I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust. I try always to remember that their deepest problems are human. I constantly talk with those who come to tell me their own points of view; with those who manage great industries and financial institutions of the the country; with those who represent the farmer and the worker; and often, very often with average citizens without high position who come to this house.

And I constantly seek to look beyond the doors of the White House, beyond the officialdom of the national capital, into the hopes and fears of men and women in their homes. I have traveled the country over many times. My friends, my enemies, my daily mail, bring to me reports of what you are thinking and hoping.

I want to be sure that neither battles nor burdens of office shall ever blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the simple purposes for which they put me here...I always try to remember that reconciling differences cannot satisfy everyone completely. Because I do not expect too much then I am not disappointed. But I know that I must never give up-that I must never let the greater interest of all the people down, merely because that might be for the moment the easiest personal way out.

FDR, Fireside chat, April 14, 1938, from the book FDR's Fireside Chats Oklahoma Press, 1992 pages 122-123

Doesn't anymore, too long, too cerebral, too much principle.

I agree that this was pre-tv but it still resonates

not to think-

To fill thier minds with movies, television, magazines- shopping, aquiring more and more 'stuff'.

It's easy for me to point to those who don't even know their congressman's name, and condemn them for not caring, but sadly, they are a product of this sick, perverted society.

I think people are desperately hungry for some genuine contentment.

And they are taught to find it not in themselves and in the 'community' but in easy- quick fixes.

Does that make us 'better' than them? Not in my perspective. It just means that we know what we are missing.

And that makes life uncomfortable.

peace~

that we need other people and we need a community that works. After World War II, everyone wanted to live in the land of tomorrow,
a pristine world with hi-tech machines where we would rocket around at high speeds. We are still trying to live that fantasy. I
was fortunate enough to live in a small town where the emphasis was on what you had around you like your neighbors not how fast
you were going.

quite purposely.

After WWII the ruling class was very concerned for their well-being and feared a resurgence of the socialism that griped this country before the war. The average folks were very concerned about the return of the inequities that destroyed the nation before the war and the astonishing victory that we accomplished proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there was, in fact, not only plenty to go around but far more than we knew.

How do you convince a population that has just defeated the combined military might of the world that they must be afraid, so that they will bow to your will? Well just look at what was said vs. what was done after the war, look at who paid for our nation then vs. who pays now, look at how the population was distributed then compared to now (ever heard of consolidation and isolation?), etc...

saying corporate taxes have never been higher when they have never been lower, they went from near 50% during the
Eisenhower administration and they are now at 17% if I remember correctly. But you are right, folks are divided
now, liberal vs conservative, evangelical vs non-believer, etc.

oil spills, bad products, reckless speculations with subprimes, where's the accountability here, Uncle Sam will
just make good.

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/files/imagegallerymodule/@random47e2e6d383464/gallery1/Spivak_P_30A.jpg



Eleanor Roosevelt championed all of these people. Someday, it would be good to see her get the credit she so richly deserves. She was obviously the company brains, soul and strongest arm.

she was worried more about what Americans had to eat than about a designer dress. Those are great pictures, the difference between
then and now is that people were horrified by the dust bowl, the plight of sharecroppers, inhumane prisons. Now our news is often
a dozen canned stories that repeat throughout the day with spurts of "breaking news."

to keep her husband's interest. As a busybody, a graceless do-gooder. One of those inconvenient women. :)

We've yet to know her contribution to the framing of the New Deal. Franklin's vision of America was much more narrow than hers. As good a man as he was, it was her much more expansive intellect and ethic that bore the fruit we still enjoy.

And he relied on her for so many things. His presidency would have been impossible but for Eleanor. She protected him, promoted him, advised him, challenged him and finally, went beyond him in the arena of human rights. And in such a wise way -- without trying to take anything away from him, his projects or his legacy.

We were so lucky to have her for a moment. As Gore says, she really was the brains. Trust Gore to just say it. lol

:toast:

She was a willing helper to her husband and was his eyes and ears in all levels of society. There would have been no diabetics dying from lack of insulin in the convention center after Katrina if she had been first lady at that time.

and the captain of the Iwo Jima - a woman - on the other and arranged to have water delivered to the convention center and would have had herself lowered by helicopter to make sure everyone got what they needed.

She'd probably leave her secretary back at the White House or in Atlanta for this and taken someone like Hopkins, who would need a lot of whiskey to get through the day.

called from everywhere and the dispatch of all available armed forces to help with the crisis and all the governors involved staying
at the White House.

the entire country was their backyard.

