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History News

Amity Shlaes Is Lying About Roosevelt, The New Deal, And the Great Depression

That’s a lot! Detail here. (via)
You know, one of the things I like about being a liberal is that if you come into an issue with pre-assumptions and then the evidence contradictions your initial assumptions, well then you throw out your initial thesis or at least modify it (ask a scientist sometime about that). Conservatives, [...]

Obama Is The Next…

Ok, media going too far. While as an Obama fan I hope to see him remembered FDR style when he leaves the presidency, how about we let him get sworn in first? Furthermore, I hate the rhetorical question of whether he will be the next JFK, FDR, Carter, Reagan, etc.
He’s going to be, for better [...]

Overheard

Last night, I heard the following yelled by a man in front of the White House:
Washington!
Lincoln!
Obama!

Thank You


Almost 4 Years Ago

Just to give you an idea of where things stood and why conservatives are just making stuff up when they say Kerry lead Bush.
Likely voters surveyed in six major showdown states indicated that they are almost evenly split in their support for President Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry, according a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released [...]

It Can Happen In America


There’s Something Happening Here

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are in line today to vote in Atlanta, Georgia.
These are not McCain voters.

Florida, North Carolina

Black vote turning out like gangbusters. Somehow, I don’t think they’re voting for Sen. McCain.

Southern Black Vote Is Coming Out Early

The beginning…
There have been predictions all year of a record black turnout for Obama. The first actual figures suggest that wasn’t just talk:
_ In North Carolina, blacks make up 31 percent of early voters so far, even though they’re just 21 percent of the population and made up only 19 percent of state’s overall 2004 [...]

What an amazing country!

Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times
The other day I had a conversation with a Beijing friend and I mentioned that Barack Obama was leading in the presidential race:
She: Obama? But he’s the black man, isn’t he?
Me: Yes, exactly.
She: But surely a black man couldn’t become president of the United States?
Me: It looks as if he’ll [...]

Get On The Bus

Early voting in Indiana:
For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it [...]

14 Days To Go

We shall overcome.
Ann Nixon Cooper, 106 years old, has seen presidents come and go in her lifetime and has outlived most of them. On a sunny fall morning, she left her weathered but well-kept Tudor home in Atlanta, Georgia, to vote early — this time for Barack Obama.
The African-American centenarian remembers a time not long [...]

Bush Led Kerry At This Point In 2004

I don’t know why people writing about the election - especially conservatives - keep getting this wrong. Today it is Edward Luce writing in the Financial Times.
The RealClear Politics website’s average of polls, which gives Mr Obama a lead of 6.8 per cent over Mr McCain, offers a better guide to the situation. It compares [...]

A Nation Of Dilla Freeman Burts

Unstoppable.

A month after her 100th birthday, Dilla Freeman Burt cast the first vote of her long life — for presidential candidate Barack Obama.
It’s the excitement surrounding these elections — a woman running for vice president and a black man running for president — that prompted Burt to action, said her daughter, Phyllis Burt.
‘I was feeding [...]

Can We Do This? Really?

Every American election is hyped as the most important election ever. They all matter, though. The job has only been held by 42 men and each one of them has affected the lives of billions.

We’re in the middle of so much right now, all manner of crises - foreign and domestic. We need so much [...]

“There Are Better Days Ahead”

Obama: “I’m here today to tell you that there are better days ahead. I know these times are tough and I know that many of you are anxious about the future but this isn’t the time for fear and panic. This is a time for resolve and steady leadership.”

“The Only Thing We Have To Fear [...]

Just Once I Wish A Conservative Would Crack Open A History Book

Erick Erickson of Redstate tries to make Sen. Obama’s statement on when America needs to intervene militarily into a gaffe.
Barack Obama suggests we need to consider moral issues in intervening with combat forces. He mentions intervening in the Holocaust and how we should have done that.
Um Senator, we did intervene in the Holocaust. It was [...]

When Cons Believe Their Own Horseswill

This conservative blogger is attacking me for connecting FDR to Obama/Biden. He thinks that this is a bad thing. FDR is considered one of America’s greatest presidents - across the aisles. He not only led us out of the Depression that happened on the Republican Hoover’s watch, he also created social security and led our [...]

Oh By The Way

The Democratic party just officially nominated a black man to be its nominee. I thought that was worth noting.

Apollo Is Calling

From a new Rasmussen poll:
With energy issues taking center stage in the presidential campaign, 81% of Americans see development of new energy sources as an urgent priority. Only 9% disagree.
For nearly two-thirds (65%), finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume. Twenty-eight percent (28%) think reducing [...]

