AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Cicerone Imposter wrote:"Sorry, JM. "

Thank you very much. I certainly am very happy to accept your apology.

JM

I would make two points with regard to this. One is that i have no reason to assume that the quote of Mr. Roosevelt is genuine. But, assuming for the sake of discussion that it were, the portion of the Possum's post which you have highlighted is a comment by him, and not one attributable to Mr. Roosevelt. The Possum (the name given him here because he has been here in so many guises before being banned for his over-the-top attacks on other members) is not very well thought of here, and that includes members who can be described as conservative, both because of his posting style and because of his outrageous remarks which he is often unable to substantiate, and outright lies in which he has been caught.

But, for the sake of discussion, i will assume that the Roosevelt quote is valid, and will ignore the Possum's editorial comment, which i consider to be without foundation. Mr. Roosevelt took office in 1933, before Hitler came to power, and when the exact nature of the activities of Stalin and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union were as yet unknown. So when exactly Mr. Roosevelt made such a comment is of particular importance as the context of the remark. The opinion of the Soviet Uni0n was by no means universally bad--Henry Ford was willing to work with them, as well as Armand Hammer. There was a vague theory of industrial production known as Fordism. I say vague because even Ford himself was full of contradictions. He was willing to hire armed goons to deal with sit-in strikers, and to hire scabs to break strikes. At the same time, his was the idea to make affordable automobiles that his factory workers could afford, and to pave vast parking lots next to his plants. His was a paternalistic attitude reminiscent of that of the owners of big mills in the New England and "old" England in the 19th century--opposed to organized labor but fancying themselves as the stern fathers of vast families of wayward children (rather than grown men and women entitled to have their own opinions on what constituted a living wage and decent working conditions).

Marx had always hotly denied that the paradise of the dictatorship of the proletariat would arise in Russia, and preferred to think of this devoutly desired consummation taking place in Germany. Although one may not entertain a high opinion of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov--Lenin--there can be no doubt that from the perspective of a Marxist, he was faithful to the ideology. Therefore, he determined that the socialist paradise could not be erected in Russia until it truly became a proletarian state, and he promulgated the New Economic Plan, which intended to make Russia an industrialized state in which the Marxist ideal could then be founded. It was because of the NEP that Ford was invited to visit the Soviet Union, and Armand Hammer became close friends with Lenin and even resided in the Soviet Union for several yeas in the 1920s (you might know of him from his oil deals which eventually created Occidental Petroleum).

So references to Bolshevism and to the Soviet Union did not then evoke the horror that they later would do. No one then knew about Stalin's deportation of the Kulaks. Contrary to right-wing propaganda, for as bad as it was, it did not result in the deaths of millions--probably about 400,000 died, mostly of famine. Although that sounds horrible enough, Russia had been the largest exporter of grain before 1914, exceeding in those days, the United States and Canada combined. Most of that grain came from the Ukraine. But the civil war between the Whites and the Reds was largely fought over this territory, and the Social Revolutionaries and the Peasants Party had succeeded in handing out the most land to peasants in the Ukraine, before the Bolsheviks ultimately gained power. Therefore, the vast majority of Stalin's alleged Kulaks (from the Russian word for fist, it was a pejorative term for a prosperous peasant) were found in the Ukraine. Russia would never again recover her position as a net exporter of grain, and famine was all too common in the Soviet Union, especially in early days. Armand Hammer first showed up there brokering a grain deal, which is how he became friends with Lenin.

It was not until the show trials of the late 1930s, well into Mr. Roosevelt's second term-- and when most of his "alphabet soup" programs had been already struck down by "those nine old men" on the Supreme Court--that Bolshevism began to have a more universally bad reputation. Nonetheless, the Possum has a certain point, although no one in 1933 would have characterized Roosevelt's programs as fascistic. After all, those people understood that fascism was a right-wing ideology (pacem Okie), and that Mr. Roosevelt's policies were closer to the policies of Lenin's NEP. Ican's hysteria and fulminations against Mr. Obama are over the top, and based in no reality. But his complaints would be nearer the mark if applied to the younger Mr. Roosevelt. (Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., although considered a "radical" by other Republicans, was a Republican, and not a Democrat as Fox once claimed--his younger cousin, Franklin, was, of course a Democrat.) I find it hilarious that people call Mr. Obama a socialist and claim his is the most leftist administration in American history. The palm for that goes to Mr. Roosevelt the younger. But the Congress of 1933 would have signed on to almost anything that Roosevelt came up with in the despair of the times. His NRA (National Recovery Administration) and his WPA (Works Progress Administration) were far closer to Ican's hysteria about the transfer of wealth. The NRA was struck down by the Court in 1935, and in 1936, the Supreme Court held that Mr. Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Act was funded by an unconstitutional tax, and New Dealers began to fear for the WPA, the TVA and Social Security. Personally, i consider that the enabling legislation was at fault, but there can be no doubt that courts, following the lead of the Supremes, became more conservative in their rulings, much to the relief of business men, who felt that they were being robbed to fund a welfare state. Roosevelt then peed in his own Wheaties with his entirely unconstitutional "court packing plan," which not only failed miserably, but which alienated much of the public who had theretofore supported his programs.

The connection to the NSDAP is much less clear. In 1919, Germany was nearly in a state of constant chaos. The popular right-wing line was in two myths--one was the "stab in the back" myth, which held that Weimar politicians had betrayed an army which had never been defeated in the field. This was, of course, a myth because the army had been badly defeated, and because German politicians who had gone to Paris had been promised that they would not be held responsible for events they could not control. Almost all of central and eastern Europe was in chaos, and the French had sent their army, and Czech, Serbian and Greek client armies, out across the map from Bohemia to Turkey to try to end the chaos, which of course resulted in land grabs by most of these armies, or attempts at land grabs. To try to form a bulwark against the Red Army, then in the process of trouncing the White Army in the Ukraine, the largest German Freikorps (originally an 18th century term) was allowed to operate in the Baltic littoral. Right-wing rabble rousers would point to that as evidence that the German army had never really been defeated.

