We are all "New Dealers" now.

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
28,561
4
0
BWWWAAAAAHHHHH!
Hysterical. Turn on any talk show and listen to Republicans talk about how we have learned so much from the Great Depression. We have the FDIC, a Roosevelt invention to protect the banks, etc.
In fact, just about every positive thing the Republicans say about what is different between now and 1929 was a result of Roosevelt.

And of course since Roosevelt every Republican wanted to eliminate everything Roosevelt did.

Somewhere in heaven FDR is sitting back smoking a cigarette, having an old fashioned and smiling.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
33,382
7,445
136
Yes, we?re mostly all pro government and pro dictatorship nowadays. Why else would Congress pass Patriot Acts and protect Wiretappings? The church was thrown out in favor of a new religion, and that religion?s god is the President and both major political parties believe they have divine right to play god.
 

winnar111

Banned
Mar 10, 2008
2,847
0
0
Thank goodness for his sensible treatment of prisoners of war; he didn't have the absurd foolishness to release our enemies. It's a shame modern Democrats have learned nothing.
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: techs
BWWWAAAAAHHHHH!
Hysterical. Turn on any talk show and listen to Republicans talk about how we have learned so much from the Great Depression. We have the FDIC, a Roosevelt invention to protect the banks, etc.
In fact, just about every positive thing the Republicans say about what is different between now and 1929 was a result of Roosevelt.

And of course since Roosevelt every Republican wanted to eliminate everything Roosevelt did.

Somewhere in heaven FDR is sitting back smoking a cigarette, having an old fashioned and smiling.

And we all know how intelligent all these "Obama is an Arab" Republicans are, don't we?
 

Starbuck1975

Lifer
Jan 6, 2005
14,698
1,909
126
And we all know how intelligent all these "Obama is an Arab" Republicans are, don't we?
Sigh...the intellectual and elitist left once again showing its true colors.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136
Warts and all, FDR was a master politician who left this country in much better shape than he found it, particularly wrt the financial sector.

Deregulation and "innovation" left the policies of the New Deal blown off into the ditch, unfortunately. It really was a remarkably effective set of constraints and incentives, a great compromise that harnessed banking to the needs of the nation.

And, yeh, it's ironic that the only things standing between the financial sector in general and a full blown panic are the remnants of the New Deal...

Too bad that the free marketeers convinced us that we really didn't need it any more, that the banks would be self-regulating, so forth and so on.

It took 70 years to forget the lessons of 1929, maybe it'll take longer to forget the lessons of 2008...
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: Starbuck1975
And we all know how intelligent all these "Obama is an Arab" Republicans are, don't we?
Sigh...the intellectual and elitist left once again showing its true colors.

I'm not an elitist lefty. I'm an elitist Libertupian. Get it right. ;)
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Warts and all, FDR was a master politician who left this country in much better shape than he found it, particularly wrt the financial sector.

Deregulation and "innovation" left the policies of the New Deal blown off into the ditch, unfortunately. It really was a remarkably effective set of constraints and incentives, a great compromise that harnessed banking to the needs of the nation.

And, yeh, it's ironic that the only things standing between the financial sector in general and a full blown panic are the remnants of the New Deal...

Too bad that the free marketeers convinced us that we really didn't need it any more, that the banks would be self-regulating, so forth and so on.

It took 70 years to forget the lessons of 1929, maybe it'll take longer to forget the lessons of 2008...

Oh yes, our problems are due to "free marketeers." Keep saying it, and it may end up being "true."
 

LegendKiller

Lifer
Mar 5, 2001
18,256
68
86
Originally posted by: bamacre
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Warts and all, FDR was a master politician who left this country in much better shape than he found it, particularly wrt the financial sector.

Deregulation and "innovation" left the policies of the New Deal blown off into the ditch, unfortunately. It really was a remarkably effective set of constraints and incentives, a great compromise that harnessed banking to the needs of the nation.

And, yeh, it's ironic that the only things standing between the financial sector in general and a full blown panic are the remnants of the New Deal...

Too bad that the free marketeers convinced us that we really didn't need it any more, that the banks would be self-regulating, so forth and so on.

It took 70 years to forget the lessons of 1929, maybe it'll take longer to forget the lessons of 2008...

Oh yes, our problems are due to "free marketeers." Keep saying it, and it may end up being "true."

It is very true.
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: LegendKiller
Originally posted by: bamacre
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Warts and all, FDR was a master politician who left this country in much better shape than he found it, particularly wrt the financial sector.

Deregulation and "innovation" left the policies of the New Deal blown off into the ditch, unfortunately. It really was a remarkably effective set of constraints and incentives, a great compromise that harnessed banking to the needs of the nation.

