How Ignorant Is He?
I was already aware that as a professor of Constitutional law, President Obama has some rather unusual views of the meaning of the Bill of Rights, but he is apparently just as ignorant about the history of the United States.
Anglachel pointed this out in her post today, but the error was so egregious I looked for the transcript to verify what was said.
The statement was made in the White House meeting with five bloggers that I mentioned, so I knew that Duncan had what I was seeking.
This is a quote from the transcript of the October 27, 2010 meeting with “liberal” bloggers, in which President Obama said:
This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
I’m quoting the entire paragraph to provide the available context for the remark.
In the Wikipedia article, New Deal, subsection – The First Hundred Days they note” “Ever since, presidents have been judged against FDR for what they accomplished in their first 100 days.”
The basic programs of the New Deal were law within 100 days of the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It required calling Congress into session to make this happen, but he set the standard for every President since.
President Obama was parroting conservative revisionist history which is filled with lies about Presidency of FDR. As he apparently believes this garbage, I see no reason for Democrats to vote against impeachment when the Republicans push their trumped up charges. It’s not as if a member of their party was being attacked.
16 comments
Well, there was four months between the time FDR was elected and the time he took office, since in those days Presidents were elected the first Tuesday in November but took office on the first Tuesday in March 1933, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter. When he took office things were dire indeed. The banking system was basically in a state of total collapse, the money supply was all under mattresses rather than circulating and commerce had basically come to a complete halt, there were food riots in major cities at the same time that farmers were dumping produce they couldn’t sell into creosote pits, and it looked like if this continued into the next winter, there would be mass starvation and probably a Communist revolution. By May 6, 1933 — roughly 90 days after taking office — FDR had signed the WPA into law. By the time he was 6 months into his job, the WPA was law, the CCC was law, the TVA was law, the FERC was law and had set up massive relief efforts in every state to deal with the problem of hungry people shivering in freezing houses, and FDR had created over 4,000,000 jobs. While in 18 months, Hopey McSmokey has created… err… basically *none*.
Yeah, Hopey’s drank the Rethuglican Kool-aide, alright…
– Badtux the History Penguin
Just to add, the Catfood Commission splatted out yet more nonsense today about how a 6.6% of GDP deficit will be a job destroyer (via what mechanism, Mr. Bowles?), and in honor of the fact that if the Catfood Commission gets their way even catfood will be too expensive for most Americans to eat, and in honor of the fact that if they get their way most Americans will have a hard time getting sufficient protein in their diet, I have now posted my first recipe for the Greater Depression: Rat gumbo. It should taste reasonably good, actually, I just adapted a tree rat (squirrel) gumbo recipe. Remember: Rat: The other white meat. 😈
– Badtux the Culinary Penguin
Four months isn’t a lot of time when you are essentially limited to snail mail and train travel, rather then conference calls and airliners.
If someone were paying attention, what happened shouldn’t have come as a shock, and Obama had the solution laid out by the programs that FDR used. Not everything was a success, but we know what was, and should have just fired them up and got them going, while something more “customized” could be devised.
HOLC worked and HAMP is a disaster. The banksters are in trouble again because they weren’t forced to fix the real problem of the worthless assets on their books. There is no need for all of the pain that is occurring, as the New Deal found workable solutions that produced results. We also know what will happen if you listen to the Austerians, because FDR made that mistake.
Obama is a cruel joke on the American people.
I’m staying with Cornish game rabbit, or possibly squib…
Well, damn and hot damn.
Looks like somebody else has joined my team on this issue.
I’ve said since he ordained Summers and Geithner as Popes of Finance within a month of becoming President that we had elected a pretender, and that hope must have been the new cocaine.
Thanks for the links!
S
I have never supported him, Suzan. He disenfranchised Florida Democrats through manipulation of the DNC, and that made him a nasty piece of work as far as I am concerned.
I’ve been wondering what Krugman would have to say about this (but he’s busy with other things like Bryan). 🙂 Anyway, he finally posted:
FDR, Reagan, and Obama
Yeah… As I’ve said before, he’s a righty in lefty clothes.
Yeah, I posted on his finally accepting the reality that Badtux and I saw. He suspected it at about the same time we did, but he was hopeful he was wrong. With luck, Obama will understand it is highly unlikely that he can be re-elected.
The sad thing is that the Democratic Party will decide that the answer to electing a righty who is accused of being a socialist by Republicans will be to nominate someone even more right-wing than Obama. That’s how the Democratic Party seems to work. If you lose elections because your candidates are basically Republicans in drag and folks prefer their Republicans straight-up, why, double-up on the stupid!
Sigh. WASF.