I wish I could have met her. :)

I once dated a guy, an average guy, he wanted to just see Truman's house so he drove out there early one morning. Truman comes out
to get the paper out of the mailbox near the road. He is dressed in his bathrobe and slippers, he shakes the guy's hand and goes
back in the house. We had different leaders back then, leaders who considered themselves one of us.

Fyi: there's a panel on tonight at 11 EST on CSPAN 1 re Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign. All the old warriors are on the panel, with Kathleen Kennedy introducing them.

I caught it about two weeks ago. Well worth the time.

yes, I still get misty eyed over Bobby's campaign, so short with such a brutal end.

that THIS is the guy that FDR sent to Georgia and Florida to stop the practice of using hotboxes in federal prisons. Earl Miller. Former USN middle weight boxing champion, US Olympic Team 1920 Antwerp, Instructor NY State police, bodyguard for FDR and bodyguard and 'close friend' of Eleanor. Hubba hubba. Go girl. Miller put the scare into the GA and FL federal prison wardens and got them banned - with - on FDR's arrangement - Lucy Mercer Rutherford as his lovely assistant on the task. VERY strange as Miller and Eleanor had something going on through the bulk of the White House years. Miller thought it was damend strange, but the hot boxes were banned and Miller got a real taste of how manipulative FDR was.

but he tried to promote the greater good as in the 4 freedoms, social security and the WPA projects that we still use today.
Did he have a live-in mistress in the WH, probably.

Just the other night, there was a documentary about the Oneida -- and the whole program was based on the work of indigenous writers that had been paid by the WPA to record their bands' history.

On top of every other good, the WPA helped preserve our American heritage.

I grew up looking at a massive wood carving of coal miners and steel workers in our small rural post office done by the WPA, it was the only art I saw as a child that was not in church.

While governor, FDR encouraged Miller to have an affair with his - FDR's secretary/companion - which confused the hell out of a lot of people, including Miller and the Roosevelt kids.

Lehand lived in the governor's mansion and the White House, but so did Sam Rosenmann, live in Albany and on and off in the White House. FDR had to have peeps around him. Evidently, Lehand had a thing going on with William Bullitt for a while. She's the one that said FDR was "incapable of a true friendship." Sad, but FDR emotionally starved everyone around him. Eleanor saw herself and Lehand as victims of his selfish focus on himself. The kids too. And, they all were.

FDR certainly deserves credit for keeping his eye on the prize even if he had to step aside of it on occasion.

he was focused on his political life, I can see him holding everyone at arms length emotionally, but I still think that Miss LeHand
was more that just a "secretary."

someone advised him that the Japanese might recruit them to act against the country during WW2.

He belonged to the oligarchy in a way Eleanor never did.

the odd thing about Franklin was that although he was part of the privileged elite, he developed a debilitating illness that carried with it a social stigma. In some restaurants, he was marooned back in the kitchen with the "help" so that the other dinners would not have to see a wheelchair. So he understood about discrimination because he lived it. And although many blacks could not eat in whites only establishments at the time, they were still in the back fixing the food.

his greater understanding due to his disability. Bittersweet but true.

desks filled with paperwork, used foam cups from coffee, long hours, great stress, standard uniform of suit and tie except for rare
vacations--

according to Bugliosi "prologue to the prosecution of GWB for Murder" on pages 56-57, As of January 1, 2008, in less than seven years as president, he had visited his ranch in Texas an unbelievable 69 times, spending, per Knoller, "all or part of 448 days on vacation there." As amazing as this is, Bush also made, Knoller says, 132 visits to Camp David, during this period, spending all or part of 421 days there," and 10 visits to his family's vacation compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, spending "all or part of 39 days there." So the bottom line is that of a total of approximately 2,535 days as president, most of them during a time of war, Bush spent all or a part of 908 days, an incredible 36 percent of his time, on vacation or at retreat places. Hard to believe but true.
Nine hundred and eight days is two and a half years of Bush's presidency."

Bush spent out of the WH was one less day he could create havoc.

he could have saved himself a lot of hard work, think of the time he would have had for Barney and clearing brush and cycling.

Conyer's Judiciary Committee, I was appalled to hear that the main way Bush operates is by a "gut reaction" to a situation.

He then lets a few advisors weigh in on the protocols and policies needed to implement such a gut feeling's reaction (Say a war against a nation like Iraq)

Then a few weeks later, he has his action, and a rather vague idea of how the action will go, and then he's done.

And no criticism of any of his ideas after that point.

It was scary to see McClellan still thinks of Bush as a rather decent person!!

I am reading Scottie's book and after 9-11, "The president had indicated he didn't need a formal prepared statement.

