Free Republic

And President Truman has been proven wrong. The great and honorable legacy of President Truman is the United States being the first nation to officially recognize the re-establishment of the State of Israel.But with regard to his handling of the illegal Chinese military involvement and attack against U.S. and allied troops in Korea, Truman was flat out wrong.The following is from the fourth chapter entiltled "Korea" in the book written by General Douglas MacArthur- "Revitalizing A Nation":["While I was not consulted prior to the President's decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision, from a...

CVN 75, scheduled to deploy this week, cancelled. The Pentagon this afternoon released a statement announcing the delay of the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Gettysburg. The carriers were scheduled to leave Norfolk later this week. Below is a portion of the released statement of Pentagon Press Secretary George Little: "The secretary of defense has delayed the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) and the USS Gettysburg (CG-64). "Facing budget uncertainty -- including a continuing resolution and the looming potential for across-the-board sequestration cuts -- the U.S. Navy made this request to the...

On this day in 1950, in anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order putting America's railroads under the control of the U.S. Army, as of August 27, at 4:00 pm. Truman had already intervened in another railway dispute when union employees of the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Railway Company threatened to strike in 1948. This time, however, Truman's intervention was critical, as he had just ordered American troops into a war against North Korean communist forces in June. Since much of America's economic and defense infrastructure was dependent upon the...

TOKYO — Japan marked the 67th anniversary of its World War II surrender with a somber ceremony in the capital Wednesday, while renewed tension over territorial disputes and animosity over its wartime actions heated up across the region. Renewing Japan’s pledge to maintain its war-renouncing policy, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda mourned for the war dead and apologized to victims of Japanese wartime atrocities. “We have caused tremendous damage and pain to many countries, particularly the Asian people, during the war. We deeply regret that and sincerely mourn for those who were sacrificed and their relatives,” Noda said. “We will not...

Today is the 67th anniversary of the US's bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. As with each anniversary, many Japanese hold a ceremony designed to promote peace and prevent the use of nuclear weapons. It is hard to judge these people, as the bombing is of course regrettable, but like the Austrians and Italians, these people have a convenient lapse in memory regarding their culpability in WWII. Most regrettable, however is the attendance of Pres. Truman's grandson at the event. While Clifton Daniel stopped short of decrying his grandfather's leadership in the decision to end the war, his presence was a blithe...

Clifton Truman Daniel will visit Japan from August 2, and attend ceremonies in Hiroshima August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9, according to Kyodo News as reported in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun. It is the first time a member of the late president’s family will attend the ceremonies, and will holds a deep symbolic meaning for the Japanese. Public papers from his time in office reveal a man with no regrets about using the A-bomb, but his grandson told Kyodo News that the late-president was horrified by the destructive power of the Bomb.

Edwin M. Truman explains why the spreading LIBOR scandal has the potential of raising new doubts over the reputations for honesty of many large financial institutions.

You should be sitting down. The skies just might open. Glorious Leader has spoken his first words of truth while bungling Harry Truman's famous quote. "Well, here's what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United States, it's pretty clear to me that I'm responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you," Obama said. "The Buck stops with YOU !" Does it ever; about $140,000 per taxpayer on our $16 trillion dollar debt. In actuality, a 'one-percenter' is on the hook...

With bland, hapless Michigan-born Mitt Romney betraying a greater likeness each day to bland, hapless Michigan-born Thomas E. Dewey, the comparisons of 2012’s presidential marathon to 1948’s Dewey-Truman match-up slog steadily forward—with the latest installment arriving on our doorstep in the form of tonight’s State of the Union Address. Like many a politician before him, Barack Obama preaches a lilting bi-partisanship but practices a harsh partisanship. Predictions that his 2012 State of the Union Address will in reality be a campaign roadmap are near universal. In this instance, once again, “Give ‘Em Hell” Barry, scold of the “Do Nothing 112th...

As the election for the presidency starts to heat up, the discussion if Barack Obama is a natural born citizen is also heating up. The Supreme Court case Minor v Happersett is being used as the main case to declare Obama not natural born in growing state ballot challenges to his candidacy. What I have noticed in the heated arguments on many political forum boards lately is that Obama supporters are countering Minor v Happersett with the Indiana case Ankeny v Daniels. That case declares this: "Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance...

Harry Truman is the one president widely admired today who was generally reviled in his own times. There was no cult of personality around Truman while he was in the White House; to the contrary, he eventually logged the lowest approval ratings in Gallup’s history, just nudging out Richard Nixon on the eve of resignation. His legislative record was anemic. He failed to curb the anti-communist fervor known as McCarthyism, and the carnage of the Korean War is part of his resume. The fact Truman endures is a testament to two factors: the first, his exemplary decision to assert American...