The other myth was that the hyper-inflation and the collapsed economy were the product of the Versailles Treaty. This is the "Versailles Diktat" myth. There are two objections to this which shoot it down unquestionably. The first is that the inflation which plagued Germany began in 1914, before the war even began. German economic scholars writing in the 1980s have produced the documentary evidence that this is so. Not only that, the Weimar Republic took the necessary steps to tend the inflation, revalue the mark, and re-establish a sound economy. Almost all of the legislation which is credit to the NSDAP that stabilized the German economy was actually passed by Weimar, and was in place before the NSDAP ever took control of the Reichstag. The hyper-inflation had ended before Hitler got out of prison. The second objection is that the Germans never actually paid the reparations which were imposed on them. They paid somewhat less than 25% of the bill, and about 80% of what they did pay had been in kind "payments" which were actually physical assets seized by the Allies before Weimar stabilized the political situation. The Versailles Diktat myth is so powerful that it is still taught in high school and even college history courses in the west, although it has long been justifiably discredited by European historians. That is in large measure the fault of John Maynard Keynes. He was a participant in Lloyd George's commission to the Paris Peace Conference, and began to pout when no one would listen to him. He went home before the Conference ended, and wrote a book predicting the economic collapse of German as a result of the treaty. People thought he was pretty damned slick because of that, but people so rarely value such opinions based upon real world conditions. The heavy inflation of 1914-1916 gave way to runaway inflation in 1917 with the enormous expenses resulting from the continued useless, bloody offensives around Verdun and in Flanders. By the time the armistice was signed in 1918, the German economy had already collapsed, and hyper-inflation was already a reality before the Allied commissions met in Paris. Keynes, who was truly brilliant in economics, knew squat about politics (which is why Lloyd George and everyone else on the English commission in Paris ignored him), and his "prediction" was actually only a description of what had already happened, which he then pettishly chose to blame on the Versailles Treaty. The main reason that the Versailles Diktat myth still gets taught in the west was because it was already believe in the West, even before anyone had ever heard of Hitler.

In those chaotic days, when sailors from the Imperial fleet raised the red banners, and fought right-wing Freikorps members in the streets with rifles and machine guns, one small party emerged which attempted an amalgam of left-wing policies and right-wing principles. This was the German Workers Party, the acronmym in German for which was the DAP. If one reads the "25 Point National Socialist Program" published in 1920, before anyone ever heard of Hitler, one can see what a witches brew it was. It was anti-parliamentary, pan-Germanic nationalist and surpemacist, racist, collectivist, promoted eugenics, antisemitism and anti-communism, and denounced economic liberalism and political liberalism--and, finally, it called for totalitarianism to achieve its ends. Hitler became involved because he was still in the Bavarian Army, and was sent to investigate the DAP. He argued their program with party members, and they were impressed enough to invite him to join. He was given the propaganda portfolio. It is small wonder, then, that his Mein Kampf convinced Okie that he was a dangerous leftist ideologue. What he was, actually, and the only thing he was ever good at, was as a gutter politician. His book was merely the equivalent of campaign promises, designed to lure in those who saw something in the DAP program which they liked. There is little reason to believe that any part of it described the policies he intended to implement, other than the invasion of the Ukraine. In 1920, before Hitler was locked up, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Anyone familiar with the history of socialism will known that nationalism and ethnocentrism are anathema to socialist and Marxist principles--and this is one of the reasons that Okie is so deluded. The DAP started soup kitchens, a very real need in 1920, and "make-work" public work projects to provide employment for some of the millions of soldiers who had come home and could find no work. Comparing Mr. Roosevelt's CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to this program is as close as anyone can reasonably come to a similarity between Roosevelt's programs and the NSDAP--and it's a damned weak link.

To finish the story, the Freikorps became street bullies who battled in the streets on behalf of political parties. One such Freikorps group, the Sturmabteilung, or SA, which means the "storm battalion," or "assault detachment." The SA was founded in 1919, before the DAP was founded. The origin of the SA was in the special assault units formed in the Imperial armies in 1915, but it became a political organization in 1919--right-wing soldiers who were looking for a party affiliation, and who fought the "reds" in the streets. They first became affiliated with Hitler in his attempts at mass meetings in Munich (the capital of Bavaria) in 1919, and in 1920, when the 25 points of the DAP were being disseminated, the SA, or "Brownshirts" would beat up any hecklers who tried to shout Hitler down in his public meetings. One of the early leaders of the SA was Herman Goering. Goering was a genuine war hero, a fighter ace, whose mentor in the Imperial Air Force had been Manfred von Richtoffen, and who took command of the Red Baron's "flying circus" when Richtoffen was shot down. He was a very visible public hero, and Hitler capitalized on this. Hitler got Hans Klintzsch to take over the SA--he was a former naval officer, and he turned it into a notorious right wing hit squad, like the Organization Counsul, of which he had been a member. Klintzsch taught the SA the murderous techniques they would need in the street fights which were an inevitable feature of German politics in those days--they reveled in their trouncing of opponents during mass meetings. Then the SA was taken over by Ernst Röhm,who was very popular, and who was probably also homosexual. He surrounded himself by an inner leardership which he recruited from among his homosexual bully boy friends, most of whom were bouncers in gay nightclubs. Eventually, Hitler decided he needed to get rid of Röhm and the SA, and he already had the SS in place. Ironically, Goering was one of the architects of the "night of the Long Knives" when the SS put the SA out of business in 1934, when Hitler was safely in power, the Enabling Act had been passed, and the SA was no longer needed, and had in fact become an embarrassment, as it became more widely known that so many members in leadership positions were homosexual. The NSDAP had no use for homosexuals, and they were the first people rounded up for their concentration camps.

I've written here many times about the parliamentary maneouvers which Hitler used to take power. But to dispose of Okie's thesis, allow me to point out that there are two types of compaign promises. The kind with which we are familiar are publically made, and Mein Kampf was in the nature of such promises. It is important to remember that Hitler was the propaganda chief of the DAP when he wrote that. These are the promises which really mean nothing, and are only made to attract public support. The other type of campaign promises are made behind closed doors to money men--to industrialists, bankers and financiers. These are the kind of campaign promises of which the public never hears, and which are always kept. They get the money the politician needs to run his campaign and support his party (and this is precisely what Hitler and the NSDAP did), and those promises are kept so that the money men won't turn off the tap. The industrialists and bankers who supported Hitler in the early 1930s got the plum government contracts when the Enabling Act was passed and the NSDAP began the process of destroying and outlawing all other political parties. No one with any real knowledge of the period and the actions of Hitler and the NSDAP will have any doubt about the right-wing and fascist character of his true policies and goals.

