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Record unemployment, stock market gyrations, economic anxiety: For my generation, these grim tidings have a familiar ring. So does the voice of a new president offering hope in the first 100 days of his administration. Then as now, there were people who were for him and people against him — but whatever your politics are, the parallels are undeniable.I was 9 years old when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March 1933. The country was deeply mired in the Depression, but my family was luckier than many: My father was a coal miner. Depression or no Depression, people needed coal to heat their homes and to cook (we had a coal stove), and in northeastern Pennsylvania, the mines stayed open.I also had a grandmother and three bachelor uncles who were all helping keep food on the table. But I can remember other men not so fortunate coming to our door, looking for something to eat. My grandmother always sent them around to the back door, and she always gave them food — but never money.
- For a nation sunk in financial crisis and shaken by recession, the inauguration of the 44th president seemed to have as much boisterous bonhomie as a Big 10 football game on a blustery afternoon.
By any measure, it was a big scoop. Hours after becoming first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt opened up to Associated Press reporter Lorena A. Hickok about the weight the nation had placed on the shoulders of her husband and herself.
Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt's birth, President Bush on Monday called him an inspiration and one of the greatest statesmen in the nation's history.
The "mirage" of American economic invulnerability has vanished, along with "much of the savings of thrifty and prudent men and women," the presidential hopeful told the crowd.
Plans to turn a secluded Badlands trail into a major road and river crossing might not have created such a stir if not for where it is: near the ranch where Theodore Roosevelt helped conceive the American conservation movement.
A one-time director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association stole and tried to auction off one of its prized artifacts — a 1918 letter the former president wrote about his son Quentin's death in World War I, prosecutors said.
George Washington, a Virginian, has his statue on Wall Street, Ohio-born Ulysses S. Grant has his tomb overlooking the Hudson. But for reasons nobody can easily explain, New York native son Franklin Delano Roosevelt has no official memorial in this city.
What the 2008 presidential candidates have been saying about Theodore Roosevelt:
Tantillo's Brand Winner... And Loser: The Republican Party and the Democratic PartyThe Republican Party has pulled itself out of its "Party of No" rut. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is clearly out of touch with the right-of-center American public, pushing Rooseveltian policies on a public that is no longer living in 1929.
Prosecute The Financial Fraud - Economist James Galbraith's View Of The Recession - Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBSJames K. Galbraith, onetime executive director of Congress' Joint Economic Committee, teaches economics at the University of Texas, where he holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
Well, the text of the president's speech to school students has been released . To summarize, he talks about: - How kids might feel nervous at starting school or as summer ends and a new school year begins.
History Lesson: Nation again awash in 'Wirtism' - today's hysteria echoes cries of Bolshevism in FDR administrationFrom the original LA Time's article -- Nation again awash in 'Wirtism':
What if -- Obama logic applied to presidencies past"McKinley encourages gun presence at town hall meets," "HOOVER FILLS TREASURY WITH J.P. MORGAN EXECUTIVES," "LBJ: 'War on Poverty' too costly" and other mightabeen headlines...
Obama Celebrates Enactment of New GI Bill, "the most comprehensive education benefit offered since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the original GI Bill in 1944."President Barack Obama says helping U.S. service members and veterans continue their education is not only an investment in their future but in the country's future as well. Obama spoke Monday at a ceremony marking enactment of what's called the post-9/11 GI Bill.
'Donâ??t Tell Me It Canâ??t Be Done' - HUMAN EVENTSLast week, I had the pleasure of addressing the Senate-House Annual Republican Dinner. The MC for the evening was actor Jon Voight. Before he spoke, a video tribute for Voight was shown, including clips of him playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a movie.
Act of War: North Korea Holds American Hostages"You have 24 hours to return our citizens before we start obliterating your military bases - one every hour until the hostages are set free. If we run out of military bases and you still continue to hold them then, unfortunately, we'll have to start on your cities.
We need a revolution in this country. Not of violence, but a purging of what our apathy has created.
Great Smoky Mountains celebrates 75 years as the 'people's park'This is what a 75 year old successful stimulus package looks like today. There were even fewer jobs to be had in Appalachia then than there are even today. There would have been 4,000 families going to bed hungry without this program.
How Government Prolonged the Depression The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis.
The First 98 Days: What Obama Has Shown, So Far, About His Style of GoverningObama has surrounded himself with a collection of accomplished advisers, many with Ivy League credentials and experience in the Clinton administration.
Today's NYT Lead Editorial: Farm Workers' Rights, 70 Years Overdue It is more than bank failures and rising unemployment that give these troubled times echoes of the 1930s. An unfinished labor battle from the New Deal is being waged again.
Skilled statisticians like George Barna and carefully researched studies from the Pew Reports all show a declining moral climate and a gradual but alarming number of youthful exits from the church in America. Is it chronic, should we be worried?
Is Barack Obama our Franklin Roosevelt? (Part 1) People regularly search the past for parallels to the present.
We are hearing Obama be compared with FDR, Kennedy and Reagan. Who will we compare our First Lady Michelle Obama to? Eleanor, Jackie or Nancy?
Was George W. Bush Really the Worst President Ever?Several polls of historians have named George W. Bush the worst president in American history. This baffles me. I've been writing about presidents for a long time. What I know, and what I presume these gentleman know, doesn't connect.
C-SPAN's Historians Presidential Leadership Survey Puts George W. Bush Among The Worst 10 Presidents In American History (Worse Than Hoover)Timed for Presidents Day 2009, C-SPAN today releases the results of its second Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65 presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership.
U.S. Rep. Austria blames Depression on Roosevelt"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."
City schools to have 2-hour delay day after Super BowlThe Pittsburgh Public Schools will operate on a two-hour delay Monday because of the Super Bowl, Superintendent Mark Roosevelt said today.
Recent media reports would have you believe that crime has shot out of sight because of the economic woes our country had encountered over the past two years.
A Call for Change - Rejecting Bush Era, Reclaiming Values WASHINGTON — Barack Obama's Inaugural Address on Tuesday was a stark repudiation of the era of George W. Bush and the ideological certainties that surrounded it, wrapped in his pledge to drive the United States into "a new age" by reclaiming the values of an older one.
I woke this morning to the sound of taps. I've always loved its exquisite, poignant melody. So it was lovely to have the bugler awaken me on this sunny morn. I didn't open my eyes until the last note faded away.
Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid TestThe parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today.
Is Now The Time To Legalize Drugs? This may be apocryphal, but when FDR was running for President for the first time in 1932, he said something along the lines of "What America needs now is a good, stiff drink." Then he won and went on to help end prohibition.
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