Did You Know That Pretty Much Everybody Agrees That The New Deal Failed?

[BlooInBloo]

If not, you haven't been watching your daily dose of faux news:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/big-failure-by-digby-my-god_08.html

My God. Just when you think the Democrats really are as crazed and stupid as Republicans, you see this, and realize they are juvenile amateurs by comparison:

BRIT HUME: That's right. Well, then, the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed. The debate is over why it failed. People on the left believe it failed because Roosevelt, at the end of the day, really didn't do enough spending, that it simply wasn't spending -- he was not spending, whether deficit spending or not, on a scale grand enough to lift the damaged U.S. economy out of that depression.....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200901080005?f=h_latest">Read here for the full rundown on why Brit Hume's mendacity is approaching Holocaust denial territory. Talk about intellectual violence.

The conservative elite appear to have decided on a strategy of making Obama's recovery plan fail so that they can blame the Democrats, seize power and start a world war.

I keep thinking I can't be any more shocked by their audacity. But they always exceed my expectations.

There's a lesson to be learned from her last two sentences.


EDIT: Forgot ellipses. And bold.

[alsame]

1. Gee, I guess everything I learned in school was wrong. It's a good

thing we have Faux to re-educate us.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. It's not a new Depression, it's a continuation of the old one.

Everyone knows that.

[shadowknows69]

3. It didn't fail, it was murdered.

[Terran]

4. good god

That is awesome in its deliberate stupidity. Audacity indeed...

[MichiganVote]

5. It didn't fail my ancestors. But it sure screwed the wealthy.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

6. This is a spoof, isn't it?

You got this from The Onion, right?

Or you're smoking that funny green stuff again. The, what is it, oregano?

No one is this stupid. And no one would ever say anything like this in public because they know that they'd be labeled "stupid."

Good one.

So, where'd you get it?

[BlooInBloo]

16. It really, really seems like that, doesn't it?

[dysfunctional press]

7. so says brit hume...'nuf said.

:eyes:

does anyone actually pay any attention to anything that farts forth from his ass face?

[RoyGBiv]

8. What's truly scary ...

Is a lot of people who call themselves liberal or progressive think that as well. Worse, some express opinions that are derived from the supposition that the New Deal failed and don't even realize it.

Obama is going to need a wide berth and support in trying times when all seems to be going wrong if he's going to succeed in any way with all this. Or, he's simply going to have to suck it up and do what is unpopular anyway, which is where I suspect he'll go. Roosevelt was pilloried in his day during the first 4-6 years of his administration, in part because many failed to see that deep seeded problems required long-term, forward-thinking solutions as well as some plain ol' experimentation.

[JuniperLea]

9. The Audacity of Stupidity...

I'm so sick of the stupid I could spit.

This would be re-writing history, but the knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who will believe this never understood the history to begin with.

[mod mom]

10. revisionist history repuke style-probably this has something to do w it: Coup against FDR

1934: The Plot Against America

DEPARTMENTNo CommentBYScott Horton
PUBLISHEDJuly 28, 2007

I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to this, a not-to-miss program on the BBC this morning, accessible over the next several days by internet. It’s the story of the Plot Against America. I don’t mean the Philip Roth novel, nor even the Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here, but rather the historical events upon which these two works of fiction were based.

In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. Roth’s novel is developed from several strands of this factual account; he assumed the plot is actually carried out, whereas in fact an alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved a retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been made available.

The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was of course deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier under Chancellor Aldoph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government.

Prescott Bush, of course, went on to service as a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, and his son, George H.W. Bush emerged from World War II as a hero.

-snip

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651



The Whitehouse Coup
Monday 23 July 2007



The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

WHENEVER THEY DISS FDR, I'M GLAD TO BRING THIS LITTLE KNOWN HISTORY INTO THE SPOTLIGHT! AGAIN, BUSH FAMILY CONNECTED!

[The Doctor.]

24. One more reason we cannot allow Bush to escape justice...

Had Prescott been appropriately prosecuted and stripped of privilege, his progeny would not have had the opportunity to wreak further harm on America.... and the world.

[mod mom]

27. Exactly. More recently, Clinton's failure to expose BCCI/ Iran Contra also would have

prevented BFEE from reeking havoc on the world. NO MORE!!!! We must expose this cancer for what it is!

[Greyhound]

30. One curious thing; "Federal investigators" did not uncover the plot,

the man they picked to lead the military aspect, General Smedly Butler (two-time Medal of Honor recipient) exposed it and turned them in.

I wonder why they would say that?