So, i would agree that Mr. Roosevelt's policies looked a lot like Lenin's NEP, and bore a faint resemblance to some DAP policies. But Roosevelt was a leftist, and had no political goals to match Hitler's, and made no deals with bankers and industrialists as Hitler did. Wealty Republicans in the 1930s made a point of attending public gatherings where Roosevelt was to speak so that they could hiss and boo and heckle him. They hated him. There was nothing remotely ethnocentric about Lenin's policies, and he abhored antisemitism--and ethnocentrism and antisemitism were core values of the NSDAP. Lenin, in fact, took positive steps to prevent antisemitism, and brought Felix Dzerzhinsky up short when he suggested that the CHEKA (the forerunner of the KGB) should hunt down "Jew bankers."

Mr. Roosevelt had no policy of ethnocentrism. He had no policy of antisemitism. He was not an anti-parliamentarian, although he rode rough-shod over a Congress which told him: "Whip us, beat us, make us write bad checks!" He was not only not opposed to liberal politics and economics, he practiced liberal politics and economics. He did not support or publicly endorse eugenics. How he felt about collectivism i couldn't say, but i don't think the AAA intended to establish agricultural collectivism. There is no evidence that he was racist, and the blacks of America looked up to him, and especially to Eleanor, as their best hope to gain the civil rights to which they were entitled (whether or not that was justified, i am not prepared to say). There is absolutely no basis of which i know to claim that Mr. Roosevelt believed in political totalitarianism. And that covers the core principles of the NSDAP's 25 points.

To suggest that Mr. Roosevelt resembled the Leninist Soviet Union (and especially as no one in the west yet knew what the Stalinist Soviet Union would look like) is not all that unreasonable. To suggest that his policies resembled those of the DAP or the NSDAP is much like observing that the sun shines on Berlin and the sun shines on Washington, so that, therefore, they must be identical.

Now, Mr. Morrison, i've answered your question. Will you do me the courtesy of answering my two questions, in light of my response? They only require simple yes or no answers, and, as Cyclo has observed, you didn't really answer them.

T
K
One hell of a write up

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse addressed the Senate yesterday on the issue of torture. This is the entry from the Congressional Record:

[Congressional Record: June 9, 2009 (Senate)]
[Page S6359-S6361]




TORTURE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to now change the subject and
speak about an incident that is not part of anybody's proud heritage
and that is the evidence we have recently heard about America's descent
into torture. I know it is an awkward subject to talk about, an awkward
subject to think about. On the one hand, we, as Americans, love our
country, we hate the violence that has been done to us, and we want
more than anything to protect our people from attacks. On the other
hand, torture is wrong and we have known it and behaved accordingly in
far worse circumstances than now.

When Washington's troops hid in the snows of Valley Forge from a
superior British force bent on their destruction, we did not torture.
When our capital city was occupied and our Capitol burned by troops of
the world's greatest naval power, we did not torture. When Nazi powers
threatened our freedom in one hemisphere and Japanese aircraft
destroyed much of our Pacific fleet in the other, we did not torture.
Indeed, even when Americans took arms against Americans in our bloody
Civil War, we did not torture.

I know this is not easy. Our instincts to protect our country are set
against our historic principles and our knowledge of right versus
wrong. It is all made more difficult by how much that is untrue, how
much that is misleading, and how much that is irrelevant have crowded
into this discussion. It is hard enough to address this issue without
being ensnared in a welter of deception.

To try to clarify it, I wish to say a few things. The first is that I
see three issues we need to grapple with. The first is the torture
itself: What did Americans do? In what conditions of humanity and
hygiene were the techniques applied? With what intensity and duration?
Are our preconceptions about what was done based on the sanitized
descriptions of techniques justified? Or was the actuality far worse?
Were the carefully described predicates for the torture techniques and
the limitations on their use followed in practice? Or did the torture
exceed the predicates and bounds of the Office of Legal Counsel
opinions?

We do know this. We do know that Director Panetta of the CIA recently
filed an affidavit in a U.S. Federal court saying this:

These descriptions--

He is referring to descriptions of EITs--enhanced interrogation
techniques--the torture techniques.

He says in his sworn affidavit:

These descriptions, however, are of EITs as applied in
actual operations and are of a qualitatively different nature
than the EIT descriptions in the abstract contained in the
OLC memoranda.


The words ``as applied'' and ``in the abstract'' are emphasized in
the text.

These descriptions, however, are of EITs as applied in
actual operations and are of a qualitatively different nature
than the EIT descriptions in the abstract contained in the
OLC memoranda.


The questions go on: What was the role of private contractors? Why
did they need to be involved? And did their peculiar motivations
influence what was done? Ultimately, was it successful? Did it generate
the immediately actionable intelligence protecting America from
immediate threats that it had been sold as producing? How did the
torture techniques stack up against professional interrogation?

Well, that is a significant array of questions all on its own, and we
intend to answer them in the Senate Intelligence Committee under the
leadership of Chairman Feinstein, expanding on work already done,
thanks to the

[[Page S6360]]

previous leadership of Chairman Rockefeller.

There is another set of questions around how this was allowed to
happen. When one knows that America has over and over prosecuted
waterboarding, both as crime and as war crime; when one knows that the
Reagan Department of Justice convicted and imprisoned a Texas sheriff
for waterboarding prisoners; when one sees no mention of this history
in the lengthy opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ that
cleared the waterboarding--no mention whatsoever; when assertions of
fact made in those OLC opinions prove to be not only false but provably
false from open source information available at the time; when one
reads Chairman Levin's excellent Armed Services Committee reports on
what happened at the Department of Defense, it is hard not to wonder
what went wrong. Was a fix put in? And, if so, how? A lot of damage was
done within the American institutions of government to allow this to
happen.

If American democracy is important, damage to her institutions is
important and needs to be understood. Much of this damage was done to
one of America's greatest institutions--the U.S. Department of Justice.
I am confident the Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Leahy's
leadership, will assure that we understand and repair that damage and
protect America against it ever happening again.

Finally--and I am very sorry to say this--but there has been a
campaign of falsehood about this whole sorry episode. It has disserved
the American public. As I said earlier, facing up to the questions of
our use of torture is hard enough. It is worse when people are misled
and don't know the whole truth and so can't form an informed opinion
and instead quarrel over irrelevancies and false premises. Much
debunking of falsehood remains to be done but cannot be done now
because the accurate and complete information is classified.

From open source and released information, here are some of the
falsehoods that have been already debunked. I will warn you the record
is bad, and the presumption of truth that executive officials and
agencies should ordinarily enjoy is now hard to justify. We have been
misled about nearly every aspect of this program.

President Bush told us ``America does not torture'' while authorizing
conduct that America itself has prosecuted as crime and war crime, as
torture.