"Mr. Truman's St. Paul, Minn., pie for everybody speech last night reminded us that at the tail end of the recent session of Congress, Representative Clarence J. Brown (R-Ohio) jammed into the Congressional Record the following poem describing its author only as a prominent Democrat of the State of Georgia."

President Obama's slow ride down Gallup's daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Since March, Obama's job approval rating has hovered above Carter's, considered among the 20th century's worst presidents, but today Obama's punctured Carter's dismal job approval line. On their comparison chart, Gallup put Obama's job approval rating at 43 percent compared to Carter's 51 percent.

In the spirit of the recent holiday, among the many things for which Americans should be thankful is a political decision made more than 67 years ago as the Second World War was beginning to wind down and as the nation’s voters prepared for a presidential election. It was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s finest moments of decision, though admittedly, one he exercised reluctantly. By 1944, FDR was living on borrowed time. It was a hardly a secret that health issues he had been dealing with were reaching critical mass, though only a few insiders had any idea as to the...

Give 'Em Hell, BarryThe new model for Obama: Truman vs. the "do-nothing Congress" Recently both First Lady Michelle Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis went to the key swing state of Florida to blast the president’s adversaries. For the first lady, Obama’s opponents were concerned only with “the few at the top� and care little for racial, gender, or class justice. For Solis, the sexually derogatory term “tea-bagger� summed up the wave of 2010 that for a while stopped Obama’s attempts to borrow more money in order to stimulate the moribund economy. Apparently Harry Truman’s unforeseen win in 1948 against...

For all of the recent comparisons made between Barack Obama seeking reelection in 2012 to Harry Truman in his stunning upset win of 1948, there are some sharp differences, and pundits should be more careful in saying "Give 'em Hell Harry" can be replicated next year by "Give 'Em Hell Barry." That was the conclusion last week of a respected historian who has written three books exploring important presidential years. David Pietrusza, author of the widely praised books "1960" and "1920" on the presidential elections of those years, was in Washington, D.C., to appear on the weekly C-SPAN documentary, "The...

It’s often been said that Barack Obama is an audacious leader. But perhaps it's better to consider the possibility that he is just a politician who lacks a sense of irony, at least when it comes to himself. For example, last weekend in Detroit, the president said: The time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now. No more manufactured crises. No more games. Now is not the time for the people you sent to Washington to worry about their jobs; now is the time for them to worry about your jobs. This would perhaps be a...

The False WWII AnalogyObama's America is more like Attlee's Britain than Truman's America. Since 2009, the example of the economic boom following World War II has been used by Keynesians to justify their record “peacetime� levels of borrowing intended to lift the U.S. out of the doldrums. Indeed, the more the contemporary borrowing fails, the more the vast indebtedness of the war years is invoked to reassure us. On occasion a wry lament follows that if only a spaceship full of dangerous aliens were to appear, we might have the requisite excuse to follow our grandfathers into a new collective...

But on one policy Truman went further than his top advisers or Dewey's. When the Soviets blocked land access to West Berlin in June 1948, Truman's advisers -- men of the caliber of George Marshall and Omar Bradley -- said that it was impossible to supply food and fuel to Berlin and we should just abandon it. At a crucial meeting in July 1948 Truman listened to this advice. After others finished talking, Truman said simply, "We're not leaving Berlin." Gen. Lucius Clay, our proconsul in Germany, set about organizing what became the Berlin airlift. Gen. William Tunner, who had...

Never before in our nation's history have we had a President less likely, or less willing, to take responsibility for his failures. Unlike President Truman, who famously had a sign on his desk that read, "The Buck Stops Here," President Obama avoids responsibility like the plague. It can be seen in his handling of the Democrat written, Democrat passed, economy destroying health care initiative--to which he contributed little, but rhetoric and which he allowed his Democrat allies in Congress to write, it can be seen in his Libyan War-that is not war--the planning of which and the decision for which,...

President Barack Obama is eyeing a 2012 campaign modeled on President Harry Truman’s 1948 successful re-election campaign against Congress. First, however, the White House will send to Capitol Hill an assortment of ‘economy-boosting’ legislation in a package that may include a major overhaul of the tax code. “I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” Obama told a friendly audience at a Decorah, Minnesota campaign-event on Monday. “My attitude is, get it done … [but] if they don’t get it done, then...

