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Johan Norberg, on his blog JohanNorberg.net, points out the Democratic intervention that caused the financial crisis SOME milestones in the prehistory of the crisis. 1933: As part of the New Deal, investment banks are stopped from also acting as commercial banks (which would have given them bank deposits and more stability). 1938: As part of the New Deal, president (Franklin D.) Roosevelt creates Fannie Mae and in 1970 Congress creates Freddie Mac. With their implicit government guarantees they can offer cheaper loans and expand until they dominate the American mortgage market. 1989: The American government step(s) in and pay(s) for...

As everyone knows the Wall Street crash of 1929 ushered in a period of profound and unprecedented hardship for the American people. Then president of the United States, Herbert Hoover fought valiantly to keep the government from wading into the financial crisis tried in vain to let the markets self-correct. For his efforts, Hoover was castigated as a do-nothing president, a failed leader, a man who allowed his nation to wither for the sake of ideological purity and a lack of compassion. Unemployment soared, commerce ground to a halt, and thousands of Americans found themselves waiting in soup lines and...

Sources: Intense Pressure Led To Palin UN Snub CBS 2 HD Has Learned Democrats Threatened To Attack Jewish Groups' Tax Exempt Status Over VP Nominee Invite Reporting Marcia Kramer NEW YORK (CBS) ― Hillary Clinton won't be speaking at Monday's anti-Iran rally at the United Nations -- and neither will Republican Sarah Palin or any other politicians for that matter. The reason? A heated behind the scenes tug-of-war. Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came as the result of intense pressure from Democrats....

Carter Sold out Iran – 1977-1978 As if a light were switched off, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, portrayed for 20 years as a progressive modern ruler by Islamic standards, was suddenly, in 1977-1978, turned into this foaming at the mouth monster by the international left media. Soon after becoming President in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a deliberate campaign to undermine the Shah. The Soviets and their left-wing apparatchiks would coordinate with Carter by smearing the Shah in a campaign of lies meant to topple his throne. The result would be the establishment of a Marxist/Islamic state in ...

I keep hearing the lefty commies cringe at any mention of God, as if Palin is a wacko. Who can help direct me to a list of quotes from past Presidents or other historical figures, esp. dems, who have mentioned God, faith and such? Maybe there is a list here already. Thanks

A week ago I saw this Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal Daniel Younger Itasca, Texas Under 45, lover of the outdoors, a Republican reformer who has taken on the Republican Party establishment, has many children, and a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office -- you describe Teddy Roosevelt in 1900 and Sarah Palin in 2008. And it inspired me to post this thread: Original Thread HereWho Am I? I am under 45 years old, I love the outdoors, I hunt, I am a Republican reformer,...

The John F. Kennedy legacy came up repeatedly during the Democratic National Convention. But today, would JFK even be a Democrat? Kennedy supported, in today's lexicon, a George W. Bush-like "belligerent" approach to fighting the Cold War, and told CBS' Walter Cronkite it would be "a great mistake" to withdraw the American presence from Vietnam. In his 1961 inaugural speech, Kennedy said, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success...

You won't be hearing the Democratic chattering class mention that Woodrow Wilson had only 2 years of executive experience as a governor. No! You won't be hearing that he was nominated and elected President (and Sarah Palin is nominated for vice-president!) with zero foreign policy experience. So, next time the talking heads take off after Sarah Palin, somebody should merely say two words: Woodrow Wilson. The central point is obvious: John McCain is the GOP nominee for President, but even if you succumb to their scare tactic that Sarah Palin is only "a heartbeat away"....simply counter-argue with two words: Woodrow...

Theodore Roosevelt was elected Vice President of the United States (with McKinley as President) on November 6, 1900. Prior to becoming VP, Roosevelt had served in a few municipal offices in NYC and as a U.S. Civil Service Commissioner in Washington, D.C. (The latter was not an elected office.) He then served as Police Commissioner of NYC. In 1987-88, he served briefly as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt became Governor of NY on December 31, 1898. He was elected Vice President of the United States less than two years later (on November 6, 1900). On September 6, 1901,...