Vice President Cheney agreed in an interview that waterboarding was
like ``a dunk in the water'' when it was actually a technique of
torture from the Spanish Inquisition to Cambodia's killing fields.

John Yoo, who wrote the original torture opinions, told Esquire
magazine that waterboarding was only done three times. Public reports
now indicate that just two detainees were waterboarded 83 times and 183
times. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed reportedly was waterboarded 183 times. A
former CIA official had told ABC News: ``KSM lasted the longest on the
waterboard--about a minute and a half--but once he broke, it never had
to be used again.''

We were told that waterboarding was determined to be legal, but we
were not told how badly the law was ignored and manipulated by the
Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, nor were we told how
furiously government and military lawyers tried to reject the defective
OLC opinions.

We were told we couldn't second guess the brave CIA officers who did
this unpleasant duty, and then we found out that the program was led by
private contractors with no real interrogation experience.

Former CIA Director Hayden and former Attorney General Mukasey wrote
that military interrogators need the Army Field Manual to restrain
abuse by them, a limitation not needed by the experienced experts at
the CIA.

Let's look at that. The Army Field Manual is a code of honor, as
reflected by General Petraeus' May 10, 2000, letter to the troops in
Iraq. He wrote this:

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we
sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain
information from the enemy. They would be wrong. . . . In
fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards
laid out in the Army Field Manual . . . shows that the
techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in
eliciting information from detainees.

We are indeed warriors. . . . What sets us apart from our
enemies in this fight, however, is how we behave. In
everything we do, we must observe the standards and values
that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with
dignity and respect.


Military and FBI interrogators, such as Matthew Alexander, Steve
Keinman, and Ali Soufan, it appears, are the true professionals. We
know now that the ``experienced interrogators'' referenced by Hayden
and Mukasey had actually little to no experience.

Philip Zelikow, who served in the State Department under the Bush
administration, testified in a subcommittee that I chaired. He said the
CIA ``had no significant institutional capability to question enemy
captives'' and ``improvised'' their program of ``cooly calculated
dehumanizing abuse and physical torment.'' In fact, the CIA cobbled its
program together from techniques used by the SERE Program, designed to
prepare captured U.S. military personnel for interrogation by tyrant
regimes who torture not to generate intelligence but to generate
propaganda.

Colonel Kleinman submitted testimony for our hearing, in which he
stated:

These individuals were retired military psychologists who,
while having extensive experience in SERE (survival, evasion,
resistance, and escape) training, collectively possessed
absolutely no firsthand experience in the interrogation of
foreign nationals for intelligence purposes.


To the proud, experienced, and successful interrogators of the
military and the FBI, I believe Judge Mukasey and General Hayden owe an
apology.

Finally, we were told that torturing detainees was justified by
American lives saved--saved as a result of actionable intelligence
produced on the waterboard. That is the clincher, they stay--lives
saved at the price of a little unpleasantness. But is it true? That is
far from clear.

FBI Director Mueller has said he is unaware of any evidence that
waterboarding produced actionable information. Nothing I have seen
convinces me otherwise. The examples we have been able to investigate--
for instance, of Abu Zubaida providing critical intelligence on Khalid
Shaik Mohammed and Jose Padilla--turned out to be false. The
information was obtained by regular professional interrogators before
waterboarding was even authorized.

As recently as May 10, our former Vice President went on a television
show to relate that the interrogation process we had in place produced
from certain key individuals, such as Abu Zubaida--he named him
specifically--actionable information. Well, we had a hearing inquiring
into that, and we produced the testimony of the FBI agent who actually
conducted those interrogations.

Here is what happened. Abu Zubaida was injured in a firefight and
captured in Afghanistan. He was flown to an undisclosed location for
interrogation. The first round of interrogation conducted
professionally by Soufan and his assistant from the CIA produced such
significant intelligence information that a jet with doctors on it was
scrambled from Langley--from this area--and flown to the undisclosed
location so that the best medical care could be provided to Abu Zubaida
so he could continue to talk. That was the first round of information.

In the second interrogation, conducted consistent with professional
interrogation techniques, Abu Zubaida disclosed that the mastermind of
the 9/11 attacks was Khalid Shaik Mohammed. That may be the apex piece of
intelligence information we have obtained during the course of the
conflict.

At that point, the private contractors arrived, and for some reason
Abu Zubaida was handed over to them so they could apply their enhanced
interrogation techniques. Ali Soufan testified that at that point they
got no further information. What triggered the first round of
information was that Soufan knew about Zubaida's pet name that his
mother used for him. When he used that nickname, Zubaida fell apart. He
didn't know how to defend himself, and he began to disclose this very
important information.

Knowledge, outwitting people, playing on mental weaknesses, taking
advantage of our skills as Americans--that is what worked and got the
information about Mohammed. He was

[[Page S6361]]

turned over to the private contractors for enhanced techniques and they
got nothing.

It was then determined that because the interrogation had become
unproductive, he should be returned to the FBI agent and CIA agent who
had twice interrogated him. It was in the third round that he disclosed
information about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber, which was
so important that Attorney General Ashcroft held a press conference, I
believe in Moscow, to celebrate the discovery of this information.
Again, for some reason, he was turned back again to the private
contractors for the application of more abusive techniques, and again
the flow of information stopped.

For a third time, he was returned to the FBI and CIA agents again for
professional interrogation, but by now he had been so compromised by
the techniques, even they were unsuccessful in getting further
information.

As best as I have been able to determine, for the remaining sessions
of 83 waterboardings that have been disclosed as being associated with
this interrogation, no further actionable information was obtained. Yet
the story has been exactly the opposite. The story over and over has
been that once you got these guys out of the hands of the FBI and the
military amateurs and into the hands of the trained CIA professionals,
who can use the tougher techniques, that is when you get the
information. In this case, at least, the exact opposite was the truth,
and this was a case cited by the Vice President by name.

The costs of this could be high. There has been no accounting of the
wild goose chases our national security personnel may have been sent on
by false statements made by torture victims seeking to end their agony;
no accounting of intelligence lost if other sources held back from
dealing with us after our dissent into what Vice President Cheney
refers to as the ``dark side''; no accounting of the harm to our
national standing or our international good will from this program; no
accounting of the benefit to our enemies' standing--particularly as
measured in militant recruitment or fundraising; and no accounting of
the impact this program had on information sharing with foreign
governments whose laws prohibit such mistreatment.

