Panic On WallStreet

Remember this clown?



So he's concerned about the deficit but not how much comes from the economy naturally? Who hired this buffoon?

In the final moments of this clip, Steve mentions 1937. That's not the first time I've heard that mentioned and it will likely not be the last. So what happened then?

By the spring of 1937, production, profits, and wages had regained their 1929 levels. Unemployment remained high, but it was considerably lower than the 25% rate seen in 1933. In June 1937, some of Roosevelt's advisors urged spending cuts to balance the budget. WPA rolls were drastically cut and PWA projects were slowed to a standstill.[3] The American economy took a sharp downturn in mid-1937, lasting for 13 months through most of 1938. Industrial production declined almost 30 per cent and production of durable goods fell even faster.

Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938, rising from 5 million to more than 12 million in early 1938.[4] Manufacturing output fell by 37% from the 1937 peak and was back to 1934 levels.[5] Producers reduced their expenditures on durable goods, and inventories declined, but personal income was only 15% lower than it had been at the peak in 1937. In most sectors, hourly earnings continued to rise throughout the recession, which partly compensated for the reduction in the number of hours worked. As unemployment rose, consumers' expenditures declined, leading to further cutbacks in production.

I've often said that the economy of today is nothing like it was during Roosevelt's tenure as President. However, the very idea of stopping all spending at once in order to balance the budget is a very risky endeavour that I'm sure Santelli knows will likely backfire, he's just too caught up in his faux populist fervor to admit it right now.

Why, Indeed

More Beckerwocky about how we have all been deceived by our teachers.



I would have to say the same reason we weren't taught that Santa and Baby Jesus built a giant tower of cheese on the moon in 1967, and it was actually Australia that attacked us on Sept. 11th 2001 with cargo planes full of Fosters.

If Ignorance Is Bliss...

Then Michelle Bachman is quite possibly the happiest woman on the planet. Of course, with her overly-eager grin and that half-glazed-over look in her eye that is normally indicative of one too many Dirty Martinis at lunch, I just might be overstating the obvious.

Previously, Bachman decided to speak-up on PajamasTV when she heard there was a new flu running about. It's a shame that an elected official doesn't have the mindset of most middle-school children who would have been able to consult Wikipedia to find out who the President was in 1976.

Now, Michelle is at it again. This time she's doing her best to channel Glenn Beck and trashing FDR for something he had no part in.



If you're not sure of how the story really goes, here's what TPM has to say.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office, unemployment was already about 25%. And the tariff referred to here was actually the Smoot-Hawley bill, co-authored by Republicans Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon, and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.

I keep revisiting this notion that the people that Bachman is charged with representing are actually fine, upstanding, and intelligent Americans. Now, more than ever, they need to consider booting Bachman from office. Would you honestly want a seething ignoramous representing you in Washington?

The FDR Angle

Just so that it is out there, I voted for Obama. I knew - yes KNEW - that McCain had no clue what was going on with the country and would destroy more than he could or would create. And I voted for the man that was prepared to step outside the pototypical nonsense that was, and still is, propogated from the Right.

That being said, I would like to say this.

The Right is continually lambasting Roosevelt for the "New Deal", that he somehow had a hand in bringing ruin to the country with his policies. They have gone so far now that the new darling of Fox"News" ( Glenn Beck ) claims that FDR brought "socialism" into the country and that that has worsened our families lives.

Let's take look at this alleged "socialism" that the throngs of ill informed "patriots" claim to see.

Publicly funded parks for them to gather and rant and rave about something that really isn't there - funded by their tax dollars.

Medicare for their grandparents - funded by their tax dollars.

The sidewalks where they were shuffling about, the schools they send their children to, the services they take for granted day in and day out - all paid with mine and your tax dollars.

Should I go on?

But there is more to this nonsense that FDR is somehow now a poison-pill in our presidential history than most will understand.

There was a MASSIVE war going on that we, as citizens, had to take part in. We built, we toiled, we participated. This was done in order to bolster our economy. But there is more that we don't realize when taking part in these discussions with the far Right.

Here's two things that didn't exist back then that have hurt us now:

Credit-Default-Swaps

Mortgage-Backed-Securities

Not only those, but there are people attempting to prove that there is an equal relation between what FDR did in his day and what Obama is attempting to do. But, they are leaving out the fact that we are speaking about two divergent, economic times. They are telling you that the 1930s and 2009 are one and the same. These people have no sense of history on multiple levels.

So, the next time someone attempts to draw equivalency between what FDR did to bolster the economy back then and what the Obama administration is doing now, let them know that these two timeframes are fundamentally different in more ways than we might realize.

The Soft Tyranny Of Revisionist History

I was watching the multual-masturbation interview between Sean Hannity and Mark Levin last night while I was working on some writing. I felt like I needed to take a shower after it was over.

Didn't realize that he was on Fox And Friends earlier in the day. This afforded Levin the opportunity to have Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy give his undercarriage a nice licking.

Media Matters has put this video up today.




It's amazing how well Fox"News" has stayed "on message" with their FDR talking-points.

I've never seen such a coordinated effort by an entire media conglomerate to completely besmirch one of the greatest Presidents of our time.

The underlying theme within not only this video, but all discussions of this nature had by the GOP, Fox personalities, conservative bloggers and pundits, is their struggle to find out why their tilted ideology isn't working.

"Who are we?" is the constant question that they are all asking.

It's not so much a struggle to find their own identity, but a struggle to find a way to provide supplication to themselves. Their massive loses - across the country on multiple political levels, not just in the Presidential election - has turned the entire party on it's ear.

They simply don't know how to act when they are not in the catbird seat.

And, as such, their current position has exposed them to such a degree, that their very words and actions are often-times counter-productive - just look at what Micheal Steele has done to the party.

Levin is a classic example of a political movement that has no convictions to stand on. He has to "reinvent" who he is in order to distance himself from his failed theories and all the hackery that he espoused as "truth".

Part of that is blaming the ills of the country on those that did any and everything within their power to help that same country that Levin, and those like him, has systematically destroyed.