And, yeh, it's ironic that the only things standing between the financial sector in general and a full blown panic are the remnants of the New Deal...

Too bad that the free marketeers convinced us that we really didn't need it any more, that the banks would be self-regulating, so forth and so on.

It took 70 years to forget the lessons of 1929, maybe it'll take longer to forget the lessons of 2008...

Oh yes, our problems are due to "free marketeers." Keep saying it, and it may end up being "true."

It is very true.

Oh FFS, LK, you're smart enough to know that's BS.
 

Rainsford

Lifer
Apr 25, 2001
17,515
0
0
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

I don't know, sounds like at least winnar111 considered every Japanese-American during WWII "our enemies".
 

winnar111

Banned
Mar 10, 2008
2,847
0
0
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

I don't know, sounds like at least winnar111 considered every Japanese-American during WWII "our enemies".

I was more referring to the Nazi agents which FDR tried with military tribunals, a concept which someone eludes the Democrats today.

Surely, though, it can't be that bad if liberals consider him so great.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Warts and all, FDR was a master politician who left this country in much better shape than he found it, particularly wrt the financial sector.

Deregulation and "innovation" left the policies of the New Deal blown off into the ditch, unfortunately. It really was a remarkably effective set of constraints and incentives, a great compromise that harnessed banking to the needs of the nation.

And, yeh, it's ironic that the only things standing between the financial sector in general and a full blown panic are the remnants of the New Deal...

Too bad that the free marketeers convinced us that we really didn't need it any more, that the banks would be self-regulating, so forth and so on.

It took 70 years to forget the lessons of 1929, maybe it'll take longer to forget the lessons of 2008...

You know who really gets too little credit, is the American left who pushed FDR to enact those policies.

America had a stronger left wing after the great depression probably than at any other time - people who were in favor of socialism. FDR did not become president as a 'great reformer', but as very much a Wall Street-friendly 'moderate'. It was the pressure from the left that repeatedly forced him to put through 'compromise' measures designed to diffuse the public outcry that led to the good reforms he's praised for. But people tend to only know he did it, not who was the real source of the improvements.

FDR to his credit created a 'think tank' of experts to come up with 'experiments', to the great criticism from Republicans.

FDR's compromises were left enough to cause an attempted coup to form among the right - a coup attempt not much taught in history books.

(For an interesting book on the politics of the time, Sinclair Lewis's "It can't happen here" in 1935 was the story of how a charismatic, ignorant right-winger leader could gain power and move the US to fascism - including a figure very analogous to Rupert Murdoch who would supply the adoring media coverage.)

You have to wonder how much good could have been done if the left had gotten more passed.

But the government has always opposed any real left-wing policies as a rule, including its willingness to use force aganst other American nations who put leftists in power.

The demonization of the left has a lot to do with the Republicans, having lost 4 elections to Roosevelt and being in big political trouble, finding that a demon was just what they needed, which led to the domestic hysteria of 'loyalty oaths' and the Red Scare/McCarthy era (and a happily Republican president and Congress again for the first time since the Great Depression), and to no small extent the cold war - which infuriated Winston Churchill who was for more peaceful relations with Russia and felt ignored by the US.

One could argue that the US switch lanes from the 'world leader for freedom' to 'the softer empire' at that time, as the US became a force often against freedom, democracy, and the 'masses' as it developed its covert action abilities and global policies aimed more at ensuring its own wealth and power than any of our principles. Sometimes, our policies have served good principles but others it has been on the wrong side. What is consistent is our always using those principles as an advertising slogan whatever the actual policy.

The divide between those who say the emperor has no clothes, and those who call any telling of those truths 'blame America first', is largely the divide in America today.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Originally posted by: Farang
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

Every great president had a fascist streak in them.

What was JFK's fascist streak? I disagree. And the internment of the Japanese was not fascist, you need a different pejorative label for it (paranoid, tyrannical?)
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Originally posted by: winnar111
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

I don't know, sounds like at least winnar111 considered every Japanese-American during WWII "our enemies".

I was more referring to the Nazi agents which FDR tried with military tribunals, a concept which someone eludes the Democrats today.

Surely, though, it can't be that bad if liberals consider him so great.

You falsely claim the only alternative to military tribunals was 'letting them free'. Your entire argument is dismissed by that false claim.

As for the tribunals, I'm going to blame the American people for being basically a blood-thirsty mob at the time, who demanded fast executions (10-1 in polls).

I'll also blame FDR for following their wishes, while acknowledging the practical problems of the president defying the people in a situation like that.

