and delighted to hear that voice

Maybe if he had served all four, we would already have universal health care....

....always makes me think 3.

But for the benefit and edification of our friends across the aisle, I like to rub in the fact that he was elected 4 times--FOUR times--so apparently the country didn't feel that he was a traitor and a turncoat, even if the bank(st)ers did.

Please proceed.

truebluegreen

And I guess he would have won his 5th turn in office - if he had not been ill - and died as the world war two was starting to end - Nazi-Germany did it best, to use the death of the President - to make the case that Hitler would win the war - and that its enemies would fall back and sue for peace... As Russia had been doing when Catarina the Great - empress of Russia died in mid 1700s - when Russia and Preussen war at war...

Diclotican

(Creative Zen, actually but most people don't know what that is).
I'm an FDr geek.

I like Churchill's first speech before the US Congress at Christmas, 1941, right after Pearl Harbor. His "What kind of people do they think we are?" brought the combined houses down and shook the rafters of the capital building with a huge affirmation.

That's another speech which brings tears to ones eyes, along with the "Four Freedoms".

Both were incredible orators. Funny, they did not see eye to eye politically yet were very close friends during the war.

Always surprises me. He seems to have practically "Truman-ed" himself.....
If I understand it correctly.

He lost office almost immediately after Germany's surrender. He was in the midst of the Potsdam conference with Truman and Stalin and overnight he was no longer the Prime Minister. The rest of the conference had Clement Atlee as British PM, a significantly weaker negotiator. (Not that Churchill was up to snuff himself, but I think he knew he was going to lose.)

One of the more interesting stories of international politics of the 20th century which likely had sweeping consequences.

Potsdam Conference

Thanks.

clear Germany would lose, and the Soviet Union would become the greatest single power in Europe, even as GB in the personage of Churchill clung to its Imperialist past. Hard as it is for some to believe, FDR loathed imperialism, believing he could deal more effectively with Stalin in the post-war era. We'll never find out if that would have been true.

Churchill was a very flawed character. But damn! He was a great orator and he turned the UK around precisely when they needed it. He did so with his shear audacity and bombasity, not usually beneficial traits.

But waging worldwide war is not done by the meek. And almost nobody but Churchill in Europe at the time had been lecturing people about the dangers of fascism for the better part of a decade. He was the guy who was right.

His writing is as great as his speeches, written in plain language. He hated obfuscation, clouding the narrative using four syllable words.

Hope people realize just how disappeared FDR has been.
Except for PBS (occasionally), it has been total blackout.

*BARF!*

(how do I get "BARF" in big letters, the size of Kilimanjaro, on here??)

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

St. Ronnie would not have the sense to pour the piss out of his own boot.

{font size=10}*BARF*{/font size}

Use these [] instead of these {} and you get:

[font size=10]*BARF*[/font size]

my wife got me a book called "Together We Can Not Fail" that had a CD with some of his speeches and I've been hooked since.
I guess he has been gone from schools too (I was in high school and college from 1977-1987) and don't remember a word about him. I guess the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" has some good points about how biased the education system has become.
I guess the more the right wing shouts "Liberal" the more distorted (to the right) the medium has become (as in schools, media).
I think it is almost criminal that his 4 freedoms and second bill of rights aren't mandatory in schools.

It's in several parts.
It's just astounding when they reach the part:
"This is the last picture ever taken of hin standing on his own 2 legs". And then you find out that that was before he decided to run for president.
Astounding.

BTW that video is real easy to find. Libraries seem to universally have a copy.

(Silent Spring) from this same series.

When Mom and Dad talked about he greatness of the man,it was like:"Blah Blah Blah."
But I was lucky enough to have a WW2 Navy Vet who did not teach solely by the book but fed in information that was omitted from the textbooks.
The guy taught until his health got to be to bad(80 something years old),but i would see him in the halls on my way to a 4 alarm maintenance disaster(Aren't they all in a school?)and thank him for his service at home and abroad.

FDR has brilliant advisers as to what actually transpired to cause the depression and how to straighten out the economic system which held until Reagan and cocktail napkin genius Laffer started the reversal which brought us to the largest recession in nearly a century.

My Dad served in the WPA and McArthur's Civilian Conservation Corps and later with McArthur in the Pacific before and during WW2.
One of their tasks was to run telephone cables to the west coat,they ran into a huge obstacle in the Grand Canyon.
Down at the bottom on the bank of the Colorado River,my Dad found a Condom Tin(They actually came in a twist off top tin can in those days).
Curious as to the state of the contents having been in the river(highly polished by the fine grains of sand),he opened it up and found a note "In a fine hand as if written by a woman".

The note was a homespun parable and i will try to not butcher the contents of the note too badly:
"What really caused the great depression?
Peter was robbed to pay Paul.
But Peter was never repaid.
This made Peter Angry indeed.
Every one knows,you can not do business with a sore Peter."

Last edited Tue Sep 24, 2013, 01:38 AM - Edit history (1)

the corporate media's propaganda has become.