– Badtux the Walking-oddly Penguin
They have been shifting right so long they are no longer on the field, but have entered the bleachers where they are left watching nothing happen in the game.
And to extend the football analogy even further, the only reason the Republicans aren’t running up the score even more is because they’re so stupid they keep forgetting which goal is the Dem’s and which one is theirs, and keep doing own-goals like, say, nominating Caribou Barbie as their Veep choice.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
We’re probably safer with the Dems on the sidelines, because own-goals are the only scoring they know how to do.
The same here at the moment. We have State elections this weekend. Our choices are: A bunch of morons too stupid to be crooks who waste money on stupid projects that never work (Labor), or a known crook who is sure to contine to be a crook (Liberals)
The Liberal leader Ted Bailieu own’s one of the biggest real estate agencies in Aus. When he was Liberal President, and the Lib’s were in power in Vic, the Lib’s closed dozens of schools, and his company *won* all the contracts and bought all the land. Then, the Lib’s closed a very much needed regional Hospital, and Bailieu won that contract as well, even though his company had never had such a contract before and had no experience with hazardous waste (chemical, radiological, and even lead & asbestos). When they demolished the hospital, there was a cloud of toxic waste spread for miles and miles!
As for Steve Bracks, current Labor State Premier of Vic… He has a penchant for making amazingly stupid decisions! It’s HIS fault Vic burned in Feb 2009, because he relented to some minority retarded tree huggers and stopped land clearing and burn-off’s around 2004. All the reports have now concluded there was far too much fuel available and once the fires got started, there was no stopping them, no matter what policies or procedures were in place. Then we have the Myki public transport ticketing system! Wat a joke!! It’s never worked, it’s way over budget (over $1.3bln so far, and the gov is about to throw another $300mill at it if they get re-elected! They say it will break even in 10 years. I don’t see how! It has cost the taxpayer so fat about $300 for every man/woman/child in Vic! Even if half of them use public transport (and they don’t), that’s $600 per user! Never gonna happen! They have trialed the system here where I now live for a year, I’ve never had so many free bus trips because the bloody thing doesn’t work! (Either the ticket computer has decided to shut down, or the readers at the doors won’t scan the card!) So, from the point of view of free travel, I love it! How do they make money from that? Morons! There are plenty of systems that work well they could have used, but they don’t have the *Big Brother* aspects this retarded Gov wanted! Myki tracks your every move, and the Police have access to that data. Well, they would, if it actually worked!
And then, the Desalination plant! It won’t work, it will be a black hole for money, and will do nothing for anyone outside of Melbourne! They have finally admitted it will be only useful as a last resort because it costs to much to run and maintain when it’s operating (estimates from $10-20 mill / year) that it will be turned off most of the time! It’s going to cost an estimated $4.9 bln to build! We would have to be paying $5/ltr per person to pay for it in 10 years! Cheaper to buy water by truckload! Also, the plant will use about 90-100 MWatts (or about 2200MWh per day) of power from the National grid, which is already strained! The plan is to build a new *coal-fired* power station to power the plant. Watch power bills skyrocket also. The plant will dump about 200 Megaliters of brine into the ocean off the Vic coast every year it’s operating. About 1.5 MTons of greenhouse emissions will be emitted during construction, and 1.2 MTons every year it operates. The plant when it’s operating will suck in 480 billion liters of seawater, and pump back 280 billion liters of saline concentrate that will kill all sea-life for many miles. The plant will be operated by a private company, and it’s estimated they will charge $1.5 bln over the 25 year life of the plant!
So… The choice is, a moron who is intent on bankrupting us all and destroying the State, or a crook who will pocket ever dollar he can! I think I’ll take the crook!
Feel lucky that you have an intelligent crook as a possiblity. Here in the U.S., we have the insane crooks (the Republicans) and the moron crooks (the Democrats). What a choice.
– Badtux the WASF Penguin
Yeah… See… We have a lot more in common than most people thing! 😈
We may well end up with our first ever hung State parliament. I am sure the Indie’s will get a lot of votes. Will be interesting, I guess. *shrug*There is an Indie here where I live who is, at least, making the right noises (he seems to know what out local needs/wants are). Whether he can deliver anything is, of course, a whole other mater. *shrug* Still, I’ll give him a vote just because he seems to know what the problems actually are!
If anyone ever wanted to know what kind of a job an ignorant moron can do, look at politics. It’s a prerequisite apparently these days.
It’s probably a virus they pick up in law school, as most of these morons are supposedly lawyers. It may be part of the tuition, like $100K and 15 IQ points to get in. It’s probably cheaper the more IQ you give up.