Hero

Our government - state, local, federal - should not honor racist a-holes.
L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he’d ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.
Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the [...]

In Politics, Appearances Matter

Increasingly I get the sense from the McCain campaign that they didn’t learn about the impact of the Kennedy-Nixon debate in their history class. Actually, Sen. McCain was 24 at the time, he probably watched it on TV.

Its not that stagecraft trumps policy, but the presidencies of folks like FDR, Reagan, and Clinton show us [...]

Perspective

TUESDAY WAS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF BLACKS IN AMERICA.

Conservatives Are Idiots [Radio Host Kevin James On Neville Chamberlain Appeasement Edition]

Chris Matthews Stumps Right-Wing Radio Host: ‘Tell Me What Chamberlain Did?’ ‘I Don’t Know’.
Idiots could not crack open a history book to save their lives.
I can’t stand Chris Matthews but he absolutely PWNED.
Video of Kevin James getting pwned by Chris Matthews over Never Chamberlain’s history with the Nazis on Hardball:

Synchronicity (Not The Police)

The Democratic convention keynote will be on the 45th anniversary of “I have a dream”.
History FTW.

A Jackie Robinson Moment As Prelude To A Bigger One

This issue of Time is going to sell well. Mothers and fathers will get it to show their kids its not a pipe dream, it is no longer theoretical. I’ll be getting one to show the children I have in the future.
“I was there. I remember when it happened. Right at the start of it [...]

The Greatest Generation (Domestic Edition)

Elderly black Americans like this woman laid the groundwork for those of us who followed. Without their sacrifices in the past, there is no America of today - where the ideals of racial equality are recognized as an uncontroversial national ideal. These men and women understand the historical significance of a black president in a [...]

Liberal Navelgazing: WWII Edition

Some new pictures of Hiroshima post-bombing have provoked what has now come to be the expected response from some liberals in the HuffPo comments section. Ridiculous things like how the bombing could have been avoided, or stupid things like creating a moral equivalence to Hitler.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a necessary extreme action [...]

Superman Foreign Policy

photo credit: szlea
Ezra Klein makes the (convincing to me, at least) that American foreign policy should better be expressed as Superman versus Jack Bauer. Though to be honest the foreign policy we’ve got right now bears more resemblance to Lex Luthor.

John McCain’s Troubling, Deceitful History With Martin Luther King’s Birthday

John McCain is today claiming that though Martin Luther King was killed when McCain was 32 he didn’t understand the “issue” when he was 47, 15 years later. He goes on to treat a commemoration of the leading civil rights figure in U.S. history as if he was just one of the lobbyists he employs [...]

40 Years Later: Martin Luther King, The Greatest American Of All Time

Yes, he did
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me [...]

The Smithsonian Is Wrong, Bob

I love stories like this.
Is fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam smarter than the Smithsonian? The 11-year-old boy, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, went with his family during winter break to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the [...]

The Gospel Of American Politics

According to the Right Honorable August J Pollak
There is not a single instance of political discourse in the history of this nation in which the participants did not want to simply kick their opponent in the balls.
Verily, he doth tell the truth.

Senator Clinton Vs. The Founding Fathers

I watched the first three episodes of HBO’s excellent John Adams series today, and while looking forward to episode four tomorrow, I thought to myself about Senator Clinton’s anti-intellectual attack on Sen. Obama’s oratory as “just words”.
Much of the first and second Continental Congress and its work product - the Declaration of Independence - was [...]

Obama Speech: Raise Your Expectations

One of my personal maxims has been that politicians will disappoint you. The ones you like will have personal failings, while the ones you detest will fail time and time again. With Senator Obama, for the first time in my life, I have watched a political leader who I don’t worry if he’ll be up [...]

The Latest Evidence We Need To Turn The Page On Civil Rights “Leaders” Like Al Sharpton

Commemorating Martin Luther King? Why not invite serial moron Sean Hannity? Kee-rist.

Hillary Clinton Crosses “The Commander In Chief Threshold” During Her Time As First Lady: Illustrated

Sen. Clinton repeatedly cites 35 years of experience as a major rationale for her presidential candidacy. Next to her term in the Senate (in which the most significant vote she cast was a vote in favor of the Iraq war), the only other experience of hers that has national significance is the 8 years she [...]

Black Men Built The Capitol


The Greatest American Ever


I Love Negative Ads


Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941


Ken Burns/PBS The War


G.P.O.A.T.


20 Years


Trailblazer


Hiroshima