The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Bernie, Hillary,Eric and Sync

    By Flavius on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 6:02am |

    (From Harold Ickes  ´ diary)

    In 1933 FDR appointed William Woodin as Secretary of Treasury and Dean Acheson as  Under Secretary.

    During the appointment process Acheson joked he had no qualification for the post.  The joke ceased being funny , Woodin was in poor health  and Acheson soon was in effect the actual Treasury Secretary and

    FDR ś plan for Treasury was to  salute and say ¨yes sir¨ as he restlessly experimented to try to find a way to exit the Recession.

    One experiment was to devalue the dollar. FDR would literally flip a coin to decide how much to increase the price of gold , i.e. devalue the dollar. Acheson as actual rather than Under Secretary of Treasury did not salute and say ¨ yes sir" but vocally disagreed.  On the grounds that devaluing the currency meant breaking faith with countries or individuals who had purchased US securities .

    One morning Acheson was surprised to read in the morning paper that he had resigned. FDR had no patience at that point with such niceties as first informing a subordinate he was firing.i

    Things moved fast and a couple of days later FDR was surprised  to  see in his morning paper a  photo of the new Under Secretary , and  standing behind him , with bowler hat and mustache dominating the photo,the beaming countenance of the now former Secretary Acheson for all intents supporting the leader 's

    new team member

    Time passed and FDR had occasion to  again fire a well known executive who immediately held a press conference to denounce the change.

    FDR´s comment was:  ¨ someone should tell Mr. X to talk to Acheson about  how a gentleman goes about leaving an administration¨.

    Mutatis mutandi , Hillary was in an analogous situation in 2008 and whatever she secretly felt she managed to appear to enthusiasticly welcome Obama´s nomination. Not always the case, Eugene McCarthy took until the eve of the election to endorse Humphrey.

    Bernie has followed the Acheson and Hillary pattern and has said that he will vote for her.

    Whatever their private fury its time for Bernie ´s army to fall in line.  

     

    Comments

    The BernieBros want to see Hillary lose so that everyone will suffer. They want people to pay for noting following their advice. They don't care if Trump appoints wingnut judges or bankrupts the economy. They want everything burnt to the ground if they cannot get their way, if Bernie doesn't win, the BernieBros will try to prevent any real progress any way they can. They are fanatics.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 12:17pm

    Then let them fan at it. They're not worth the time or attention they're demanding.


    by barefooted on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 12:29pm

    They are also rapidly becoming irrelevant.

    And Sanders' leverage, such as it was, diminishes with every passing day.


    by Austin Train on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 12:49pm

    I posted this comment on another thread.  I'll repost it here, I've never done this before as I don't want to flood this site with reposts but it seems very apropo in this thread.

    The way Sanders is handling losing illustrates why he wouldn't be a good president. He's just not a team player. Passing legislation requires a team. His my way or the highway approach makes it difficult to form coalitions.

    He could have parleyed his support into a powerful movement within the democratic party to push for change. Many Hillary supporters would have supported such a movement just as many Hillary supporters support Elizabeth Warren. But rather than accepting his loss and being part of a team he decided to go it alone. With holding his endorsement of the winner means that Hillary supporters will not support him leading a movement within the party for change. And Sanders more pragmatic supporters are beginning to abandon him as they move to Hillary for the general. He will be left with only the leverage he can get from a small group of his most angry and recalcitrant supporters.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 4:49pm

    Flav, you seem to represent the authoritarian 'get in line' tendencies of those who worship the Brahman Ruling Class of old and those who submit to their wisdom in leading the unwashed masses. BTW FDR didn't end the depression, only the huge expenditures of WW2 brought down unemployment that was still 14% in 1940.

    You also seem to paint FDR as a Trump like 'you're fired' autocrat but FDR didn't seem to have the guts to face his rejects. FDR did save capitalism and the ruling class from their own failures and  HCR does seem to resemble him in that respect but she won't be offering any new deal to coopt the rising tide of resistance to her neoliberal agenda.


    by Peter (not verified) on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 5:45pm

    I won´t try to debate  FDR except to say  I´ve always liked Brandeis' assessment : a second rate intelligence and a first rate temperament.

    Compared to such  peers as Fr. Coughlin and Lindberg FDR looked pretty good.