Most history books written by Democrat professors downplay the fact that the Worst President Ever was a Democrat. Did the Democrats nominate him? No, he was the 1864 Republican nominee for vice president.Andrew Johnson – Andrew Jackson Johnson, to be precise – was the only southern Senator not to go with the Confederacy. For being strong on nation security, this hardline Democrat was nominated to be Abraham Lincoln's 1864 running mate. // continued at http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/andrew-johnson.html

Lyndon Baines Johnson, born 100 years ago this week, came from a part of the country where Jews were about as common as a herd of cattle in Manhattan. But in 1939, while still a young and relatively powerless congressman, Johnson was moved enough by reports of Jewish suffering in Europe to begin raising money and pulling whatever strings were necessary - not all of them legal - to save as many Jews as he could from the Nazis. Over the next few years, hundreds of Jews were issued counterfeit passports and visas and brought to Johnson's home state of...

Poof. Just like that, he was gone. With all the focus on Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama's speeches before a roused audience last night, little attention was given to Jimmy Carter, who also appeared on the stage at the Pepsi Center on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. This was by design. In the four years since the former Democratic president took the stage in Boston in 2004, 14 members of his Carter Center resigned in protest after he published a book comparing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the treatment of blacks in South Africa under apartheid,...

Our Troops Rock!  Thank you for all you do!   For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.   Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ~ Hall of Heroes ~ Theodore RooseveltAll info and photos from this website.             On July 1, 1898, exposed as the only man on horseback, a target above the rest of the troops on foot, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt found his "crowded hour" as he led charges at Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights during...

structure (not words) changed for clear reading) “No American natural history was more influential during the 18th century than Thomas Jefferson's (1743-1826) Notes on the State of Virginia, though it is, as intended, far more than a simple natural history. At once a description of the land and people of the state and a theoretical discourse on historical, natural, and political systems, the Notes represents Jefferson's conflicted views on the present and future of the new American nation, an integral mix of hope and anxiety. “Jefferson's Notes began inauspiciously during the late autumn, 1780, when François de Barbé Marbois, the...

I was with some friends and the subject of presidents got brought up. They all proceeded to to give their highly educated /s opinions on who was the worst and why: Reagan because he was a capitalist pig; Bush because he is an imperialistic fascist; Hoover because he was laissez faire (which isn't true). They became enraged that I could even suggest the FDR was anything short of the savior of mankind and that because I was black I had an obligation to vote for Obama. So I'm wondering, who do you think is the worst or most overrated president?

Full Article at Political Capital Before you read this article, take a couple steps back from your political opinions - because I can already hear the partisan bickering. I want you to approach this and analyze it in an antiseptic, neutral way - regardless of whether you are a Bush lover or Bush hater. I think both camps will find things to love, and hate in this article. But, reserve judgment please - because this is an article about how history will remember George W. Bush, it is not a political judgment on his presidency. Indeed, you will find several...

WASHINGTON — Former President Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI's conclusion that John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Ford's FBI files. Ford, still a congressman at the time, also told a senior FBI official about internal panel disputes over hiring staff, Chief Justice Earl Warren's timetable for completing the final report on the assassination and what panel members said about the FBI. In turn, Assistant FBI Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach confidentially advised...

Most Americans remain utterly ignorant of this nation’s first foreign war but that exotic, long-ago struggle set the pattern for nearly all the many distant conflicts that followed. Refusal to confront the lessons of the First Barbary War (1801-1805) has led to some of the silliest arguments concerning Iraq and Afghanistan, and any effort to apply traditional American values to our future foreign policy requires an understanding of this all-but-forgotten episode from our past. The war against the Barbary States of North Africa (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli—today’s Libya) involved commitment and sacrifice far from home and in no way involved...

On 27 occasions, presidents have called both houses into session to deal with a crisis. The most recent of these special sessions -- and the first one since 1856 -- met at the behest of President Harry S. Truman on this day in 1948. With less than four months remaining before Election Day, Truman's approval rating stood at 36 percent. His GOP opponent, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, looked like a sure winner. So in search of a bold political gesture, the president turned to the provision in the Constitution that allows the president "on extraordinary occasions" to convene one...

Obama accuses Republicans of trying to make voters afraid of him because he's "not like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Be careful what you wish for, Barry, because you are likely to get it. (If you want to use this, please COPY and don't LINK; it uses my bandwidth.)

Facing an Overweight Electorate, Barack Obama Might Find Low Body Fat a Drawback (snip) But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

Old Right War Lessons by Donald Devine Issue 112 - July 23, 2008 “Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.”“America was created to break every kind of monopoly and to set men free upon a footing of equality.” Are these anti-property and pro-equality quotes from Marx or Lenin? In fact, they are from two U.S. presidents, the first from Theodore Roosevelt and the second by Woodrow Wilson, the fathers of American progressivism, the radical doctrine that explicitly broke with the philosophy...

