US POLITICS: "I figured clueless was better than argumentative."

FDR was considered a socialist by a considerable portion of the population. If you think FOX News is toxic, you should hear radio shows from the mid thirties. He was loathed.

Ned OTM

republicans anti-FDR but he rarely comes up, LBJ never comes up. american politics before carter doesn't get a lot of attention in our political dialogue.

you should hear radio shows from the mid thirties

Link please? I'd love to hear some oldschool mudslinging, if only to explore the idea that things might not really be all that different in the field of political fearmongering.

Actually, this is one of my favorite FDR clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIqe4aeublo&feature=player_embedded

Startlingly contemporary.

Glenn Beck, the few times I've seen him, cultivates an aura of historical evidencey-ness, so he most decidedly does go after people like FDR and LBJ. The last time I caught him he was spinning an elaborate conspiracy web linking Valerie Jarret to Woodrow Wilson (who is evil fyi). I imagine some of that sensibility trickles down and FDR is considered a fascist.

they were also socialist! but it's really really hard to tell if the current right-wing frame of mind admits to any kind of degrees or continuums or modes of socialism...

honestly a better way to think of it is that there is a core of good people or a good "way of life" ("the real america") that has been beset at all times by enemies through history. all of these enemies have of course been working in concert, because being against the RA is their purpose. the nazis, the communists, foreign empires, the UN, the third world, the muslims, it hardly matters...

many xps

I do loathe Wilson though.

Reagan specifically campaigned on ending The Great Society.

LBJ never comes up

don't think this is strictly true but could be a result of him being loathed by BOTH sides - on the right for civil rights/expanding the "welfare state", and on the left for Vietnam

xp
yeah, the scary thing about his anti-Wilson ranting was that much of it was on point, it was the rest of the chalkboard that was deranged.

hmm. I saw that months ago, so let me amend that to "some of it was on point."

I see. That was helpful, thanks.

(I was actually kind of under the impression that there was some positive consensus around FDR. Not entirely sure why now.)

he was a nazi who fought nazis. strange, i know

This terrible book got a lot of traction in 2008 before the election. She's tickled by the discovery that most of FDR's answers for ending the Depression failed! It's like she hasn't written a new book in fifty years.

xp
I think there used to be; ten years ago I think you'd be fringey to go after him.

not only a Nazi but he appeased Stalin!

amity shlaes is a nutcase

*written = read

Great critique.

i have also read somewhere that shlaes has merely an undergrad degree in english. i like to think i understand econ to some degree, but come on

her name looks like it lost several vowels and consonants.

Shlaes graduated from Yale University magna cum laude[1] with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1982.[2]

Shlaes writes a syndicated column for Bloomberg News.[3] She is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her many appearances on television and radio include commentary on public radio for Marketplace.

She wrote columns for the Financial Times for five years, until September, 2005, for which she won the International Policy Network's Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2002.[4] Earlier, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she was a member of the editorial board. She has written for The New Yorker, The American Spectator, Commentary Magazine, Foreign Affairs, Forbes, National Review, and The New Republic, among others. Her obituary of Milton Friedman appeared in The New York Sun.[5]

She was awarded the 2007 Deadline Club award for Opinion writing,[6] and the Newswomen's Club of New York's Front Page Award for her Bloomberg columns.[7]

Miss Shlaes teaches an MBA course titled the Economics of the Great Depression at NYU/Stern School of Business.[8] She is the 2009 winner of the Hayek Prize awarded by the Manhattan Institute.

This is pretty famous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9yoZHs6PsU

thanks for the FDR clips alfred

first one: 515 views, posted october 2009

Just curious - if a senator (or senators) wanted to sit on the other side of the aisle, could they do it? Why doesn't anyone ever try it? Wouldn't it be a nice symbolic bipartisan gesture?

I should run for senate…"vote z s, he'll literally sit on the other side of the aisle"

interesting, but this is not a great idea in practice imo

One Progressive's Nat'l Scheme To Burn Confederate Flags At Tea Party Rallies

AAAARGH I did post that for the amusing URL earlier and nobody bit.

ACLU intervening in the Awlaki case we were discussing earlier: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/03/awlaki

― elephant rob, Tuesday, August 3, 2010 12:57 PM (5 hours ago)

aclu are heroes. on point article from greenwald too

IMPORTANT

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/08/bristol_levi_breakup.html?hpid=artslot

Someone lock Sullivan back in his Levi-proof soundbooth!

man FDR bringin the "I welcome their hatred"

fucking awesome

love how Levi's knocked up some other bimbo

worked so well the first time!

xpost love the excitement in FDR's voice; he really gets off on the hate.

burning confederate flags seems like a terrible idea

I mean as a political statement at a tea party rally. not in general.

