As in "useless as ..."

Yep.

> But the risk, even this aide concedes, is that the Democrats will miss the chance to express their solidarity with universal�and American�ideals and aspirations.

This is so contemptible, I should have something pithy and clever to say about it. But I can't get over how contemptible it is.

the democrats are tainted goods. i really get the sense they are mortally wounded as a national party. like the black knight they can still make a spectacle of themselves but not much else. good riddance.

Wonder if Dean can convince Joe Lieberman to go on a one-man Democratic Party "Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East Victory Tour," just so party leaders can film it and have something to show to their grandkids.

Just one more indication that the party of slavery, secession, segregation, quotas and filibusters is about to join the other party founded around the same time as the Jackon presidency, the Whigs, belongs in the dustbin of history.

Their vision is as crabbed as that of the GOP members who opposed the Marshall Plan. The good thing is that of the American people was not so crabbed then, and certainly is not today.

The Marshall Plan was a disaster for Europe, though by destroying them permanently it helped us.

OJ,

Europeans do not see it that way. It achieved its goal of encouraging European voters to elect governments which were on our side during the Cold War. If you meet Euros who were kids during WWII, they will tell you how grateful they were for that American assistance. I know you don't see that as important, even though pretty much every serious analyst on both sides of the Atlantic did.

Bart:

Of course they like it--they got to keep the social welfare system that takes care of them though thwarting any future. As David says, at least we don't have to worry about them anymore.

OJ,

That whole Wirtschaftswunder thing just escaped your notice, eh?

Bart:

There's no such thing. Rebuilding follows damage and creates good economic juju. FL notoriously reaps terrific economic benefits from hurricane damage in similar fashion.

OJ,

Those insurance payments have nothing to do with it? I'll keep that in mind the next time I do a filing for a rate increase. Dear Commissioner, I know that our payments went down but rebuilding automatically follows damage and creates good economic juju, the amounts of money insurance companies pay off has nothing to do with it. So, since the policyholders benefit whether we pay off or not, shouldn't we still get that rate increase because of the economic benefits created even though we don't pay a dime.

Somehow, I don't see too many Insurance Commissions being terribly convinced by that argument, no matter how arithmetically-illiterate and staggeringly uncreative they may be.

The Marshall Plan behaved like an insurance payment to the victims of a natural disaster, creating the conditions whereby the rebuilding could take place. Sure, they could have rebuilt things themselves, after 150 years Germany was back to where it was before the 30 Years War, and Picardy today has almost as many people as it had before the Black Death. But, if you want a quick turnaround, and politics demanded that we get a quick turnaround in Europe in the 40s because the Commies were damn close to winning local elections, you have to prime the pump. Europe had its act together more or less after less than a decade and the reason for that was American aid.

Bart:

You're arguing against your own point.

If you don't believe that the speed of the turnaround matters, maybe so. But we had to prime the pump in the 40s or else the Iron Curtain would have been in the Mid-Atlantic. Whether it was long-term sound economic policy is open to question, but it worked in the short-term and as Baron Tilton used to say 'In the long run, we are all dead.'

Spain which got no Marshall aid had the fastest growing economy in Europe.

Nor is there any reason to believe that letting Stalin try to run the whole place wouldn't have been better strategically.

Spanish growth was like PRC growth is today. They started at such a low level, the place was hemorrhaging labor to Latin America for centuries, that they had nowhere to go but up. I would remind you who was in steerage in 'Ship of Fools'. Itinerant day workers from Southern Spain.

As opposed to Japan and Germany which we'd leveled?