Woodrow Wilson's Constitution by Robert Curry Issue 112 - July 23, 2008 Justly revered as our great Constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws. ... Woodrow Wilson Justly revered, but not by Wilson. He really did want to cast it aside, writing “no doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere...

National Security: In 1962 the Soviets tested a young American president by putting nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida. Barack Obama fancies himself the next JFK. He may get to find out.In June 1961, a young and ambitious President Kennedy met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria, to discuss Cold War issues, particularly the situation in Berlin. Khrushchev came away unimpressed, convinced the young Kennedy could be had. Two months later the Berlin Wall was going up. By the following spring the Soviet leader was making plans for installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy quickly found out that "aggressive personal...

Polish authorities have erected a monument to US president Ronald Reagan, feted for his crusade against communism and seen by some as having hastened the collapse of the Soviet bloc, reports said Tuesday. Officials in the south-west city of Wroclaw unveiled the monument to the Hollywood actor-turned-president, apparently the first of its kind in Europe, Poland's centrist Dziennik daily reported Tuesday. "To Ronald Reagan for his struggle against totalitarianism -- from the residents of Wroclaw," reads the caption on the relief plaque erected at an intersection in the city bearing Reagan's name. During his two terms as president between 1981-1989,...

McCain’s Cult of Teddy RooseveltThe Sage of Sagamore Hill was not a conservative. By Michael Knox Beran Asked recently by the New York Times to name a conservative model, John McCain cited Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy, of course, had no shortage of virtues. Conservatism, alas, wasn’t one of them. It’s one thing for a conservative to admire T. R.’s style and gallantry, the charge up San Juan Hill, the rounding up of crooks in the Badlands. It’s something else for a conservative to identify Roosevelt as a fellow reformer, as Sen. McCain did in the Times interview. Far from allaying conservative...

McCain’s Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore) By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MICHAEL COOPER HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy....

HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy.

HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy. The views expressed by Mr. McCain in the 45-minute interview here...

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin. In a letter sent from Monticello to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said his "wee little book" of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of...

On this 4th of July, President Bush attended the 46th Annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia (Transcript) Those of you taking the oath of citizenship at this ceremony hail from 30 different nations. You represent many different ethnicities and races and religions. But you all have one thing in common -- and that is a shared love of freedom. This love of liberty is what binds our nation together, and this is the love that makes us all Americans. You may have heard about the uninvited guests at today's ceremony. More on that...

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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,...

Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or a coin across to Fredericksburg.

So…On this week in which we celebrate the birth of our nation and the liberties and freedoms which our predecessors have fought so hard to uphold, I bring you a simple message; a reminder and a warning from our First President and the man who was charged with uniting and building this great nation...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – President George W. Bush will attend the July 4 event at Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, the White House has announced. Bush will be the featured speaker at Monticello’s 46th annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony. He will become the fourth sitting president to participate in Independence Day activities at Monticello, joining Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936), Harry S. Truman (1947), and Gerald R. Ford (1976). “We are truly honored to have President Bush as our featured speaker on July 4, and regard it as a great compliment that he has chosen to spend part of the...

"Not Exactly a Crime" is the title of a book on America's vice presidents published in 1972 -- a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime. The office of vice president has long been the butt of jokes -- you know the punch lines -- but as we await Barack Obama's and John McCain's choices for vice president, we do so with the knowledge that vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government. (Yes, including Dan Quayle -- see Bob Woodward and David Broder's book). How the...

The near simultaneous publication of historian Sean Wilentz book “Age of Reagan” and the publication of activist / reporter Rick Pearlstein’s “Nixonland”, previously praised on these pages, has caused a dust-up over who most personified and ultimately transformed the modern conservative age which played out on the New Republic website. Although I am neither historian nor an unbiased reporter, I was a participant in the Nixon realignment which ultimately begat the Reagan revolution. ..... The change in Richard Nixon comes with Goldwater’s sweeping nomination and what Nixon then understands can be salvaged, even nurtured,in the ashes of Barry’s defeat. “You...

You don't have to agree with everything in this monumental account of politics in the 1960s and 1970s to find Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" (Scribner, 896 pages, $37.50) interesting and even engrossing. The book is a masterful retelling of the turbulent period between the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the equally stunning loss by George McGovern to Richard Nixon in 1972. Mr. Perlstein's use of the elections of 1964 and 1972 as ideological goalposts may be arbitrary, but it is easy to see why he selected them. Could two such different countries really be...