I wonder if Levi's ever worn a condom in his life.

I wonder if Levi's ever been in a gay chatroom and talked to Sullivan in his life.

Maybe Trig is Sullivan's baby.

levi's life decisions might actually affect the future of america

Maybe Trig is Sullivan's baby.

Not unless there's a miracle.

Fuckin' Palins -- how does Sully work?

re: Levi & Palin's - all i can think about is the first 3 minutes of Idiocracy

dumbass clinton/bush advisor lady just on blitzer: "no it's okay, there's a whole system of review and checks & balances when the gov't decides someone is a threat to the country".

nevermind that there's no due process

clinton/bush advisor?

clinton's bush advisor?

xp haha whatever she was, idk she was like a national security person i think

Did Bill Clinton need a bush advisor? SRSLY NOW.

Rad for the ACLU. Hope they make it in time.

I cannot believe that article about Levi J expects me to buy "Rex Butler" as the name of an actual human being.

so nuts to that.

just noticed that mccain carved a boner going up the country

dunno if i can trust 4president.us to give me accurate info

obama did not win as much as mccain lost

Maybe and maybe not, but if that's true it's doubly so in the House, where many Dem seats were won by narrow margins in strongly Republican districts, and many of those Congressmen couldn't reasonably have been expected to hang on to those seats for long no matter what else happened.

OK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2008.svg

Politicians claim "mandates" all the time. The difference with Obama's victory is that he could legitimately claim one: the biggest Dem winner since LBJ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2008.svg

voting is probably not going to kill you

Thanks for the opening, Milton. An Election Eve message from the dead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk

<3

"I'm sure that once the election is over, your country will improve immediately."

I can't be quite as curmudgeonly as George, but I wouldn't want to get caught trying to debate him on those points.

i don't think 08 can be described as "obama did not win as much as mccain lost" -- whoever grabbed the dem nomination had it basically in the bag. forgive me milton but this sounds like the kind of thing victor davis hanson and michael barone tell themselves.

anyway, i appreciate principled non-voting, i really do. but i don't do it. i just don't think principled voting occurs. like, when i pull the lever, it's not a stamp of blanket moral approval of everything that the powerful do for the remainder of their term. it's hardly a statment at all, just rather weak indication of preference: i'd rather this person hold that seat rather than some other person likely to get a majority. i understand that i am to feel implicated in this, somehow, morally, but i don't feel this way at all. i pulled the lever, and whatever they do next is on them.

i'll put it blutly: i know exactly to what degree this 'regime' has been bunglers or blunderers or cowards or miscalculators or over-calculators or just outright killers, i read the papers. but i'm going to get up tomorrow morning and vote for everyone i can find with a D next to their name, without regret, or a second look back, as i probably will do for the rest of my life.

i'm sure this is probably just as an infuriating decision to some as people advocating quietism or dropping out. i don't begrudge anyone their decision to do or not do anything politically. except vote for haley barbour, that guy looks like boss hogg and sounds like it too, come on.

/ I admit to overstating my case; the ratio was huge and the enthusiasm for obama was not an illusion

still, we owe many of the undecided votes simply to a pragmatic unwillingness to vote for mccain, and it's those people who have been targeted by the Tea Party. they'll be voting from the heart this time; it's our turn to be pragmatic.

Fuck the heart, seriously.

btw u guys are missin a helluva ballgame

they'll be voting from the heart this time; it's our turn to be pragmatic.

This means nothing. "The heart"? It's more like -- no, EXACTLY like -- the "gut" that Colbert talks about. Call me elitist, but Tea Partiers don't understand a thing about what they're voting for.

hm. 3 -- 0 giants in 7th.

Morbs otm again. There's little point in this particular conversation.

For those of you not voting for Democrats, do you live in states with ballot measures? and are you voting for them? Just curious. Ballot measures and candidates have always seemed like totally separate things to me, yet they are conflated together as "voting".

e.g. the marijuana initiatives in California and Oregon.

I've got eight amendments to our state constitution on which we're voting.

My district is a safe socially liberal Republican seat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFSIcI0wmGw

for the record

For the record, Mo. went for McCain.

Tried to open all messages to read stuff from two hours ago and it practically crashed my browser (and, yes, I'm on a lame internet connection)

NEW THREAD, PLEASE

US POLITICS election/post-election edition: your country will improve immediately.