When it happened, the defendants appealed to the Supreme Court about the military trials, and the political divide was similar to the one today. Some expressed outrage for the Supreme Court to get involved at all and delay the executions, while more thoughtful people praised the rule of law being preserved with Supreme Court review.

A lot of bad law begins with an unusual precedent - something that seems like a good idea in one case turns out to be a bad idea when greatly extended.

I think that's what happened with those tribunals, and the nation should have stuck to trying the two saboteurs who were citizens in normal courts, and the others as POW's.

Another note on the story is how the saboteurs were caught because two of them defected to the US and went to authorities and were promised a pardon in exchange for their cooperation, which they offered and the others were rounded up and later executed. But the promise for a pardon was broken; FDR was even opposed by J. Edgar Hoover, who had apparently made the promise, for his commuting the two executions of the two who had exposed the plot to life and 30-years sentences.

Truman released the two to Germany after the war, where they were viewed as traitors to Germany.
 

winnar111

Banned
Mar 10, 2008
2,847
0
0
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Farang
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

Every great president had a fascist streak in them.

What was JFK's fascist streak? I disagree. And the internment of the Japanese was not fascist, you need a different pejorative label for it (paranoid, tyrannical?)

The wiretapping of Martin Luther King?
 

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
28,561
4
0
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Farang
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

Every great president had a fascist streak in them.

What was JFK's fascist streak? I disagree. And the internment of the Japanese was not fascist, you need a different pejorative label for it (paranoid, tyrannical?)


Actually, FDR thought he was protecting the Japanese against mass murder. After Pearl Harbor many District Attornys, Police Chiefs appealed to the State of California for assistance in protecting the lives of the Japanese Americans in their districts. The Police Chiefs specifically said not only did they not have the manpower, but their deputies had already been involved with the murder of Japanese Americans.
The governor of California said he had no men, every man was needed to protect the shores against Japanese attack.
Facing rampaging mobs out to murder Japanese Americans, FDR proposed a "protective detention" which by the way is now legal in the US in many instances, such as those liable to hurt themselves, those seeking sanctuary at police stations from mobs, etc.
 

winnar111

Banned
Mar 10, 2008
2,847
0
0
Originally posted by: Craig234
You falsely claim the only alternative to military tribunals was 'letting them free'. Your entire argument is dismissed by that false claim.

As for the tribunals, I'm going to blame the American people for being basically a blood-thirsty mob at the time, who demanded fast executions (10-1 in polls).

I'll also blame FDR for following their wishes, while acknowledging the practical problems of the president defying the people in a situation like that.

When it happened, the defendants appealed to the Supreme Court about the military trials, and the political divide was similar to the one today. Some expressed outrage for the Supreme Court to get involved at all and delay the executions, while more thoughtful people praised the rule of law being preserved with Supreme Court review.

A lot of bad law begins with an unusual precedent - something that seems like a good idea in one case turns out to be a bad idea when greatly extended.

I think that's what happened with those tribunals, and the nation should have stuck to trying the two saboteurs who were citizens in normal courts, and the others as POW's.

Another note on the story is how the saboteurs were caught because two of them defected to the US and went to authorities and were promised a pardon in exchange for their cooperation, which they offered and the others were rounded up and later executed. But the promise for a pardon was broken; FDR was even opposed by J. Edgar Hoover, who had apparently made the promise, for his commuting the two executions of the two who had exposed the plot to life and 30-years sentences.

Truman released the two to Germany after the war, where they were viewed as traitors to Germany.

When these people petition to civilian court, are released by some nutcase judge, return to Iraq, and kill our soldiers? Yeah, that is pretty much the only alternative.

Although lets correct the record on WWII:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32458.pdf

Cliff notes: FDR realized the Nazi's would get 3 years in prison if they were allowed in civilian courts. He wanted the death penalty. His position was upheld by all the judges he appointed to the Supreme Court.
 

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136
Kee-rist. I can't believe some posters here took the bait- winnar111's diversion away from economics to modern day terrarists along with saboteurs and internment in WW2...

Quick! Quick! Look over here! Over Here! Look, it's a Bunny! No! Wait! It's teh ebil terrarist! coddlin' libruhls! And the granddaddy of them all, teh ebil authoritarian FDR!

Divert and deflect- talk about anything but the subject at hand...
 

CanOWorms

Lifer
Jul 3, 2001
12,404
2
0
Originally posted by: techs

Actually, FDR thought he was protecting the Japanese against mass murder. After Pearl Harbor many District Attornys, Police Chiefs appealed to the State of California for assistance in protecting the lives of the Japanese Americans in their districts. The Police Chiefs specifically said not only did they not have the manpower, but their deputies had already been involved with the murder of Japanese Americans.
The governor of California said he had no men, every man was needed to protect the shores against Japanese attack.
Facing rampaging mobs out to murder Japanese Americans, FDR proposed a "protective detention" which by the way is now legal in the US in many instances, such as those liable to hurt themselves, those seeking sanctuary at police stations from mobs, etc.

