hugely expensive wars, but take a year to fix our own problems at home with healthcare, white-collar crime, etc., all while saying it costs too much money. Riiiight.

Yeah, that debt clock is interesting. War (both started under Bush) is listed under "largest budget items". Good thing we were debt-free and war-free until Obama took office!

All those that vote for war should serve in the war. I'd wager that if you personally had to go to war if you vote "yes" for a war, there would be a lot less of that going on.

And of course, the wars and the Patriot Act all commenced due to 9/11, where miraculous feats of physics defying, mind bending "heroism and horror" took place.

Best government money can buy.