Gosh... you make this tough.

How can your claim that "if it worked then it must work now" keep you tied up in these knots?  Its a facile but false premise to base your argument on... and you don't seem to want to hear me when I explain that to you.

I don't want argue this anymore... not because I think I am wrong, or you are winning this "fight"... but because you don't want to "discuss" anything.

Now, seemingly, you want me to call myself the "progressive" that I must be and embrace all that the term implies... like I should run out and get my HOPE pins, put the blue bumper stickers on my truck, then trade it in on a Chevy Volt so I can justify Obama's bail out.

Again... I don't support New Deal for the here and now because what I feel New Deal FIXED is still fixed.  What New Deal failed to fix was most Democratic politician's understanding on how to spend government money.  Everything else about New Deal... and I'm waiting for you to prove this point wrong... ended by 1943 or much, much earlier.

What is truly sad is that you are assuming that I'd NOT support things like the implementation of FDIC, the SEC, the strengthening of the Federal Reserve, the signing of the AAA, or the implementation of SSI had they been done by Hoover rather than Roosevelt... because Hoover was a "conservative".  That's lame, man.  The programs and policies listed above WORKED to prevent another depression (and are still working) and helped carry the US dollar into the rest of the century as the global benchmark currency.  I don't care who signed them into law... the fact that they were signed into law and worked is enough for me.  Just the same way that whenever a "conservative" President signs into law something that I am convinced doesn't work (Nixon's EPA jumps immediately to mind, as does Ike's making a cabinet level office for the New Deal-esque Department of Health, Education and Welfare and extending welfare benefits to more than 10 million non-union workers) makes me very, very sad and unhappy so that I DO NOT want to vote for them again.  My main point all along has been that Hoover should have recognized this and done something similar himself... then I'd be lauding Hoover rather than Roosevelt.

I don't want to see another WPA just because I have mementos from my grandfather's days with the program, and I don't want another CCC because I recall hearing stories about it when I was a young child.  They aren't needed now... but I maintain they were needed then.  WPA put more than 8 million men to work over the course of 9 years, and accomplished great things for the country (infrastructure) while putting food in families mouths and roofs over heads... but things like UEI and state-level placement programs now do what wasn't being done in 1932.  The CCC put 300,000 young men to work in the woods and fields of America to help create the needed conservation programs that have kept a repeat of the Dust Bowl from ever happening again... but it isn't needed now, because the tree rows and dikes they built in 1935 still do what they were intended to do.

If your beef with New Deal is about "wasted relief" (my term, not yours) then perhaps we should discuss ending once and for all Federal programs like FEMA... which do nothing else but put back into place infrastructure resources that disasters destroy, while plugging relief money into the hands of victims like us during Katrina.  If New Deal was a wasted effort and a handicap to the nation as a whole, then how can FEMA be any different?  I see New Deal as a response to a single, catastrophic crisis that, for the most part, ended by the end of the crisis.  Isn't that what FEMA is, too?

Finally, if I have to give credit for failures within New Deal programs as well as credit for successes, then please explain why I shouldn't move Dwight D. down my list, since he expanded the scope, cost and benefits available through Social Security to those citizens who WEREN'T contributing to the general fund through payroll contributions?  That means "Federal welfare" in my book, and it didn't exist before Ike signed it into law in 1953.  A conservative, Republican President who promised to end "New Deal" programs during his campaign for office, signing into law a multi-billion dollar expansion of SSI benefits that you seem to only want to attribute to FDR.  How is that a fair and balanced view of the topic we are discussing?

Like I said... you can have FDR anywhere on your list that you want, I know you hate the very mention of his name.  I'm not ever going to try and convince you that you are wrong again.  I will, for as long as you ask me to, defend my position, though, since I am quite sure I am right.  So, continuing the talk is entirely up to you.