You are sick. It's amazing how similar this is to what holocaust deniers say.
 

Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
12,651
2,395
126
I grew up in Connecticut. Just about every state park facility here was built by the CCC in the Depression and they are beutiful to this day. My father and his brother worked briefly in the CCC as teens before his brother went to the service and my father nailed a full ride scholarship to a pretigious school and became the first family member to attend college. Even though I grew up in a rock-ribbed blueblood New England GOP family, I have always had a romantic view of FDR's New Deal, the CCC and the hope and vitality it gave to a desperate young generation of Americans. Remember, that was an era when older kids were asked to leave home because there was no way to feed them.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Originally posted by: winnar111
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: Farang
Originally posted by: CanOWorms
Originally posted by: techs
Shocking how little respect FDR gets today.

He deserves no respect due to what he did to the Japanese-Americans.

Every great president had a fascist streak in them.

What was JFK's fascist streak? I disagree. And the internment of the Japanese was not fascist, you need a different pejorative label for it (paranoid, tyrannical?)

The wiretapping of Martin Luther King?

Given that Kennedy was fundamentally allied with King - he was the originator of a massive civil rights bill that was later passed by LBJ - and that his motivations were far from 'fascist', including the fact that he was trying to *block* tyranny by so many radical right-wingers in the government and had to do various things in that effort, you are not correct to call it 'fascist', though you can attack it as a mistake on other grounds.

Here is a link to a summary of the FBI's outrageous and evil activities against King.

As it describes on Kennedy, though:

On October 10 and 21, Attorney General Kennedy gave the FBI one of those "investigative techniques" by approving the wiretaps on King.

On October 18, 1963, the FBI distributed a different kind of memorandum on King, not only to the Justice Department, but to officials at the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Defense Department intelligence agencies. It summarized the bureau's Communist party charges against King and went much further. According to - Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, it was a personal diatribe . . . a personal attack without evidentiary support on the character, the moral character and person of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it was only peripherally related to anything substantive, like whether or not there was Communist infiltration or influence on the civil rights movement.... It was a personal attack on the man and went far afield from the charges [of possible Communist influence].

The attorney general was outraged and demanded that Hoover seek the return of the report. By October 28, all copies were returned. This was the first-and last-official action to deter Hoover's vendetta against King.

Kennedy's 'outrage' over the internal report against King and demand for its recall was hardly the act of 'fascism' against King.

For a flavor of the FBI attitude to King the Kennedys were up against:

With Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson pressing action on civil rights legislation and calling for a "War on Poverty," Martin Luther King was a man the country and the world thought worthy of honor. In December 1963, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year." In 1964, while continuing his "nonviolent" activities on behalf of civil rights in St. Augustine, Florida, and other cities, King was awarded honorary degrees by universities; he was invited by Willy Brandt, the mayor of West Berlin, to speak at a ceremony honoring the memory of President Kennedy; he had an audience with Pope Paul VI in Rome; and, in October, he was named by the Nobel Prize Committee to receive the Peace Prize in December.
If for King 1964 was a year of honors and increasing public recognition, for the FBI it was a year of concerted effort to dishonor him. Learning that King had been named Man of the Year by Time, Hoover wrote across a memorandum, "They had to dig deep in the garbage to come up with this one."
...

Hoover's first response was to say that it was incumbent on the civil rights movement to prove that there was no Communist influence. Then, in November, Hoover held a press briefing. Asked to respond to King's charges, Hoover, off the record, called King "one of the lowest characters in the country." On the record, he called King the most "notorious liar" in the country. Hoover's comments were widely publicized.

(Hoover's 'this one' reminds me of McCain's 'that one' in the debate...)

The Kennedys faces all kinds of right-wing subversion, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were quite opposed to much of his approach, to the CIA doing all kinds of operations against their policies (e.g., had JFK stopped the Bay of Pigs, the CIA operatives working with the Cubans had a plan to fake the Cubans overpowering and tying them up and proceeding with the invasion).

A main reason Kennedy created the Defense Intelligence Agency was because he had to to get decent information, as opposed to the service branches.

He planned for Bobby Kennedy to do an overhal of all US intelligence agencies in his second term to weed out this corruption - that not happening when he was assassinated led to years of CIA abuses of power later exposed in the 1975 Church Commission (and the appointment of the politically reliable - wait for it - George H. W. Bush to head the CIA to prevent any further revelations.)