Song from 1952..."I'm no Communist" by LuLu Belle and Scotty. Somehow still very relevant in 2011...(Barack Obama's America). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gudJgbvBnmo

In just four days last week, President Barack Obama’s administration increased the national debt by more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the administrations of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower increased the national debt over the entire decade of the 1950s. At the start of business on Tuesday, Aug. 2, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the national debt subject to the legal limit was $14.293975 trillion. Obama signed legislation that day lifting the limit by as much as $2.4 trillion—with an initial and immediate increase in the limit of $400 billion. By the close of business on Friday, Aug....

Stalin's indifference made a profound impression on Marshall. The Soviets, it seemed, were quite content t see uncertainty and chaos prevail in Europe. It served their purposes to let matters drift. Particularly, they had no wish for a return of order and stability in Germany, let alone a revived prosperity there. Marshall had thought the Russians could be negotiated with, but at Moscow he decided he had been mistaken.

The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress. The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved. One aspect of the present situation, which I wish to present to you at this time for your consideration and decision, concerns Greece and Turkey. The United States has received from the Greek Government an urgent appeal for financial and economic assistance. Preliminary reports from the American Economic Mission now in Greece and reports from the American Ambassador in Greece corroborate the statement of the Greek Government that...

Sixty-five years ago this month, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., hero of World War II and an outspoken critic of the Soviets, was en route to a Sunday hunting trip, a day before permanently leaving Europe, when he was critically injured in a vehicle accident on a deserted two lane highway near Mannheim, Germany. A large US army truck that Patton’s driver later said was waiting for them, suddenly — and without signaling — abruptly turned into his limousine’s path, causing a head-on crash. Even though Patton had an aide with him and the driver of the truck had one...

Who decided we wanted 'a new FDR', anyway... Newsweek? Give-em-Hell Harry's pragmatic and patriotic Democratic leadership was actually of the type that could have banished today's GOP to the political boonies for a decade or more. Alas, somehow it seemed more stylish and romantic to repeat the expensive Keynesian failures of the Roosevelt Administration instead... this coupled to a weird defeatist foreign policy of Team Obama's own creation. Harry S Truman (the "S" doesn't stand for anything... just "S") was a brave, humble, and grateful-to-be-free American who ran to serve his country... and in a most competent and principled manner....

Pres Truman Thank you for the hard decisions that allowed my grandpa to live

Note: The following text is a quote: Al Qaeda Supporter Pleads Guilty to Supporting Terrorist Organization Kansas City Man Also Admits to Bank Fraud, Overseas Money Laundering KANSAS CITY, MO—Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that a Kansas City, Mo., man pleaded guilty in federal court today to his role in a conspiracy to provide material support to the terrorist organization al Qaeda. He also pleaded guilty to bank fraud and money laundering. “National security is the highest priority of the Department of Justice,” Phillips said. “I applaud the diligent work of our...

President Obama's new Nuclear Posture Review has succeeded mightily in muddying the clear waters. He says that we will not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear power. Except Iran. Except North Korea. If we are attacked with biological or chemical weapons, we will not retaliate with nuclear weapons. Is this a green light for another attack on the homeland? And what are the former captive nations of Europe supposed to think? Does any NATO member -- like Poland, like Estonia -- sleep more soundly with this ringing declaration of confusion, this uncertain trumpet? When he was in Japan last fall,...

THE ISSUE: Whether presidential candidates today have character, as their predecessors did. In looking for a president with the character of Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, Ralph Peters asks, "Will we ever again have a president who didn't go to an Ivy League school, who knows what it's like to struggle -- as so many Americans struggle every day -- and who's tasted defeat, but got back in the ring with his dukes up?" ("Why Our 'Post-Modern Presidents' Fail,"). The answer is "yes." Her name is Sarah Palin. etc...

Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy. But then neither did Vice President Harry S. Truman when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945. President Obama often invokes the supposed mess abroad—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—left to him by George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama's inheritance is mild compared to the myriad crises that nearly overwhelmed the rookie President Truman. All at once Truman had to finish the struggle against Hitler, occupy Europe, and deal with a nominally allied but increasingly bellicose and ascendant Soviet Union. Within months of taking office he had to make...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

We have not yet reached a Harry Truman v Douglas MacArthur moment in Washington — the extraordinary day in April 1951 when the US President fired his top general for disagreeing with him on his Korean War policy. Yet this much is now clear: a potential battle now looms between Barack Obama and his top generals over Afghanistan that could define, even destroy, his presidency. After only nine months as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama has reached a critical point in determining whether to order a surge of additional troops into Afghanistan. It is a strategy that is being demanded by General...

