SANDY HOOK, Ky. -- In 1988, the band Alabama scored a No. 1 country hit with "Song of the South," Bob McDill's tribute to life in rural Dixie. Twangy ...

It's time for a "New Deal" for American infrastructure. Direct intervention will provide Americans with more than new highways and bridges -- it will create family-sustaining construction jobs en masse and set into motion a multiplier effect that will ripple across the economy as a whole.

Given your actions this past year and the fact that your presidential nominee lost (and you never saw it coming), don't you think you should give it a try?

Republicans are masters in the art of denying or suppressing the truth. And yet every so often one of them blurts it out. Last week, GOP Congressman Darrell Issa of California, apparently incapable of holding it in, did just that.

What he and his generation of progressive Americans made sure of was that America concretely deepened and strengthened its democratic institutions, broadened individual liberties and rendered America freer and ever so much more aligned with its historic promise.

Much like the 1930s, our slow climb out of the Great Recession has been made all the more difficult thanks to the unwillingness of austerity hawks in Congress to pass the president's jobs bill and other pieces of stimulus legislation.

The months-long effort to raise the nation's debt ceiling has taken on the feel of an existential political debate, one that will redefine notions about the government's role in society for years to come. As a country, however, we've experienced this before.

President Obama has none of the luxuries FDR had and all of the liabilities. One need not speculate about the wrath that he'd incur from millions who passionately believe that he's a closet socialist if he advocated government job programs.

President Obama should note that President Roosevelt's slamming the bankers and financiers -- beginning with his inaugural address and right up through his campaign for a second term -- did not destroy the country's banking system.

America is not so great. Any discussion of "what went wrong" must be prefaced with that statement. Harsh words, perhaps, but I do not utter them in haste. And we need to say it over and over again until we change it.

We can look back to history for guidance on the message and results for the 2010 election. But looking back only to 1994 is a striking misread of history, and leads back to 1929 thinking.

Think 2040 allows Millennials to do what they do best: be innovative and creative to re-imagine America.

Business and the GOP haven't a clue what is good for business, outside of their next bonus. Had they, they might have mentioned to the greedy bastards that lower pay for workers means lower GDP and less revenues.

If we've really survived the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression thanks to government intervention, and if health care reform is so integral to fulfilling the American promise, where is Obama's "New Deal"?

Neither Lincoln nor FDR resolved the enormous challenges that faced the United States during their first months or even years of their administrations, yet they went on to become two of our greatest Presidents.

As the financial markets pause at the edge of the abyss, deciding whether to back away, we should take a moment to mull over all the Blame Obama rheto...

As the idea of the New Deal comes back in style, so does opposition to the vision of activist government.

Building a New Deal Liberalism offers a fascinating history of New Deal public works programs, challenging the conventional arguments about the problems with these projects.

Based on conservatives' arguments, unemployment rates right now are in the neighborhood of unemployment levels not seen since the height of the Great Depression.