I do think the dynamics are changing for the better because of the Internet but any candidate or even President hawking for FDR today will take a serious beating from the corporate media.

As I stated though I do believe the corporate media's power is waning, that's why they're so bent on attacking the Internet's (aka; peoples') power by trying to kill Net Neutraility so they can control the Web and turn it into cable television.

n/t

i don't watch much tv, mostly over some other family member's shoulder. i had seen the ad and thought it was cool, but had no idea that fdr had been banished from the teevee machine.
sheesh.

history and that we are in our Sixth Year of The Second Great Depression, one might have imagined his name

coming up a bit more.

FDR, of course, championed Labor Rights and helped create the largest middle class in the world with his

New Deal Programs and the One Percent, currently working to destroy it's last vestiges, is certainly in no of that,

hurry to see that again.

The Corporate PTB have no problem with the massive Inequality of Wealth we're now experiencing.

It's occurred, according to the president's boy Larry Summers "because people are now being treated as they SHOULD be treated".

I never thought about it, but it's true, FDR has been scrubbed. I guess when you're trying to take over the whole world's economies and establish feudalism, he kind of gets in the way.

And heir-apparent.

It's like he never existed.

I wonder why.

And we thought disappearing people.... making of them "non-persons".... was a Stalinist thing.

Hah.

Throat lump instigator.

vestages of FDR's presence & life still exist here. I share the same job he undertook from 1926-1932 in his community. Recently I used one of his 4 Freedoms posters as an example for a local candidate for local office who asked some meeting type questions.. He got it immediately.

Such amazing history.

And such a magnificent part of the country.

I lived in Lagrangeville for the first 10 years of my life, and I still spend parts of my summer in Fishkill. Much of my family still lives there. I have been to the FDR estate twice and I loved it!

I live in SingSing (by way of Tarrytown). I lived in LA for a while and swore when I moved back I'd never live more than 5 miles from the Hudson, nor 5 miles from Rockefeller Park. And I never ever will again.

We are lucky to live here!

residing within my Senior Senator.

The Economic Royalists have met their new match.

...is that my great-grandfather worked as a speechwriter for President Roosevelt during the 1936 campaign. He was a lifelong Democrat to boot!

Unfortunately, he died when I was 8, so I never got to talk to him about it. I get a little bit of the history when I talk to my grandfather.

And so should you, continuing to fight the good fight!

To think that the man who pushed me around the backyard in my toy car was the same guy who, 60 years earlier, was working with President Roosevelt amazes me!

And how awesome to have that memory and have your Grandad as a legacy!

I'm old enough to remember listening his speeches on our old Philco battery powered radio. My grandmother, a staunch Catholic, always made the sign of the cross when she said, "our president" or "the president". I was 16 or 17 years old before I learned that damn and republicans are two different words. That last part is a joke I like to tell to my RW friend. (yes. I have one).

I'm guessing you're roughly the age of my folks . .Long may you wave!

I wonder if Google owns whatever's left of Compuserv now?

The way the GOPthugs have resurrected Ronnie Raygun, only we have the real FDR to celebrate.

When I was a young woman, I worked about 5 miles from his home in Hyde Park. I went there every day for a year and go there still when I can. A truly great man, and my favorite POTUS ever.

Thanks for the thread, FredStembottom.

It's just outside of Kingman, Arizona. The park -- cabins, roads, bridges, hiking trails -- was built by the CCC. And everywhere I go in the American Southwest, I am constantly reminded of Roosevelt. I can't think of many "outside" places here that weren't affected in a major way by Roosevelt's CCC.

His greatness pervades this nation in so many ways most people don't even realize. After Washington, our greatest president. We need more Roosevelts and fewer Boehners.

Dad spent his teen years in a CCC camp after his family lost their farm. Some people actually starved to death during the 'Great' Depression.

He was a sharecropper. They were so poor, they didn't even give him a name until he was seven, and then he chpse his own name because he was tired of being called "boy." World War II was the best thing to ever happen to him: it got him off the farm.

All of my best memories are of my family smiling, and many of those memories are set in places that were originally CCC work sites. If your dad is still around, thank him for me.

Thanks for the sentiment! He would have appreciated it.

reagan`s dad worked for the local ccc/wpa in my hometown. reagan became a fdr democrat because his dad finally found a steady job.

and wrote articles in the local newspaper about his life during that period of time (Idaho) when I was in school. I wasn't all that interested at the time, but I have copies of all of his writings from that time.

I am told that he brought young men home with him that worked for him at times and that is where my grandmother met my grandfather (he was one if the young men).

"His greatness pervades this nation in so many ways most people don't even realize."

True, but FDR's greatness also pervades the world. If not for his steady hand, the Far East would today be Imperial Japanese, and Europe would be Nazi.

Of course, I give Churchill some credit too. They were quite a team.

Roosevelt cabled Churchill after a meeting, "It is fun to be in the same decade with you."