How Will We Judge the Korean War in a Century? [...] What I am arguing is will this be the consensus twenty years from today (or forty years after this article was written). I mean, yes, most ordinary South Koreans enjoys such material prosperity that probably only a select few and I mean a very select few in North Korea could only begin to dream about. I am saying that had the Korean War run its course without intervention from the United States (or equivalently had Harry S. Truman not settled on a policy, the Truman Doctrine, where not winning...

U.S. naivete not only wrongly interfered with the natural development of East Asia, but in particular with respect to Korea, the greatest tragedy was that by the U.S. interfering in what was basically a civil war, the peninsula saw all the carnage and destructionthat would've played out anyways had the U.S. not interfered, but the wardid nothing to unify the nation ("Containment"). Moreover, the perverse state that North Korea finds herself to be in is a direct result of the natural order of things being prevented from occurring. Other Sinic nations experienced similar bouts of reconciliation, but with the fruits...

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb by the United States on Japan, August 6, 1945. The decision by President Harry Truman to drop the bomb has been roundly criticized by revisionist historians and others on the Left. Some have even gone so far as to call Truman a "war criminal" for doing so. They could not be more wrong. The United States had already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties at the hands of Japan, in a war Japan started. The Japanese had shown in battle after battle their willingness to fight to...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

Bill covers the WW2 nuke bombing of Japan. Video at the link...

"Here's what I think of the atom bombs. I think if you dropped an atom bomb fifteen miles offshore and you said, "The next one's coming and hitting you," then I would think it's okay. To drop it on a city, and kill a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I think that's criminal."

A follow-up to Wednesday night’s Kinsleyan gaffe: He’s sorry, he’s just not sure why he’s sorry. The closest we get to an explanation is that the decision to drop the bomb was “complicated,” but of course that’s why Cliff May brought it up — to draw a parallel with the decision to waterboard terrorists. The moral calculus about how far to go in roughing up jihadis to save how many lives is difficult, as was the calculus about how many lives would be saved in the long run by incinerating Japanese kids in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war....

Although historians have debated the issue for decades, Jon Stewart has no question about this controversial matter: former President Harry S. Truman is a war criminal for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse. Stewart repeats the charge...

Via Goldfarb, the key exchange comes at around 5:50. Hundreds of thousands of lives saved by averting a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands, and all this tool can do is point a finger and mumble “yes” in response to whether Truman’s a war criminal or not. Behold the face of mindless anti-torture absolutism. Like what you see?

In August 1951, with a little more than a year left to Harry S. Truman's presidency, historian Henry Steele Commager published an essay in Look magazine with this prediction: "By all normal standards, [Truman's] Administration has been one of almost . . . unparalleled success . . . the verdict of history will not be the same as the verdict of contemporary critics." At the time, Truman's popularity hovered in the low 20s and most Americans considered his presidency a failure. Look's editors even published a note declaring "doubts" about "whether history will accord Harry S. Truman as generous a...

Poe: "They are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system," and "they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public." Understanding the Alinsky Method of "Community Organizing" Written by Bob Dill Sep 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM Meet the Real Obama and Cult of Alinsky " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV) It is becoming readily apparent that the "change" being proposed vaguely by Sen. Barack Obama is...

After his breathtaking victory against Thomas Dewey in the 1948 election, President Truman dove headfirst into his second term. Unfortunately, he would find this term quite different from the first, which was filled, for the most part, with great successes but increasing unpopularity among the American people. The Rise of Communism The vast majority of Truman's second term would consist of the very beginning of that pseudo-conflict which would remain present in America's consciousness for nearly four more decades - the Cold War. It didn't take long after the end of World War II for America to realize that the...

<p>CNN's Election Center 2008 hosts an Election Tracker that allows you to view their company's most up to the minute predictions. As of early morning Election Day, CNN had Obama winning at 51%, McCain with 44% and leaving 5% of voters ready to cast their ballot claiming to be 'unsure'. CNN also allows you to predict the election yourself by giving you the CNN ELECTORAL MAP CALCULATOR. In this function you predict the outcome by selecting states you think either candidate will win. This could be something fun to do with family, friend or co-workers.</p>

ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True; By MIKE GLOVER and DAVID ESPO Associated Press Writers DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Despite John McCain's prediction of an upset, Barack Obama reached for a landslide Friday, invading his rival's home state with TV ads and building a lead in early voting in key battlegrounds as the presidential race headed into a hectic final weekend. McCain charged that Obama, bidding to become the first black president, "began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it. He's more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist," he added in...