At the heart of all these falsehoods lies a particular and specific
problem: The ``declassifiers'' in the U.S. Government are all in the
executive branch. No Senator can declassify, and the procedure for the
Senate as an institution to declassify something is so cumbersome that
it has never been used. Certain executive branch officials, on the
other hand, are at liberty to divulge classified information. When it
comes out of their mouth, it is declassified because they are
declassified. Its very utterance by those requisite officials is a
declassification. What an institutional advantage. The executive branch
can use, and has used, that one-sided advantage to spread assertions
that either aren't true at all or may be technically true but only on a
strained, narrow interpretation that is omitted, leaving a false
impression, or that sometimes simply supports one side of an argument
that has two sides--but the other side is one they don't want to face
up to and don't declassify.

One can hope the Obama administration will be more honorable. I
suspect and believe they will be. But the fact is that a cudgel that so
lends itself to abuse will some day again be abused, and we should find
a way to correct that imbalance. It is intensely frustrating to have
access to classified information that proves a lie and not be able to
prove that lie. It does not serve America well for Senators to be in
that position.

Chairman Levin has already done excellent work in the Armed Services
Committee, and there is no reason to believe that good work won't
continue. Chairman Rockefeller has done excellent work in the
Intelligence Committee, and his successor, Senator Feinstein, has
picked up the mantle and continues forward with energy and
determination. We can be proud of what she is doing. Chairman Leahy has
begun good work in the Judiciary Committee, and more will ensue when we
see the report of the Department of Justice Office of Professional
Responsibility about what went wrong in the Office of Legal Counsel.
The new administration, I hope and expect, is itself drilling down to
the details of this sordid episode and not letting themselves be fobbed
off with summaries or abridged editions. In short, a lot is going on,
and a lot should be going on.

While it is going on, I want my colleagues and the American public to
know that measured against the information I have been able to gain
access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line
about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its
dimensions.

I ask that my colleagues be patient and be prepared to listen to the
evidence when all is said and done before they wrap themselves in that
story line.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I know the hour is late. I appreciate
his courtesy.


http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_cr/s060909.html

Ican wrote:

FOUR OF OBAMA'S VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW
(1) Obama is transfering wealth from those who have lawfully earned it to those who have not lawfully earned it.
(2) Obama is trying to deny corporate bond holders of bankrupt corporations their full equity in those bonds, BEFORE distributing corporate assets to any other corporate persons including employees.
(3) Obama is refusing to allow many corporate receivers of federal loans to pay back those loans before he permits them to.
(4) Obama is forcing selected car dealers to close their businesses.
Quote:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Quote:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Are "we more disposed to suffer, while [Obama's] evils are sufferable, than to right" ourselves by removing Obama from office, while the cost to accomplish that objective remains relatively low?

Cyclops is really highly excrementious. And, I fear that they do not allow evidence like the material below to cross the borders of the most Liberal town in the USA--Berkeley--

Note:





Gallup: Obama losing edge on spending, deficitposted at 12:15 pm on June 8, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly Gallup’s latest polling shows that the American electorate has begun to lose patience with Obamanomics. While Barack Obama continues to maintain high personal approval ratings, his budgetary policies have lost the majority. For the first time, Obama has more people disapproving of his spending and deficit plans than approving:
While 67% of Americans view President Barack Obama favorably, his overall job approval rating and his ratings on specific areas are less positive. At the low end of the spectrum, only 45% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of federal spending, and 46% of his handling of the federal budget deficit. …
Obama’s job approval rating for his handling of the economy has dropped from 59% in February to 55% today, while his disapproval rating has risen by 12 points, from 30% to 42%. The fact that Obama’s approval on the economy has become more negative over this time period is of interest, given that Gallup’s measure of consumer mood has become more positive between March and the current time. …
Gallup has measured Obama’s handling of the federal budget deficit only twice " once in March and again in the current survey " and his ratings have become slightly more negative over that time. The percentage of Americans approving has dropped by three points, while the percentage disapproving has increased by four points.
Thus far, Americans still give Obama majority approval in other areas of his presidency, but all of those approval ratings have begun to erode. That appears to be the normal end of the honeymoon period, as Americans stop patting themselves on the back for having elected Obama, and as they see more of how Obama puts his policies into action. No one expected Obama to maintain his high approval ratings across the board, and crises take their toll on popularity in any case, as all of Obama’s predecessors could tell him.
However, the spending and deficit numbers matter a great deal. Obama has put most of his focus on these two areas, and the future of his presidency and his grand plans to reorganize the American economy depend on steady support in these precise areas. He’s not getting it. A plurality opposes him on his handling of the deficit, which might explain the Goolsbee spin this weekend, attempting to blame Bush for a budget created by Congressional Democrats when they bypassed Bush at the end of his term.
Even worse, a majority now opposes his spending practices, 51%-45%. The latter number comes closer and closer to the base level of his own party, which means Obama is now losing independents on spending. This shows the big opportunity for the GOP in next year’s midterms, when the lack of economic progress from Porkulus will become even more obvious. If they can focus on nothing else other than runaway spending and massive deficits, and the dangers of allowing both to run unchecked in a Democratic-run DC, the GOP can beat a personally popular President and challenge for control of the House, if not the Senate, where the numbers are more difficult.

Mr. Morrison:

You selected a quote from my post. Setanta does not think it is correct.

Mr. Morrison:

You selected a quote from my post. Setanta does not think it is correct.

Before I give you my source, I should explain something to you. If you find it weird that Setanta replied to you about my post, you should know that he fears me and does not have the courage to debate with me directly. That is because I have shown him up so often in the past.

He indicates that I have been banned from these posts. How could that be since I am writing on them? He and some of his friends decided that I was too difficult to debate and when I put them down repeatedly, they resorted to slurs where they posted insulting pictures relating to my name.

I do not think that Setanta will lose his fear of me.

But, let us go on to the substance---

The quote I referred to was taken from P. 121-122 of "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. Now, if Setanta is consistent, he will de nigrate Goldberg in an Ad Hominem. What he cannot do is to show that Goldberg's quote is inaccurate. The ball is in his court.

Quote:

"One of the most poignant ironies here is that a modern-day Hitler or Mussolini would never dismantle the New Deal. To the contrary, he'd redouble the effort. This is not to say that the New Deal was evil or Hitlerian. But the New Deal was a product of the impulses and ideas of its era. And those ideas and impulses are impossible to separate from the fascist moment in Western civilization. According to Harold Ickes, FDR's interior secretary and one of the most important architects of the New Deal, Roosevelt himself privately acknowledged that "what we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an orderly way." It's hard to see how orderliness absolves a policy from the charge of fascism or totalitarianism. Eventually, the similarities had become so tranparent that Ickes had to warn Roosevelt that the public was increasingly inclined "to unconsciously group four names, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt."