Now he spoke out loud, writing parts of what he would say as Dan and Ari offered input.

"Today we had a national tragedy," the president said. "Two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in a terrorist attack on our country."

"We don't know for sure it was a terrorist attack," Dan interjected.

"Sure it is," said Bush. "What else do you think it is?"

Ari and I agreed that it was clearly a terrorist attack."

This is from page 102 of What Happened by Scott McClellan,

They all agreed that it was a terrorist attack, they were not at the White House but still at the school and the only information they really had was not much beyond what everyone else had seen on Tv (after chatting with FBI Director Mueller, Cheney, Gov. Pataki) so how could they make that statement. Remember the Oklahoma bombing which everybody thought was a terrorist bombing which turned out to be domestic nut jobs. So they were making assumptions based on very little factual data.

this is why clunky geekism of Dukakis and Gore now seems so much more appealing. They respect the process.

Is when the Dems started questioning Bush ignoring the PDB saying that Bin Laden was determined to attack the US and
McClellan puts that under party bickering and election politics. No, accountability is the name of the game. Truman
understood that with "the buck stops here" sign. They wanted to brand anyone disloyal that asked questions.

people did not want to see crippled people, or were afraid they'd catch the disease. So, he had a taste of what being ostracized was.

in front of people in their wheelchairs, it's hard to describe what it was like before Jonas Salk. Tv was just coming in, people used it primarily for the news, the same with radio. In my small town, people didn't travel, they didn't go away on vacation, people's vacation consisted of going to the annual carnival. You drove to the lake on a hot Sunday. Blacks lived in their own part of town, you usually only saw them when they were working, they had their own church. Air conditioning was just coming in, it was available at the movies and the ice cream parlor. Folks at home had hand held fans or a small box fan and sometimes slept in the yard on hot nights or went to the park to sleep. To have jello was a big deal since it meant that you were well off enough to have a refrigerator. Kids used to say would you like to come over for ice cream or jello (a big hint). So imagine this world with polio, my playmate had it, she had a leg brace, people were afraid, some thought that it came from air conditioning, nobody really knew and people were afraid it was contagious. If you had a TV it was black and white with live broadcasts, so I saw Oswald shot to death on Tv because there was no editing, I was just 10 when that happened.

Salk worked often with the Surgeon General of the Army, for whom my mother worked.

She also worked in the Office of the Sec. War/Army.

We need to recraft our bills to have Salk and Reed on one and all three Roosevelts on another. The greenback is a global currency and we should design our bills with that in mind. Hell, put the lunar surface on the back of one too.

Tv has created a false persona of the hero, the loner who defeats an army to get the job done. There is no "We" as in
We the people, as in we the hospital workers, as in we the farmers, the teachers, the soldiers, the civil servants
who make this country worth something. I am all for currency with the Roosevelts, the Walter Reeds and the Jonas
Salks who really made this country great.

where a young black kid died in a hotbox, so FDR decided to lower the hammer on the prison officials in federal prisons using such tactics. As Miller put it, "some black kid died from not saying 'sir' to his white trash guard."

FDR wasn't a racist, but Black Americans did get lost in the shuffle of things at times. So, he took a more passive course and saw to it that black citizens were not excluded from federal aid, etc. by local officials. It was a fight at times. But, no, they were not the subject of specific legislation/help by FDR. That's a fact. He really worried about Southern conservatives in the Dem party.

there were even seperate drinking fountains, we have come light years in that regard since the 1930s.

of his time and class.

He was who he was.

He did not think black citizens were stupid, he thought they had been screwed over in access to education, etc. by southern racists and so forth, and steps were being taken to integrate the military while he was still alive.

Did he do enough for them as he should have? NO.

Did he hold "all the racist views of his time and class?" No, certainly not.

it became politically necessary in 1941 -- ahead of a Japanese invasion.

What is "doing enough" for American citizens, Mookie?

I'm not vilifying Roosevelt. I'm just trying to know him as he was. That's the only way we can move forward, imho.

politics took precedence over principles. A real failure by FDR.

He wanted to intern German Americans also - he actually hated the Germans and admired the Japanese - but Francis Biddle told him it was impossible to determine who was actually German and who was not. It was impracticable.

I'm not sure what you mean by 're-enslavement'. I don't think I'm following you.

We're disagreeing only on degree. No, he didn't do nearly enough to PROTECT black Americans. But his views were far more progressive than most people's views in that day.

she could reach out and bring people into Franklin's circle that would never have been there otherwise.

under the cover of criminal law.

And nothing was done about it until about 1941 when FDR ordered the Justice Department to start prosecuting those cases. Emancipation is much younger than we think it is. :(

and photographing her.