[mod mom]

32. Yes, the BBC report discusses him in length, you even hear old clips of the hearing:

from wiki:

Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti-interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket. His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

In 1934, he informed the United States Congress that a group of wealthy industrialists had plotted a military coup known as the Business Plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[ogneopasno]

11. Kick to save links.

[tularetom]

12. Yes, and labor unions are bad for workers too

That's been pounded into our heads for the last thirty years to the point where even union members applauded when St Ronnie busted the air traffic controllers in the early 80's.

[BlooInBloo]

17. There's surely a long year ahead of us, but this will certainly be in the running...

For the Up-Is-Down award for the year, I think.

[bananas]

13. "making Obama's recovery plan fail so that they can ... start a world war"

"The conservative elite appear to have decided on a strategy of making Obama's recovery plan fail so that they can blame the Democrats, seize power and start a world war."

[Hannah Bell]

14. Hume = Tool. Pretty much synonymous.

Another prevaricating scion of the ruling clASS. Virginia Mafia branch.


Burr Harrison m. Sarah Burdette
..Thomas Harrison m. Sythia Elizabeth Short
..Burr Harrison m. Mary Ann Barnes
..Sarah Harrison m. Levin Powell
..Burr Powell m. Catherine Brooke
|.George Cuthbert Powell m. Marietta Fauntleroy Turner
| .Virginia Cuthbert Powell m. Charles Minnigerode
| .George Carter Minnigerode m. Helen Louise Galt
| .Virginia Powell Minnigerode m. George Graham Hume
| .ALEXANDER BRITTON HUME (b. 1943), journalist

[Caliman73]

15. The New Deal did not fail

That it even did half of what it did is a success given that the moneyed interests sought to destroy it from any and every imaginable angle. Of course they are still at work today and will throw out whatever garbage will distract us from the goal of making this nation live up to the promises made in the founding documents.

I don't think there is any limit to what the elite will do to preserve their wealth short of destroying everything. Hell they might even do that, though not on purpose, but on the mistaken belief that their power and money can shield them from ultimate destruction. Perhaps in the days before Nuclear arms, but those days are long gone. What good are riches when the producers and means of production have been destroyed.

[earthlover]

18. Hume: the only thing we have to fear is hope itself!

[bstender]

19. debateable

lots of legitimate debate on the causes and cures for the great depression of course. i personally think massive spending is a recipe for massive corruption. and in fact, it didnt really work so it's hard to accept the idea that more of the same would work better. the current situation is similar and different, but the spending they've done so far is a complete boondoggle wealth transfer guaranteed to prolong the recession, maybe even turn it into a depression. i definately dont want to see any more of that. spending on work programs is a lot easier to swallow, at least it will get a little closer to the actual people paying for it, but i have no illusions that it will cure the recession. the recession has to work itself out, and it will if left to do so. but they wont, they will create fear and milk it for every dollar they can extort from the gullible taxpayers always hoping for big brother to fix things for them. just the way they like us to be: ignorant and dependent.

[BlooInBloo]

20. Hm. I thought you were just supposed to tell us how much longer winter would last.

[The Doctor.]

25. "BS Tender"?

That's a good one.

It really will depend on transparency here, and so far it looks like there will finally be some.

[Madison knows]

21. Actually, the New Deal probably saved this country from sliding into communism.

Those were real desperate times. And that possibility actually existed.

[applegrove]

22. That second to last paragraph is right on. The neocons and movement conservatives

are at the myth-making one more time.

[UTUSN]

23. Did not KNOW that!1 n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

26. FOX must be using the Truthiness Encyclopedia as a source ...

http://www.wikiality.com/New_Deal

[Burma Jones]

28. They think that since The Onion, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report make stuff up....

that they get to as well.

Really, Satire and conservatives just don't mix.....

[blindpig]

29. It failed not due to it's merits but rather due to opposition

of the rich. It was of course meant to save capitalism from itself. That it brought much relief to suffering Americans cannot be doubted, and that was what saved capitalism. But as soon as the crisis was averted and with the end of WWII the alliance with Communism no longer needed the retrenchment began with the Red Scare and McCarthyism and reaching cruising speed with Reagan. With the true left broken and scattered there was nothing keeping the Democratic Party 'honest' so it drifted towards the right, where the power was. And here we are.

The lesson being as long as capitalism has teeth, money, it will seek ascendancy, for only that will guarantee increased profits. All regulation is temporary as long the beast of capitalism is allowed to live, and for that reason it must be killed.

[Greyhound]

31. Very well said. Reply rec. n/t