there was an Israeli prime minister who supported a Palestinian State with control of East Jerusalem. The PLO told him to shove that offer where the sun don't shine and spent the next four years sending suicide bombers into restaurants, bars, and buses in Israel. Now, they won't even talk to the Israelis.

nt

PUMA's don't know how to handle the truth.

I'm a psychologist.  I can make this judgment.

If he doesn't do it, he's selling out.

/snark

I completely agree!

He also pushed back against generals who pushing him to attack Cuba.  If JFK had followed the GOP "strong on defense" line they push today, that the commander in chief has to bend over and do whatever the generals want, then we would have had a nuclear conflict back in 62.

Not that you're interested in the truth or anything, but MA Gov. Deval Patrick's approval rating (as reported by the Boston Globe on January 10th) was 41%.  Today, the Washington Post reported that Obama was at 56%.  This was a repudiation of Massachussetts Democrats.  Take the Obama hate back to Alegre's Aslyum.

But it's not, I believe, because Obama is too liberal, nor because he's not liberal enough. Not because this administration has been too defensive, too aggressive, too slow or too quick to act. It's because we have a system in Washington that simply does not -- will not -- allow the kind of change we urgently need.

This was a repudiation of the system--not President Obama.

Somebody let the PUMA's out of Alegre's Insane Asylum...

President Obama did the right thing.  He made a mistake or two along the way, but he was right to go for HCR right at the beginning.

If we don't get HCR through now, it just demonstrates what I've long feared, that our country is no longer governable.

....on what planet is this considered a diary?

This isn't my diary.  I just posted the diary as a comment to show the diarist that he/she can cross-post HTML.

Huey Long's FDR-prodding left populist movement -- Share Our Wealth (a.k.a. Share the Wealth) -- seemed and still seems, from the perspective of the bottom 3/4ths, common sense, morally right, and doable now (more than ever!). Read below for the details, but here is how Long began a speech in January, 1935:

We are in our third year of the Roosevelt depression, with the conditions growing worse. . . . . . . We must know the truth and speak the truth. There is no use to wait three more years. It is not Roosevelt or ruin; it is Roosevelt's ruin. . . . We ran Mr. Roosevelt for the presidency of the United States because he promised to us by word of mouth and in writing: * That the size of the big man's fortune would be reduced so as to give the masses at the bottom enough to wipe out all poverty; and * That the hours of labor would be so reduced that all would share in the work to be done and in consuming the abundance mankind produced. Hundreds of words were used by Mr. Roosevelt to make these promises to the people, but they were made over and over again. . . . Summed up, what these promises meant was: "Share our wealth." When I saw him spending all his time of ease and recreation with the business partners of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., with such men as the Astors, etc., maybe I ought to have had better sense than to have believed he would ever break down their big fortunes to give enough to the masses to end poverty-maybe some will think me weak for ever believing it all, but millions of other people were fooled the same as myself. I was like a drowning man grabbing at a straw, I guess. The face and eyes, the hungry forms of mothers and children, the aching hearts of students denied education were before our eyes, and when Roosevelt promised, we jumped for that ray of hope. So therefore I call upon the men and women of America to immediately join in our work and movement to share our wealth.

We are beginning the second year of the Obama recession. Is there any sign of resistance akin to Long's? Populist rebellion against the actual roots of our economic and political crisis: the vast wealth transfer over the last 30 years to the richest 10% and 1%, and the takeover of our media/political system by that 10% and 1% and big business? If a really popular populist resistance were to arise, it might come from the back roads of Louisiana and have a program something like this

:

1. The fortunes of the multimillionaires and billionaires shall be reduced so that no one person shall own more than a few million dollars to the person. We would do this by a capital levy tax. On the first million that a man was worth, we would not impose any tax. We would say, "All right for your first million dollars, but after you get that rich you will have to start helping the balance of us." So we would not levy any capital levy tax on the first million one owned. But on the second million a man owns, we would tax that 1 percent, so that every year the man owned the second million dollars he would be taxed $10,000. On the third million we would impose a tax of 2 percent. On the fourth million we would impose a tax of 4 percent. On the fifth million we would impose a tax of 8 percent. On the sixth million we would impose a tax of 16 percent. On the seventh million we would impose a tax of 32 percent. On the eighth million we would impose a tax of 64 percent; and on all over the eighth million we would impose a tax of 100 percent. What this would mean is that the annual tax would bring the biggest fortune down to $3 or $4 million to the person because no one could pay taxes very long in the higher brackets. But $3 to $4 million is enough for any one person and his children and his children's children. We cannot allow one to have more than that because it would not leave enough for the balance to have something. 2. We propose to limit the amount any one man can earn in one year or inherit to $1 million to the person. 3. Now, by limiting the size of the fortunes and incomes of the big men, we will throw into the government Treasury the money and property from which we will care for the millions of people who have nothing; and with this money we will provide a home and the comforts of home, with such common conveniences as radio and automobile, for every family in America, free of debt. 4. We guarantee food and clothing and employment for everyone who should work by shortening the hours of labor to thirty hours per week, maybe less, and to eleven months per year, maybe less. We would have the hours shortened just so much as would give work to everybody to produce enough for everybody; and if we were to get them down to where they were too short, then we would lengthen them again. As long as all the people working can produce enough of automobiles, radios, homes, schools, and theaters for everyone to have that kind of comfort and convenience, then let us all have work to do and have that much of heaven on earth. 5. We would provide education at the expense of the states and the United States for every child, not only through grammar school and high school but through to a college and vocational education. We would simply extend the Louisiana plan to apply to colleges and all people. Yes; we would have to build thousands of more colleges and employ 100,000 more teachers; but we have materials, men, and women who are ready and available for the work. Why have the right to a college education depend upon whether the father or mother is so well-to-do as to send a boy or girl to college? We would give every child the right to education and a living at birth. 6. We would give a pension to all persons above sixty years of age in an amount sufficient to support them in comfortable circumstances, excepting those who earn S 1,000 per year or who are worth $10,000. 7. Until we could straighten things out and we can straighten things out in two months under our program-we would grant a moratorium on all debts which people owe that they cannot pay.

One of the better brief revisionist accounts of the Long phenomenon is Remembering Huey Long, by Christian Roselund. Roselund writes:

. . . in the story where the great hero Roosevelt takes bold action to help the needy in a time of crisis, we tend to miss the political forces with which he was forced to contend. In our national mythology of that era, the most important character overlooked is the complicated Southern politician Huey P. Long, who presented a populist threat to Roosevelt, influenced the direction of New Deal legislation and left a political legacy that both provided for the poor and modernized the state of Louisiana. Unfortunately, when Long is remembered, it is usually as a distorted caricature, and the real impact of his work is lost. . . . Long's "Share the Wealth" proposal was premised on heavy taxation of the wealthiest Americans in order to pay for a national minimum income. Details were sparse, but Long's message won him a huge national following as the champion of the poor in their fight against large banks and corporations, and their servants in Washington. Long also delivered. As Louisiana's governor, he taxed the oil industry to pay for free textbooks for all children, bridge the Mississippi, and expand public universities. Long's roads program was the largest public works program in the South before the New Deal and it increased the mileage of paved roads in the state ten-fold, employing eight thousand men at its height and creating vital commercial improvements in the backward state. Louisiana was never the same. Well beyond his tenure, candidates for state office fell primarily into two camps: pro-Long or anti-Long. Despite rampant corruption, Long's successors sustained electoral support through expanding public services, like establishing a statewide system of free "Charity" hospitals. Long's impact was not confined to the South. As a senator, he was among Roosevelt's fiercest critics, continually challenging the president to do more for poor and working people. In one example, when FDR cut veterans benefits and government worker salaries, Long denounced it as the work of J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller.

Wouldn't it be cool -- right now, as a practical measure -- to have a nationwide system of free 'Charity' hospitals? Anyway, Roselund concludes:

Amid these excesses of Neoliberalism, Long’s message has a new urgency. His call for redistribution of the nation’s wealth and for a society that provides basic services for all its members speaks to our current economic crisis, when so many have lost their homes and livelihoods and so many continue to be without affordable health care. After thirty years of growing income inequality, Long’s emphasis on class is timely. And as unemployment grows, bank executives give themselves exorbitant bonuses with money from the bailout, and Exxon-Mobil posts record annual profits, we should remember Huey Long. We may not need a new Huey Long, but we do need a movement to address inequality. With all his flaws, Long was nothing less than a hero for bringing this message to the forefront of national politics, a message that is relevant today just as it was 75 years ago.

More Huey stuff at this pffugeecamp comment, and at his Wikipedia entry

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