Slow news day?

With almost every news organization practically devoting 24/7 coverage to a snowstorm in the East, a snowstorm in England and Scotland, or a snowstorm in Western Europe, just about any other coverage is welcome.

However, First Read said a while back the regular contributors would be taking holiday time off. Looks like this story is one of several to be posted to just keep the motor ticking over.

Nice to see that the country still admires the president. There is a troll working the boards named "ODIN" who seems to be peddling trash from the militia wing of the Tea Party movement. His standardized post claims President Obama is the leading edge of a conspiracy to dump the Bill of Rights, impose tyranny on the nation, hand the reins of state to the banking industry via the Federal Reserve, and concludes with an ominous quote from Jefferson suggesting that revolution is overdue. Following is the post I made elsewhere answering his crap. It does suggest some topics for further discussion, however:

Odin - You are peddling from blog to blog making the same post. Your claptrap about "tryanny" and the Bill of Rights being trampled frankly doesn't hold water. Your tired line about "taking America back" is a shopworn slogan used now mainly by those of the White population who are frightened of losing their majority overall.

The kind of America you envision died before the Civil War. The country's governmental institutions and operations especially evolved into more of a modern nation-state under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and were shown in the terrible distress of the current economic crisis to be at minimum functional and at best the bulwark that kept our ship of state from sinking entirely. You cannot "take America back" in the sense you intend - but we can all cooperate in taking America forward.

Just a few notes about Jeffersonian Democracy - and I still admire President Jefferson for his many and varied achievemnts - to set us all thinking:

Jefferson was mainly the advocate of the "yeoman democracy," a largely agrarian state of little industrialization, broken into stands of farms, orchards, woodlands, dairies and the like. In this vision of pastoral paradise, every citizen owned a "stake" in Democracy by way of landholdings.

Jefferson had deep experience of the ways that bankers and capitalist financiers - whom he hated without reservation - manipulated trade, investment, credit, and the other sinews of a wide-flung empire of Business that was Great Britain before the Revolution.

During Jefferson's presidency, the United States lacked a uniform currency (the most acceptable money was the silver Spanish Imperial peso, the 8-reale silver coin also known as the "Spanish Dollar"). The various local or state-chartered banks went largely unregulated, issuing their own "currency" and often taking down entire communities when they went bankrupt. Those banks went bust all too often.

During Jefferson's presidency, the scope of the continent was still unknown - the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 was perhaps the greatest of all Jefferson's contributions besides having the courage to make the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon.

During Jefferson's presidency the United States was almost entirely naked of a Navy or any military forces. The government's revenues came almost completely from excise levies on exports and import tarriffs, making the ports of Boston, New York, and Charlottesville the most important sources of public receipts in the country. (Baltimore was really just getting going at the time.)

During Jefferson's presidency, there was almost no industrial development anywhere in America. Partly that was the result of British colonial policies, which had suppressed colonal manufacturing in favor of manufactured imports from the Mother Country, and exports of raw goods from the colonies to pay for the imports.

Partly American lack of industrialization also reflected a somehwat limited source of native raw materials, especially coal and iron ore, copper, zinc and lead, and the bases of chemicals needed in the kind of heavy manufacturing of the time. And, of course, a relatively small population could not support any form of concentrated industrial organization.

And, finally, low levels of industrialization reflected American domestic markets - water-powered mills processed timber and rough cloth, cereal grains for local consumption; handcraft artisans including gunsmiths, furniture makers, tailors and seamstresses produced only for local consumption - and the inability of Americans to compete with better-financed, more avanced manufacturing and trading organizations based in England and Europe.

During Jefferson's presidency, in his last year in office (1808), the future of steam power as the terminator of Jefffersonian Democracy could be seen on New York's Hudson River. After his early demonstrations of the Clermont in 1807, Robert Fulton and his partners began offering regular steamship passages upriver and back.

Even by the 1820's it became clear that the United States of which Jefferson dreamed was gone, if in fact it had ever been little more than a romanticization of a rural, pastoral country of farmers. Jefferson, full-bred participant in the period of the Enlightenment, shared that romantic point of view with Marie Antionette, ill-fated Empress of France, who at Versailles had idealized farms erected where she occasionally played at being a milk-maid.

THAT is the America you think you can bring back?

It never really was, except during a very, very brief transition from the post-colonial period to the ever-expanding nation of factories, shipbuilders, railroads, mass-production goods and their bow wave of traveling salesmen, scientific experimentation and discovery, and a government that over time became a necessary component in it all.

The Federal Reserve Bank has been a vital component of regulating American money supply and balancing relative values of U.S. currency with that of other nations. Had the Federal Bank that Andrew Jackson shut down continued to operate and perform even the limited duties of its time, a number of very bad recessions during the 1800's might have been avoided. As it was, the U.S. did not really have a fully-rationalized national currency until the 1890's when at last major banking reforms began to sort out a system that had been left almost completely to the states.

Come up to date with the events actually taking place in the U.S. There is no vast conspiracy headed by President Obama to impose "tyranny" on the country - far from it, his policies have substantially furthered individual initiative and encouraged business growth. This is the first President in 30 years to actually undertake measures to encourage the rebuilding of American manufacturing.

The appointment of the next chief of the National Economic Council will be important to us all. Let us hope that appointment reflects the progress of American public institutions since the 1930's and the special challenges our institutions and people face in these years. The neglect of those same institutions and their purposes, under Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, all contributed to the current economic collapse and called for the kinds of improvements and reforms President Obama has promoted.

Glenn Beck more admired than the Dalai Lama...

Sarah Palin more admired than Barbara Bush....

what is this world coming to ?

I hope they did not pay a lot for that poll.. What a joke! Jimmy Carter made the list ... OMG. Well, that discounts the whole list!!! Find out how was the question asked and you will probably see why all the extremists made the list!

Just when you thought the media could not sink any lower. No wonder this country is in the shape it is.

You most be joking!!!!!! Who conducts these polls?

O no MR Bill?

The three stooges?

Pewee Herman?

Bill and Hilary?

Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Goofy?

Just who the hell conducts these polls? You the media love to twist things don't you.

You must be joking!!!!!! Who conducts these polls? (Sorry for the typo)

O no MR Bill?

The three stooges?

Pewee Herman?

Bill and Hilary?

Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Goofy?

Just who the hell conducts these polls? You the media love to twist things don't you.

When will these Obama love fests stop? I think the Far Left is even getting sick of them......and why isn't Billy ahead of Jimmy Carter, he at least produced Billy Beer, as bad as that, reportedly, was.

how could anyone admire obama, bush or clinton? 3 detestable stooges for wallstreet. the flip side is approval rating for obama is currently 45%, not exactly inspiring, nor was bush when he fell into the high 20s. the real villains though are congress at less than 20%. what a collection of corrupt nitwits.