You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 27

PLAYS: 27

(Teddy Roosevelt - aside from National Parks, also attributed to coining the phrases: Speak Softly and Carry A Big Stick and Good To The Last Drop)

Continuing with the other Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was also a sitting President, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (1901, assuming office on the assassination of William McKinley - 1908) received his prize in 1906.

During the election of 1912 he ran as a third party candidate of the Bull Moose Party, losing to Woodrow Wilson (the other Nobel recipient).

Here is a campaign speech he recorded during the 1912 campaign.

Teddy Roosevelt: “The other day in a speech at Sioux Falls, Mister Wilson stated his position when he said the history of government, the history of liberty was the history of the limitation of governmental power. This is true as an academic stigma of history in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting the present.”

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

Continue reading »

With the endless drone of hate and vitriol spilling out of last weeks CPAC cabal, it's comforting (somewhat) to realize the amped-up hysteria and whining is just what history does, and does over and over. It's never civilized, it's never constructive and it is always based on fear and paranoia.

So it's mild comfort to know another President faced pretty much the same barrage. President Roosevelt faced familiar taunts and similar paranoid rants during his re-election campaign in 1936.

Here is an excerpt from the now-famous Madison Square Garden address of October 31, 1936.

"“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. ... Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.  They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred!"