Churchill later wrote, "I felt I was in contact with a very great man who was also a warm-hearted friend and the foremost champion of the high causes which we served."

called "The National Parks: Our Greatest Idea" (or something like that). Franklin Roosevelt is credited in what I have seen so far. It makes me want to revisit them all, & see the ones I've missed.

It is beautifully covered & gave me chills, thinking about all the CCC workers--it must have given them hope during the depths of the Depression. It also taught many of them skills for a lifetime (& opportunities, too).

...of the National Parks.
Did you mean Teddy?

he may have been the first, but Franklin is clearly in these films also.

Because it sounds like I didn't give that series a good enough look.
It is sooooooo slllllooowwwww. At least in the beginning.

Would be done to shore up any Google stock price impact that lauding FDR might produce.

IMO

or even if you are not, you owe it to yourself to visit his Little White House at Warm Springs, GA.
It is inspiring and unforgettable.
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/roosevelts_little_white_house.html

Kenneth Branagh and CGI atropied legs.
A first rate movie.

I love Branagh's movies, both directed and acted; he's so brilliant!

Ralph Bellamy did an excellent FDR as well in Sunrise at Campobello

Saw that when I was just a little kid.
I should dig that up again.

and I know they recycle such movies every now and then. Or just stream it from somewhere

as if FDR is coaching the kid through his speech. Speak boldly. There is nothing to fear.

The whole four hours with bunches of bonus video, articles, interviews and photos: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/fdr/player/

Well done, FredStembottom!

I've read a lot about FDR, that and my mom always talked about him in a very positive light. I still read a lot of World War II history and watch progarms on it so I hadn't been aware of the 'non-personhood' assigned him on tv lately. But now that I think on it, you are correct - virtually nobody mentions FDR or Truman anymore.

Hey, that was a poem!

I was the only person that got a kick out of that. . . . He starts with a clip from The King's Speech, then I believe Churchill - then on to FDR!

It uses excerpts of his first inaugural speech in 33, with his most famous line ever. Many people today think he said " the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" after Pearl Harbor, but it was that day he said it -he was talking about the depression and the fact that the banks had all failed that very morning while he was on his way to be sworn in as POTUS. I love that man!

the children of the Great Depression my Mother age , FDR was so loved here where I live. but now they think Ted Cruz walks on water. How do you go from one end to the other??????

They have been repeating "It's a center-right country" for so long that they actually believe it.

FredStembottom

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was maybe the best president the US could have - at the time when US needed it the most - And also a man who started many of the modern programs - who still is in active service over there in the US..

And he was also the most hated man in the US, from the republican side of the isle - as he was able to turn the ship around from the chaos the Republicans have managed to make it into when they was in office - and let capitalism go amok...

And he is STILL a hated man by the republicans - the spirit, the will to fight for the common man and woman - and for every small business man is still something many republicans hated, and hate for all its worth.. Even if he was one of the greatest President the US had in the 20 century...

It is maybe therefore he also have been banned from airwaves for the last 20 year - because he could show a whole different possibility for the american public.. I doubt many young kids today - know to much about FDR and what he did between the wars - and under the war... He was a great man - and a man who was able to look longer than his own upbringing as a rich man who could have lived out his life as a privileged person - and maybe know the hardship of the ordinary man and woman in the US...


And he did also a lot for Europe after the war - The famous Marshall Plan who was available for most West European nations after 1946, was given a lifeline for most, in the critical years after the devastating World War two. Without the Marshall Plan - I doubt our continent would have been so calm - until the 1990s - and I doubt that the aftermath after the war, would have ended that well as it did...

Diclotican

From what I could glean from my own kids, he has been washed out (to a great extent) of the history books schools buy to avoid "controversy".

FredStembottom

And that is sad - that this man, who was one of the greatest president ever to sit in the White house - have been more or less "washed" out of the history-books - how ignorant our kids must be about the past - when they are not even learning about FDR... (Even though I think FDR are more known on the outside of the US than inside this days )

What is so "controversial" about what he did - in the 1930s he started to make progress for a better society - and under the war, he was one of the big 3 who was fighting against great odds - and who also had bad health on top of the strain a leadership in wartime was given him.. The last couple of years - was very hard for FDR - who was fighting bad health and who also had to kind of sort out the issues between himself - Winston Churchill - and not least Josef Stalin who had his own goals to settle in the Eastern part of Europe... And of course Germany... Specially the last year FDR was alive - in 1944 the strain of his bad health and the leadership as the US president had its toll of Franklin D. Roosevelt.. The pictures from Jalta in 1944 show a president who was tired - and in bad health even as he was trying to sort out the differences between Stalin and Churchill.. He never managed to do that - sort out the differences - and the early start of the Cold war - was at hand..

Diclotican

Makes him the most remarkable president of them all, for sure.

FredStembottom

Indeed - he did a lot of great job - from a wheelchair - and also was able to in fact wage a World War from a wheelchair. That in itself I would say makes him one of the greatest President the US have had since George Washington...

Diclotican

FDR makes todays centrist Dems look like __________________________________________!!!!!!!

Thank g-d.