The notion that FDR harbored fascist tendencies is vastly more controversial today than it was in the 1930's, primarily because fascism has come to mean Nazism and Nazism means simply evil. Saying, for example, that FDR had a Hilerite fiscal policy just confuses people. But the fascist flavor of the New Deal was not only regularly discussed; it was often cited as evidence in Roosevelt's favor. There was an enormous bipartisan consensus that the Depression required dictatorial and fascistic policies to defeat it. Walter Lippmann, serving as an ambassador for America's liberal elite, told FDR in a private meeting at Warm Springs, "The situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers." Eleanor Roosevelt, too, believed that a "benevolent dictator" might be the only answer for America. And it was hardly lost on the liberal intellectuals swirling around the Roosevelt administration that the enormously popular Benito Mussolini had used the same methods to whip the unruly Italiams into shape. After all, the "New Republic"- the intellectual home of the New Deal- had covered the goings -on in Italy with fascination and, often, admiration.


end of quote

Herr Hinteler wrote:

No. It's called the same way as the Netherlands Radio did: Colville-sur-Mer [cimetière militaire américain].

Did you miss what happened there today, some hours ago?
Quote:
(Reuters) Colville-sur-Mer, France - Barack Obama, US president, paid homage to the heroes of D-Day on Saturday, saying their assault on Normandy’s beaches exactly 65 years ago had helped save the world from evil and tyranny.

Addressing stooped, white-haired veterans, Obama said the second world war represented a special moment in history when nations fought together to battle a murderous ideology.
[... ... ...]
Speaking in a giant US military cemetery at Colleville, where 9,387 American soldiers lie, Obama said the war against Nazi Germany laid the way for years of peace and prosperity. ... ... .

******************************************************************

Does Herr Hinteler know that Obama has no moral authority to make such a speech? He is the President of the USA but he never served our country in the armed forces. What does he know about fighting and saving the world from evil and tyranny.

Setanta wrote:

. Mr. Roosevelt took office in 1933, before Hitler came to power, and when the exact nature of the activities of Stalin and the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union were as yet unknown.
***************************************************************
That is incorrect. 1929( before FDR) Stalin began a new wave of terror sending thousands to the Gulags. But FDR's braintrust were fellow travelers. Most of them were strong left wingers. One, to become Illinois Senator was an exception.

Paul Douglas had seen the Soviets at work. A group of Soviet bank clerks were tried at four o"clock in the afternoon and executed at six.

And, who were the individuals who endorsed the Soviet miracle?

Geroge Counts--a disciple of John Dewey( enough said)

Robert Dunn- from the ACLU

Roger Baldwin!!!!! the founder of the ACLU

Lincoln Steffens--So far left he was off the charts.


Not only was Roosevelt not informed about the Soviet Union, he was led by the fellow travelers to view it as almost benevolent.

Setanta wrote:

-Henry Ford was willing to work with them, as well as Armand Hammer. There was a vague theory of industrial production known as Fordism. I say vague because even Ford himself was full of contradictions. He was willing to hire armed goons to deal with sit-in strikers, and to hire scabs to break strikes. At the same time, his was the idea to make affordable automobiles that his factory workers could afford, and to pave vast parking lots next to his plants. His was a paternalistic attitude reminiscent of that of the owners of big mills in the New England and "old" England in the 19th century--opposed to organized labor but fancying themselves as the stern fathers of vast families of wayward children (rather than grown men and women entitled to have their own opinions on what constituted a living wage and decent working conditions).
************************************************************

Setanta wrote:

-Henry Ford was willing to work with them, as well as Armand Hammer. There was a vague theory of industrial production known as Fordism. I say vague because even Ford himself was full of contradictions. He was willing to hire armed goons to deal with sit-in strikers, and to hire scabs to break strikes. At the same time, his was the idea to make affordable automobiles that his factory workers could afford, and to pave vast parking lots next to his plants. His was a paternalistic attitude reminiscent of that of the owners of big mills in the New England and "old" England in the 19th century--opposed to organized labor but fancying themselves as the stern fathers of vast families of wayward children (rather than grown men and women entitled to have their own opinions on what constituted a living wage and decent working conditions).
************************************************************

I don't know where Setanta got the idea that Ford was willing to work with the Soviets. But his writings EVEN BEFORE HITLER, show that he was anti-Soviet.

Note:

prior to Hitler, Ford made the stereotypical amalgam between the Jews, the Russian Revolution and the labor movement. In the Independent, the Soviet Union was referred to as “the present Jewish government of Russia.”[12]

“There are more Communists in the United States than there are in Soviet Russia. Their aim is the same and their racial character is the same.... The power house of Communist influence and propaganda in the United States is in the Jewish trade unions which, almost without exception, adhere to a Bolshevik program for the respective industries and for the country as a whole” stated the Protocols, the Dearborn Independent and The International Jew.
***************************************************************

Perhaps Setanta needs t0 reread his History. As a matter of fact, Setanta has made many quite avoidable errors in the past. This is why he fears me. He knows I will check on his alleged facts and show were he is mistaken.

Setanta wrote:

Marx had always hotly denied that the paradise of the dictatorship of the proletariat would arise in Russia, and preferred to think of this devoutly desired consummation taking place in Germany. Although one may not entertain a high opinion of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov--Lenin--there can be no doubt that from the perspective of a Marxist, he was faithful to the ideology. Therefore, he determined that the socialist paradise could not be erected in Russia until it truly became a proletarian state, and he promulgated the New Economic Plan, which intended to make Russia an industrialized state in which the Marxist ideal could then be founded. It was because of the NEP that Ford was invited to visit the Soviet Union, and Armand Hammer became close friends with Lenin and even resided in the Soviet Union for several yeas in the 1920s (you might know of him from his oil deals which eventually created Occidental Petroleum).

and

It was Henry Ford who in the 1930s built the Soviet Union's first modern automobile plant (located at Gorki) and which in the 50s and 60s produced the trucks used by the North Vietnamese to carry weapons and munitions for use against Americans.2 At about the same time, Henry Ford was also the most famous of Hitler's foreign backers, and he was rewarded in the 1930s for this long-lasting support with the highest Nazi decoration for foreigners.


*****************************************

My last post shows that although Ford was a business man who would make money where ever he could, he was completely Anti-Soviet.

Setanta attempts to show that Ford was pro-Soviet? Ridiculous!