Rick Perlstein, an unabashed man of the left, first attracted wide notice seven years ago with the release of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, his engagingly written and fair-minded study of the rise of the American conservative movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Last month brought the much-awaited publication of the second volume of Perlstein’s projected trilogy on American conservatism. Nixonland (Scribner), as should be obvious from the title, focuses on American politics from the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s, a time and an era dominated by Richard Nixon. The Monitor asked Perlstein...

World’s Largest Reagan Statue To Be UnveiledJune 25, 2008 After four years and several setbacks, the world’s largest Ronald Reagan statue will be unveiled in Covington, Louisiana, this Friday. The statue was not Covington’s idea. “We had nothing to do with it,� said city council president Trey Blackall. A local oil tycoon, however, was interested in building a big Reagan tribute, and Covington volunteered itself as the site. “It’s a weird little story,� Trey conceded, “but when somebody offers something like this, you gladly accept it.�The big bronze Gipper, created by local sculptor Patrick Miller, stands nearly 15 feet tall...

As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over. He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will...

Barack Obama has informed us that any criticism of his wife is strictly forbidden. This though Michele Obama is constantly making speeches for her husband and plays a significant role in his campaign. However, according to his allies in the press we are also forbidden to comment on the racist rants of his pastor, his association with a known terrorist, as well as his 20 year membership in a church that seems to preach more hate than anything else. Seemingly, hyper-sensitive, Obama has taken an unprecedented step in confronting his critics who have legitimate questions about his background. He has...

June 20, 2008, 0:00 p.m. What’s the Frequency?New Deal narcissism and what FDR wrought. An NRO Q&A The New Deal celebrates its 75th anniversary this week. National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez checked in with New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, to mark the occasion. Kathryn Jean Lopez: How are you celebrating the New Deal’s 75th? Amity Shlaes: I’m participating in the Roosevelt Reading Festival at Hyde Park Saturday! One of the people I will see there is Nick Taylor, author of his own book, American Made,...

The stature and repute of our public figures are shaped, as I have written before, by this thing called Kultursmog . It is our political culture, a kultur utterly polluted by politics, left-liberal politics. For instance, it renders the Clintons, as reporter John F. Harris hymned in a recent hagiography, "the two most important political figures of their generation." Continues...================================================================= Still a hero after all these years Anyone who has been following the MSM for the past eight years and has had nothing but the MSM to go by might be forgiven for believing Bush to be some bungling nincompoop,...

"I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with," Vice President Cheney reportedly declared in a White House meeting on North Korea in December 2003. "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." Cheney's call to battle resounded last week as the Bush administration slammed former president Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas, the extremist Palestinian group that now runs the Gaza Strip, and began to have its own second thoughts about closing a new nuclear deal with North Korea. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain also chimed...

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it...

In the third week of June 1972, Richard Milhous Nixon committed an injustice with which the Western world is still struggling. Yes, two men broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building - but we're no longer bothered about that. What still affects us today - or rather tomorrow - is that the then President that week brought the American nation together by making Father's Day a public holiday. For this high crime and misdemeanour, his name should live on in the annals of infamy. Now, of course, it's over here. It's just like Hallowe'en - another American...

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." --author unknown For the past 32 years, the election cycle has revolved in a most familiar way. Every sixteen years, the Democrat candidate for president has been a relatively-unknown who campaigned as an agent of "CHANGE!" "One reason why this constant mantra of “CHANGE! HOPE!” is so irritating is that they’ve been peddling this snake oil for decades." --Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs[video of Carter commercial] Thirty-two years ago, it resulted in a squeaker of an election that wasn't decided until the next day. Jimmy Carter became just the...

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of my father's death. For anyone who has lost a loved one, those anniversaries are both sad and sweet. The sadness is obvious—you don't stop missing the person who has gone; you don't stop wishing you'd had one more year, one more day. The sweetness sneaks up on you. It comes in the form of memories, some of them long buried. But mostly it comes with the realization that nothing ever dismantled the love between you, even though many things seemed to along the way. At this time of year in California, the jacaranda trees...

The Associated Press announcement that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president has prompted former President Jimmy Carter, one of Georgia's three undecided delegates to the national convention, to officially pick a side. Deanna Congileo, a spokeswoman for Carter, confirmed that the former president has told the Obama campaign "they would have his vote after polls close tonight." Carter has strongly hinted that he would support Obama, but did not commit until Tuesday. Two other superdelegates -- Richard Ray, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, and U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon -- said they'll continue to sit...