Posted on 01/08/2010 4:53:35 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
As we saw from the poll on January 1st, the Soviets severely damaged their reputation with the common American with their attack on Finland. In fact it stated that the Americans favored the Fins 88 to 1 compared to favoring the Allies over Germany by only 42 to 1. Pretty telling honestly.
If FDR had even considered throwing in his lot on the side of the Soviets his political career would have been over that instant.
We’ve been loving this “news” lately! As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, my wife is of Finnish descent (still has relatives in Finland who visit here, and host our visits on rare occasion, and her mother’s family grew up speaking Finnish) so we are really “pulling for the Finns” here.. Yay! Go, Finland!
As always, thanks for your profound efforts on this project, and thanks for the pings.
Great stuff!
I, too, hope the valiant Finns come out on top in this struggle, but I don't know how long they can continue to withstand the Soviets overwhelming numerical superiority.
I noticed there’s been some tinkering with FR recently. For example, the “latest comments” page now auto-refreshes.. If you see a comment and then go to that thread, when you return to the “latest comments” page, it is no longer the same as when you left. It’s refreshed.
On the one hand you no longer have to manually refresh in order to see if you have any replies (”new posts to you” lights up automatically), but on the other hand you may have seen additional thread titles that interested you but you may have to scroll back a page or two to find them.
Of course! It makes sense, now. FDR was doing what was politically expedient. He was a politician first and a Communist second (or possibly third after elitist.)
There is a lot I can say against FDR, but one thing is for certain. He was about as politically astute as they come. Even if we didn’t have term limits, I doubt that there is a politician out there today that could muster a 3rd term must less a 4th.
I believe one of Ike’s better quotes was, “I studied drama under him [MacArthur].”
I like that one. He also told Stephen Ambrose in an interview when asked about MacArthur’s actions with the Bonus Army, “I told the dumb son of a bitch not to go up there.” Ike was not a MacArthur fan.
I'm not sure that even FDR could pull it off in this day of pajamas media. He had virtually all news sources (Print and radio only in that day) either carrying his water or too polite to point out his myriad shortcomings.
True. Most of them anyway. The Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald were both very anti-Roosevelt though. Almost to the point of committing treason.
You’re right though. I don’t think FDR could pull off a 3rd term in today’s political climate. He would make most of today’s politicians look like buffoons though. Like I said, he was a master politician along with the rest of his bad attributes.
Great post as always.
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