************************************************************
Now, what about Armand Hammer?

Setanta wrote:

So references to Bolshevism and to the Soviet Union did not then evoke the horror that they later would do. No one then knew about Stalin's deportation of the Kulaks. Contrary to right-wing propaganda, for as bad as it was, it did not result in the deaths of millions--probably about 400,000 died, mostly of famine.
*************************************************************
I don't think that Setanta has ever read--Alexander Solzhenitsyn's indictment of the Soviet killers-in The Gulag Archipelago.

Setanta tosses off the number( source?) 400,000. Only a mere 400,000.

Solshenitzen writes:

"The MULTIMILLION WAVE of dispossessed Kulaks... was nothing less than a tidal wave which cannot be compared to anything in Russian history. They took the head of the family first..and then they watched to make sure that none of the children--fourteen--ten, even six years old. Many of these ended up in the gulag if they had not starved to death before then."

Setanta wrote:

although no one in 1933 would have characterized Roosevelt's programs as fascistic. After all, those people understood that fascism was a right-wing ideology (pacem Okie),

*******************************************************

But this is nonsense. How could fascism be a right-wing ideology when Hitler was espousing left wing values? The Catholic church was certainly right-wing and conservative.

Hitler said "It's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of Science."

I can name twenty left wingers that would say the same thing in the USA.
So Hitler' fascism espoused right wing values?

That view does not hold up when the evidence is viewed.

Hitler's party platform had a concerted appeal to Socialistic and Pupulist economics

such as

a. Abolition of income from interest--no right winger would touch this but
left wingers love it.

b.the total confiscation of war profits--a hard left wing demand.

c. The nationalization of trusts- Can you say left wing Obama?

d. Shared profits with labor---GM, where are you--a left wing not a right wing
initiative

e. the expropriation of land without compensation---We have to protect the
del beetle bug--no right
winger would touch this

f. the expansion of health services under government control.

*************************************************************

The Nazi Party platform doubtlessly inspired the American left--NOT THE RIGHT. The Nazi Party's FASCISM PROCEEDS FROM THE LEFT NOT THE RIGHT.

Setanta wrote:

Ican's hysteria and fulminations against Mr. Obama are over the top, and based in no reality. But his complaints would be nearer the mark if applied to the younger Mr. Roosevelt. (Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., although considered a "radical" by other Republicans, was a Republican, and not a Democrat as Fox once claimed--his younger cousin, Franklin, was, of course a Democrat.) I find it hilarious that people call Mr. Obama a socialist and claim his is the most leftist administration in American history. The palm for that goes to Mr. Roosevelt the younger. But the Congress of 1933 would have signed on to almost anything that Roosevelt came up with in the despair of the times. His NRA (National Recovery Administration) and his WPA (Works Progress Administration) were far closer to Ican's hysteria about the transfer of wealth. The NRA was struck down by the Court in 1935, and in 1936, the Supreme Court held that Mr. Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Act was funded by an unconstitutional tax, and New Dealers began to fear for the WPA, the TVA and Social Security. Personally, i consider that the enabling legislation was at fault, but there can be no doubt that courts, following the lead of the Supremes, became more conservative in their rulings, much to the relief of business men, who felt that they were being robbed to fund a welfare state. Roosevelt then peed in his own Wheaties with his entirely unconstitutional "court packing plan," which not only failed miserably, but which alienated much of the public who had theretofore supported his programs.
************************************************************

Let's take that apart. It is filled with half-truths, exaggerations and errors.

First of all, Setanta says he finds it HILARIOUS that some consider Obama to be a Socialist.

Setanta is easily amused.

There are some who do not agree-Note:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is Obama a socialist?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 18, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009

Socialism, according to Karl Marx, is the transition between capitalism and communism. To achieve communism, Marx says, there must be continuing revolution in which the fundamental principal is: The end justifies the means.

For more than half a century, capitalism in the United States has taken a beating from the socialist revolution. Despite the best efforts of conservatives since the Roosevelt era, socialists have made great strides toward converting the nation to socialism. Apparently, the majority of Americans either fail to recognize the transition, or welcome it. The enthusiastic support for Barack Obama, especially among young people, is abundant evidence.

Obama has declared that he believes every person has a "right" to health care. The Socialist Party USA believes every person has a "right" to health care.

Obama believes that labor unions should be allowed to organize without a secret ballot. The Socialist Party USA calls for unions to be recognized without a secret ballot. (Hear Obama's words here.)

The Socialist Party USA recognizes the "right" of adequate housing for everyone. Obama trained ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) workers to secure mortgages for unqualified people in sufficient numbers to collapse the housing and home-financing industries


The Socialist Party USA believes that "capitalism is fundamentally incompatible" with socialism. For years, Obama worked in Chicago through the Annenberg Challenge, along with Bill Ayers, to funnel more than $50 million to anti-capitalist education projects. In November 2006, Ayers traveled to Venezuela to speak at Hugo Chavez's Education Forum where he railed against "the failings of capitalist education," and praised the "Bolivarian Revolution and the profound reforms in education made by Hugo Chavez."

The Socialist Party USA believes in open borders and six-months residency as the only requirement for U.S. citizenship. Obama marched with illegal aliens in Chicago in support of "comprehensive" immigration reform. Listen to Obama's promises to La Raza in 2007.

The Socialist Party USA calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Obama says, "I will end this war," with never a reference to "winning" or "victory."

The Socialist Party USA calls for the "unconditional disarmament" by the United States. Obama has promised to dramatically reduce defense spending. Listen to his words here.

The Socialist Party USA calls for a "livable guaranteed annual income." Obama trained ACORN members to conduct "Living Wage" campaigns in cities around the country.

The Socialist Party USA calls for a "steeply graduated" tax policy to redistribute wealth. Obama has promised to increase the tax burden on the rich to redistribute wealth to the poor. He revealed his philosophy when answering a question from Joe the plumber, who complained that he was being taxed for his success. Obama said:

It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.
This list of comparisons could be quite long. This is sufficient to reveal an unmistakable similarity between Obama's political beliefs and the beliefs of the Socialist Party USA. The tragedy is that Obama's supporters don't care. In fact, many of his supporters are delighted that he promises to usher in a new era of socialism, and push the memory of capitalism further into history.

Socialists, who are in perpetual revolution, who believe that the end justifies the means, have worked through educational institutions, non-government organizations such as ACORN and by electing socialists to public office to silence teaching the virtues of free enterprise, capitalism, private property, individual responsibility and personal achievement. For nearly two generations, students have been fed a steady diet of socialism under a variety of disguises, including Outcome Based Education, No Child Left Behind, School-to-Work and a host of other "feel good" slogans.