She was the only woman included in a major retrospective of his.

Neither has Bu**sh**, but that's because he wasn't.

I am one of those who believe that he was not elected in 2000 or 2004

Get in, let's roll!

someone other than the Joker, the Riddler, CatWoman and the Penquin

neither looks grey, exhausted or wrinkled.

Go here:

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/fdrpho50.html

I was referring to Condoleezza

:-)

I always feel upbeat after listening to their speeches, reading their views on living, I am hoping that Obama can do this for us now,
it's been a long time since we have had a man of the people in the White House, not an actor, not a wealthy businessman not the former owner of a baseball team but a leader who relates to us, the every day people.

but he IS an actor and a politician. He does not get into fights he does not need to get into. He's a very crafty politician. He knows how the system works.

That makes him FAR less an idealist/Kennedy-esque optimist in my eyes, but, perhaps ultimately, a better president.

His wavering on FISA is not cool. He does have a record of dodging fights where he should have taken a stand and FISA is one of them.

I believe he's a good candidate, I also think that some of his positions like FISA are more political savvy than
based on principle which I believe the country must come first, party and your cronies must come second. Also I
would like to see sound political advisers not yes men in his cabinet.

Just Kidding! ;)

Have you sent this to Obama ? I think he needs some help on that FISA decision vote. :eyes:

I am hoping that he will spend some time studying this, because right now I think of his position as a fumble but it's not half-time yet

but he may stop this with a filibuster which would be fine with me.

Thank you for this thread and I would like to add this one about the "New Deal". We are now facing similar problems but with a complete opposite reaction from the White House and Congress.

http://www.mhric.org/fdr/chat2.html
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT DELIVERED BY RADIO FROM THE WHITE HOUSE
May 7, 1933

On a Sunday night a week after my Inauguration I used the radio to tell you about the banking crisis and the measures we were taking to meet it. I think that in that way I made clear to the country various facts that might otherwise have been misunderstood and in general provided a means of understanding which did much to restore confidence.

Tonight, eight weeks later, I come for the second time to give you my report -- in the same spirit and by the same means to tell you about what we have been doing and what we are planning to do.

Two months ago we were facing serious problems. The country was dying by inches. It was dying because trade and commerce had declined to dangerously low levels; prices for basic commodities were such as to destroy the value of the assets of national institutions such as banks, savings banks, insurance companies, and others. These institutions, because of their great needs, were foreclosing mortgages, calling loans, refusing credit. Thus there was actually in process of destruction the property of millions of people who had borrowed money on that property in terms of dollars which had had an entirely different value from the level of March, 1933. That situation in that crisis did not call for any complicated consideration of economic panaceas or fancy plans. We were faced by a condition and not a theory.

There were just two alternatives: The first was to allow the foreclosures to continue, credit to be withheld and money to go into hiding, and thus forcing liquidation and bankruptcy of banks, railroads and insurance companies and a recapitalizing of all business and all property on a lower level. This alternative meant a continuation of what is loosely called "deflation", the net result of which would have been extraordinary hardship on all property owners and, incidentally, extraordinary hardships on all persons working for wages through an increase in unemployment and a further reduction of the wage scale.

It is easy to see that the result of this course would have not only economic effects of a very serious nature but social results that might bring incalculable harm. Even before I was inaugurated I came to the conclusion that such a policy was too much to ask the American people to bear. It involved not only a further loss of homes, farms, savings and wages but also a loss of spiritual values -- the loss of that sense of security for the present and the future so necessary to the peace and contentment of the individual and of his family. When you destroy these things you will find it difficult to establish confidence of any sort in the future. It was clear that mere appeals from Washington for confidence and the mere lending of more money to shaky institutions could not stop this downward course. A prompt program applied as quickly as possible seemed to me not only justified but imperative to our national security. The Congress, and when I say Congress I mean the members of both political parties, fully understood this and gave me generous and intelligent support. The members of Congress realized that the methods of normal times had to be replaced in the emergency by measures which were suited to the serious and pressing requirements of the moment. There was no actual surrender of power, Congress still retained its constitutional authority and no one has the slightest desire to change the balance of these powers. The function of Congress is to decide what has to be done and to select the appropriate agency to carry out its will. This policy it has strictly adhered to. The only thing that has been happening has been to designate the President as the agency to carry out certain of the purposes of the Congress. This was constitutional and in keeping with the past American tradition.

The legislation which has been passed or in the process of enactment can properly be considered as part of a well-grounded plan....

he was right on the money on the mortgage and bank crisis very similar to what we are facing now.