tagged w/ Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Thom loses his cool with Mitt Romney, who loses his cool with an Occupier.
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A concept that got suspiciously buried over the course of time.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882 and served as our 31st president. To me he was our greatest president at a time when such greatness and courage were needed. However, with all he did to help carry the nation through its darkest hours the one accomplishment I see as one of his greatest achievements was Warm Springs.
He being struck down by polio at the age of 39 was forced to dig deep within himself to find the strength and courage that I do believe made him the great leader he then became. It was through his personal struggle with polio and the lives he then enriched by building Warm Springs that prepared him to lead our country.
This is a video showing Warm Springs which still survives today as well as snippets of some of his speeches.
Happy Birthday to a great man.Franklin D. Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882 and served as our 31st president. To... more
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Continuing our States Of The Union Past series, here is FDR's from 1944 - or better known as The Second Bill of Rights address.Continuing our States Of The Union Past series, here is FDR's from 1944 - or... more
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They groped. They skirt-chased. They lusted in their hearts. And now they will live in infamy
Whether politicians cheat is hardly even a question. Why politicians cheat is a question that will never have a satisfactory answer. But which politicians have had the most spectacular, messiest, craziest affairs? That we can get to the bottom of. Philandering is as old as marriage itself, but the twenty-five instances listed here all have some variation on the theme that makes them notable even in the perpetually randy confines of the Beltway. Obviously the list is not exhaustive; as long as there are politicians, it'll never be complete.
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201006/the-twenty-five-greatest-philanderers-in-american-political-history#introThey groped. They skirt-chased. They lusted in their hearts. And now they will live in... more
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The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."
Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.
Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2234017/The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer,"... more
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For a genuine presidential war on the press, see the one FDR waged in the 1930s.
How touchy can you get?
The White House fires a few pop-guns in the direction of Fox News Channel, and suddenly everybody from Louis Menand in The New Yorker to Michael Scherer in Time to Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post is heralding the Obama administration's declaration of war on Rupert Murdoch's cable station.
The direct declaration came not from Barack Obama, but underlings Anita Dunn, who called Fox the communications arm of the GOP; David Axelrod, who said Fox isn't really a news station; and Rahm Emanuel, who invoked the president's views to say, "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." The closest His Obamaness has come to criticizing Fox on the record was in June, when he complained of "one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration."
o get a genuine picture of what a war on the press looks like, you can't fan the pages of Nexis for grouchy things George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or even Richard Nixon said about reporters, newspapers, and networks. You've got to go back to the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt raged against the press like noisy clockwork.
Roosevelt's fury couldn't have been more displaced, in part because newspapers and reporters received him like a conquering hero after his 1932 election, reports Graham J. White in his 1979 book, FDR and the Press:
The initial victory of Franklin Roosevelt over the Washington press was swift and glorious. Demonstrating a virtuosity that amazed them, the new president took the Capital correspondents by storm, winning, from the outset, their affection and admiration; securing, over the crucial early stages of the New Deal, their allegiance and support.
Roosevelt especially disliked "interpretive reporting," which Time and Newsweek were popularizing, writes Betty Houchin Winfield in her 1990 book, FDR and the News Media. Roosevelt recoiled when a reporter asked him what interpretive angle the president would take if he were to write a piece about the Democratic Party's 1934 landslide victory. "I think it is a mistake for newspapers to go over into that field in the news stories," Roosevelt said. His prescription for what reporters should do for readers: "Give them the facts and nothing else." (One can almost see Dunn and Axelrod giving Fox the same advice.)
The president reserved his greatest disdain for press proprietors, whom he blamed for what he considered unfair and distorted coverage. "It is not the reporter" who is responsible for "colored news stories and the failure on the part of some papers to print the news," Roosevelt said in December 1935. "It goes back to the owner of the paper."For a genuine presidential war on the press, see the one FDR waged in the 1930s.... more
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President Obama showcased his ignorance of world political history at the G-20 summit in London recently when he made a crack at his political predecessors’ penchant for back-room brandy sessions:
"Well, if there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easier negotiation. But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in."
I realize that every generation likes to think of itself as unique and facing problems their ancestors did not. It’s the easiest way to excuse failure. No one will blame a world leader for poorly handling a challenge that the world has never seen.President Obama showcased his ignorance of world political history at the G-20 summit... more
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This has some fascinating footage covering Roosevelt’s scheme in 1937 to pack the Supreme Court including statements by such opponents as Senator Burton K. Wheeler. This has some fascinating footage covering Roosevelt’s scheme in 1937 to pack... more
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There are strange similiarities in the bail out/nationalization logic of George W Bush and FDR.There are strange similiarities in the bail out/nationalization logic of George W Bush... more
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In October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of common stock. Even after the stock market collapse, however, politicians and industry leaders continued to issue optimistic predictions for the nation's economy. But the Depression deepened, confidence evaporated and many lost their life savings. By 1933 the value of stock on the New York Stock Exchange was less than a fifth of what it had been at its peak in 1929. Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down and banks failed. Farm income fell some 50 percent. By 1932 approximately one out of every four Americans was unemployed.
The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country's productive capacity and the ability of people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques during and after the war raised the output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and wage earners. The savings of the wealthy and middle class, increasing far beyond the possibilities of sound investment, had been drawn into frantic speculation in stocks or real estate. The stock market collapse, therefore, had been merely the first of several detonations in which a flimsy structure of speculation had been leveled to the ground.
The presidential campaign of 1932 was chiefly a debate over the causes and possible remedies of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, unlucky in entering The White House only eight months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly, but ineffectively, to set the wheels of industry in motion again. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already popular as the governor of New York during the developing crisis, argued that the Depression stemmed from the U.S. economy's underlying flaws, which had been aggravated by Republican policies during the 1920s. President Hoover replied that the economy was fundamentally sound, but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression -- whose causes could be traced back to the war. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover had to depend largely on natural processes of recovery, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal government's authority for bold experimental remedies.
In October 1929 the stock market crashed, wiping out 40 percent of the paper values of... more
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Franklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism.
"Liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power
We can use a New Deal like Roosevelt provided for Americans.
A Green Collar New Deal
cgFranklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth... more
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