Students and young adults no longer know why capitalism is better than socialism. Like Obama, young people really believe that when government redistributes wealth, "it's good for everybody." They do not realize that wealth redistribution is no substitute for wealth creation. They are never taught that the only way to create wealth is for an individual to combine his energy and intellect with resources to produce a product that improves his life, or for which someone else is willing to pay.

Private property, the accumulation of personal prosperity and individual achievement are anathema to socialism. Socialism sees the individual as nothing more than a cog in a government-run machine designed to ensure equity for all.

Capitalism seeks prosperity; socialism seeks equity. Freedom increases as prosperity increases. In a socialist system, there can be neither.

Roosevelt more Socialistic than Obama? Not if you read the evidence.


Opinion Science Red Letter Daze Blogs

Recent Updates by Topic
aap ABC Cafe architecture business Cornell Library Board digitization lecture library Microsoft Milstein Hall online digital library open access public domain tata university library
Comment on this feature!





Sun Blogs: Borderline Inappropriate
Obama Attacks Teddy Roosevelt
August 2, 2007 - 4:48am
By Bill McMorris
Tags: Borderline Inappropriate, CornellSun.com Exclusive
Barack Obama’s campaign took a surprising turn yesterday as the presidential hopeful used an Iowa campaign stop to smear the reputation of former president Theodore Roosevelt. The freshmen senator from Illinois accused the Bush administration of creating a “second gilded age” by favoring the wealthy over working families.




Obama is of course referring to the late nineteenth-early twentieth century Gilded Age where rich industrialists preyed on the poor. As president, Roosevelt initiated the trust busting movement that broke up various corporations, who had seized monopolistic positions in the business market. Obama’s campaign has vowed to also take on large corporations and unfair marketplaces once elected into office.

There is, however, a large difference between the actions of Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Namely, Roosevelt’s anti-monopoly reform was rooted in capitalism"Obama’s campaign stinks of socialism.

Roosevelt broke up enormous trusts in order to encourage competition in the market. Roosevelt did not place an unequal burden on the moneyed class with the aim of discouraging wealth; rather, his legislation aimed at creating a larger moneyed class by enabling others to enter the capitalistic business market.

Obama’s plans of redistribution are the antithesis of Roosevelt’s reforms. After all, it is impossible for a government program to create wealth"it can only take money away from some and give it to another. If anyone in the business world did what Obama plans to do, it would be called embezzlement. The inevitable result of Obama’s taxation plans is a statist monopoly, in which the government, rather than a corporate trust, decides who will suffer and who will profit in society.

Such policies are destined to fail (e.g. Jimmy Carter’s entire economy, Hitlery Clinton’s Healthcare, etc.) and Obama’s will be no different. If George Bush heralded a second Gilded Age, then Obama will surely follow with a second Great Depression.
*****************************************************************

AGAIN, OBAMA'S PLANS ARE THE ANTITHESIS OF ROOSEVELT'S REFORMS.

But, Setanta either does not know that or is deliberatly twisting the truth.

Setanta blows through the defeat of the scumbag FDR and his grab for power. What Setanta does not tell us is that FDR set a template for Obama.
Setanta apparently did not want to go into the case which handed FDR his head because it is too close to the crap being laid on to the American people by Obama.

Some direct quotes from the time are in order:

Justice Brandies( 0ne of the greatest Justices ever) told the New Deal Lawyers--
""This is the end of this business of centralization, and I want you to go back and tell the president that we're not going to let this government centralize everything. It's come to an end>"

If Cardozo were alive, he would probably tell Obama the same thing. Obama has appointed 19 Czars who have not been subject to approval by the Senate.

That is the essence of centralized power. But it seems that Setanta does not know that!

Setanta wrote:

The other myth was that the hyper-inflation and the collapsed economy were the product of the Versailles Treaty. This is the "Versailles Diktat" myth. There are two objections to this which shoot it down unquestionably. The first is that the inflation which plagued Germany began in 1914, before the war even began. German economic scholars writing in the 1980s have produced the documentary evidence that this is so. Not only that, the Weimar Republic took the necessary steps to tend the inflation, revalue the mark, and re-establish a sound economy. Almost all of the legislation which is credit to the NSDAP that stabilized the German economy was actually passed by Weimar, and was in place before the NSDAP ever took control of the Reichstag.

***************************************************************

I am sure that the careful scholar, Setanta can produce the "documentary evidence that this( inflation history) is so. If he doesn't, his statement is inadmissable in light of the following--

William L. Shirer--In "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" wrote:

"The mark BEGAN to slide in 1921, when it dropped to 75 to the dollar. The NEXT YEAR if fell to 400 and by the beginning of 1923 to 7,000....On the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, it fell to 23,000 to the dollar; by July 1 it had dropped to 160,000. by August1, it was a million."

and, there was still GREAT UNEMPLOYMENT IN GERMANY IN 1932. The Economy had gotten better between 1925 and 1929 but it was ruined by 1929.
Germany had six million unemployed in 1932 but less than a million four years later under the guidance of Schacht and Hitler.

What are these letters written down by Setanta that we are supposed to understand? Why doesn't he write down the entire title?

Note:

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (help·info), abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known in English as the Nazi Party (from the Ger. pronunciation of Nationalsozialist (based on earlier Ger. sozi, popular abbreviation of "sozialist")[1], was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. It was known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) before the name was changed in 1920.

The party's last leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime[2][3][4][5] known as the Third Reich.


The National SOCIALIST German Workers Party.

SOCIALIST? Yes--Left wing BOTH in name and IN POLICIES--NOTE:

T he SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, was convinced that the anti-witch crazewas an anti-German plot concocted by the Catholic Church. But the Catholic Church in Germany and, a fortiori, in Rome, was right wing and conservative.

Exactluy--and the Nazi policies were left wing and Socialist.

Note: It is clear that the Nazis were not "pro-life". Long before the final solution, the Nazis cast the aged, the infirm, and the handicapped upon the proverbial Spartan Hillside. This is not conservative--this is left wing.

Note: Nazi attitudes toward sex were not conservative or right wing. They were definitely left wing

Hitler, in "Table Talk" said--"Marriage as it is practiced in bourgeoise society, is generally a thing against Nature. But a meeting between two beings who compliment one another, who are made for one another, borders already, in my conception, upon a miracle."

That is not a right wing posture. It is definitely left wing!!!