     


    by Flavius on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 12:25am

    FDR was of the generation that thought public service was a duty and responsibility of their class because of the high social positions they inherited, noblesse oblige, while these new democrats led by the Clintons are grifters and power seekers who reject most of FDR's attempts to tame capitalism and make life for most everyone more equitable.. FDR was of the ruling class while these parasites only want to serve that class as junior partners and enablers to increase their personal power and influence.

    Using FDR's management of his cabinet as an example to apply to whipping voters in line is still authoritarian and elitist.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 12:36pm

    FDR was by no means such a unblemished progressive.

    He had strong connections with Wall Street.  His top man for the Soviet Union before and during the war was a money grubbing investor, Joseph Davies. 

    Davies was a scion of Wall Street and saw collaboration with Stalin as a money maker for the 1%.

    So much so that Davies went to the Stalin show trials of the late 1930's and approved the purge and executions by Stalin, from Davies book Mission to Moscow, an FDR whitewash of Stalin:

    In view of the character of the accused, their long terms of service, their recognized distinction in their profession, their long-continued loyalty to the Communist cause, it is scarcely credible that their brother officers…should have acquiesced in their execution, unless they were convinced that these men had been guilty of some offense.* It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that the accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty

    Joseph Davies.  FDR Wall Street favorite, he received the Order of Lenin from Stalin, and as US ambassador to the Soviet Union. During the late 1930's Davies spent so much buying up boatloads of Russian art, furniture etc that it was said he altered the currency exchange values.

    _____________________________________________________________________________________

    FDR Vice-President from 1933-1945, Henry Wallace. Wallace was a naive communist admiring Progressive from Iowa.

    In touring Stalin's gold camps for FDR late in the war, the Kolyma death camps in Siberia, he was completely duped when the slave workers were hidden and replaced by guards.

    See Three Days in “Auschwitz without Gas Chambers”: Henry A. Wallace's Visit to Magadan in 1944.
     
    Henry A. Wallace (1952), "Where I Was Wrong", The Week Magazine (September 7):
     
    ...as I now know, this impression was not the complete one. Elinor Lippor, who was a slave laborer in the Magadan area for many years, has subsequently described the great effort put forth by the Soviet authorities to pull the wool over our eyes and make Magadan into a Potemkin village for my inspection. Watch towers were torn down. Prisoners were herded away out of sight.
    Ernest Hemingway on FDR and the 1935 Hurricane that hit Key Largo and killed 488, more than half poverty stricken veterans sent there by the FDR administration to prevent them from another Bonus March on Wash, DC.
     
    ...wealthy people, yachtsmen, fishermen such as President Hoover and President Roosevelt, do not come to the Florida Keys in hurricane months.... There is a known danger to property. But veterans, especially the bonus-marching variety of veterans, are not property. They are only human beings; unsuccessful human beings, and all they have to lose is their lives. They are doing coolie labor for a top wage of $45 a month and they have been put down on the Florida Keys where they can't make trouble. It is hurricane months, sure, but if anything comes up, you can always evacuate them, can't you?...It is not necessary to go into the deaths of the civilians and their families since they were on the Keys of their own free will; they made their living there, had property and knew the hazards involved. But the veterans had been sent there; they had no opportunity to leave, nor any protection against hurricanes; and they never had a chance for their lives. Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans, many of them husky, hard-working and simply out of luck, but many of them close to the border of pathological cases, to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?
     
    FDR accomplished a lot, but he was not by any means perfect in his actions or disassociation from his class.

    by NCD on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 1:57pm

    YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF AND DREAMING A COMPLETELY MEDIA/ESTABLISHMENT DRIVEN PROPAGANDA DREAM set in the background of pretending that this country has NOT been taken over by corporations & the wealthy elite... and that our election was not COMPLETELY CORRUPTED.

    WE WILL NEVER "FALL IN LINE BEHIND HILLARY""" BERNIE KNOWS THAT!

     Whatever his reasons for doing what he is doing, WE HAVE NOT AND WILL NOT GET BEHIND HER OR ANYONE ELSE THE OLIGARCHY CHOOSES FOR US! Whatever Corporate Media tells you otherwise is a LIE!

     IF WE LET THEM GET AWAY WITH WHAT THEY HAVE DONE IN THIS PRIMARY,

    THEY WILL NEVER STOP!

    I AM FURIOUS AND FIGHTING AND WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT TO GET A PRESIDENT IN THE WHITE HOUSE THAT IS FIGHTING FOR THE PEOPLE INSTEAD OF THE OLIGARCHY!

     


    by synchronicity on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 7:21pm

    Synch, from a practical point of view, how could a non-Democrat beat a Democrat in a Primary?  The fact that Bernie did so well is proof that there was no fraud.  

    Your fury is eating you alive.

     


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 7:29pm

    Do you realize that the Democratic party has shrunk? Sanders brought many new voters into the party with him.

    Me I find it exciting because the country is finally demanding a new coarse away from austerity and corporate rule. People are now voting for ideas not for a team.  It isn't a sport. It is the ideas that matter not the party. 

    I am not going to argue over fraud because that involves statistical analysis and probability. You will learn more about it as these court cases expose how it is being done and how the machines  and tabulators are coded.  They are 10 years old and junk.   


    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 07/03/2016 - 6:30am

    Did he really bring many new voters into the party? Where's the evidence of that? In 08 both Hillary and Obama got 18 million votes. This year Hillary got almost 16 million to Sanders 12 million. Once again I'll ask some Sanders supporter to explain that to me.

    Where are those 8 million lost votes? If just half of them had come out to vote for Sanders he would have easily won without bringing any new voters into the system.  We've heard for years that if only the democrats would campaign on a far left liberal policy the poor and the workers would rush to us. We had a far left liberal candidate and he lost in a landslide. The people didn't seem to care. Why?

    Hillary did almost as well this year as in 08 in a non competitive race. She got 89% as many votes as 08. Despite her email scandal.  Obama was unknown to the majority of the voters when he started. He had to contend with the Rev Wright scandal in the middle of the primary. Yet he was able to fight Hillary to a dead heat in the popular vote.Again they both got 18 million votes. Sanders had no scandal to bog down his campaign. Yet he could not get people to go to the polls to vote for him. While it's possible those who voted for him voted  enthusiastically  people weren't enthusiastic to vote for him. Why?

    How is it possible that Sanders brought so many new voters into the system when he got 6 million less votes than both Obama and Hillary got in 08?


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 07/03/2016 - 8:00am

    This morning is the first moment I have had to get REALLY, TRULY ENRAGED About Hilary Clinton being the first woman aimed at the white house(like a nuke that needs to be stopped) because instead of being able to be excited about it, I Have To Fight Her Tooth And Nail Because She IS A Criminal, Grifter, Psychopath!

    &%!!*#&^!@&##@ Hilary!

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -

    It is clear to me that what it takes for a small group of powerful, insane people to defeat hundreds of millions is to deceive them and keep them divided, distracted, and just comfortable enough that they won't join together and unify with enough force/power to stop them.

    PLEASE! STOP FOCUSING ON THE 'SHINY' TRUMP BEING DANGLED IN FRONT OF YOU AND NOTICE THE 'REAL" THREATS TO OUR EXISTENCE! #‎SandersCLAN‬‪ #‎NeverHillary‬ ‪#‎NeverTrump‬ ‪#‎NeverQuit‬


    by synchronicity on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 7:24pm

    Have you talked to close friends or other people you respect about your anger?


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 7:30pm

    If you look objectively at your other posts you will see that this morning is not the first time you have been "really enraged,". You are enraged every time you write anything, but there is nothing objective; just people posting rants on YouTube.  I am not going to address the facts; I will just say that I am concerned about you.  I am hoping that if enough people tell you this you will reflect that maybe you are not basing your fury and anger on rationality and will give some thought to this whole thing.  

    You have my best wishes.


    by CVille Dem on Tue, 06/28/2016 - 7:37pm

    Comment removed.  Please refrain from personal analysis.

    Ramona


    by Austin Train on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 11:38am

    It apparently doesn't take much confrontation for Clintonites to revert to the lower forms of passive aggressive flaming and not so passive flaming. This tactic worked many times in the past but the #Bernie or Bust activists seem to be immune and because there are millions of them communicating through social media they have the group support they need.  I think we are nearing the point where small blog's influence is waning and a real insurgency is growing even among democrats.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 12:55pm

    So passive aggressive is worse than your "openly hostile combined with know-it all scold" technique. Fine, I'll try it your way.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 1:32pm

    I always knew you were a follower, PP and you don't seem to ever be passive, also you don't have to follow me to get your anti-democratic ideas into your comments.


    by Peter (not verified) on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 1:56pm

    Fine.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/29/2016 - 2:20pm