Replies to post #515159 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

LOLOL again! All funny...

[janice shell]

This is quite interesting, from a column Jonathan Alter wrote for The Contrarian:

Tsar Trump Thinks He’s the State
As he tries to wreck everything, a little history and hope to tide us over

...The only other time we have come this close to dictatorship was in early 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt became president at the depths of the Great Depression. As I explained in my first book, the word “dictator” had a positive connotation then; a car called “Studebaker Dictator” sold well until 1937. Mussolini was popular not just in Italy but in the United States. Hitler was new, only then settling in as chancellor of Germany after winning a legal election and convincing politicians that his fascist party should be invited to join the government, the same message Elon Musk and J.D. Vance recently delivered to Germans about the fascist-leaning AfD.

It’s hard to imagine, but both Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Lippmann, the most influential columnist of the time, advised FDR that a “mild species of dictatorship” might be necessary to fight the Depression.

Roosevelt considered it. He reviewed the script of a 1933 movie produced by William Randolph Hearst, Gabriel Over the White House, in which a president played by Walter Huston (Angelica’s grandfather) suffers a concussion in a car accident and becomes a good dictator who commandeers Congress, though he faces more opposition there than Trump does.

When doing research at the FDR Library in 2005, I found a document in which an unnamed aide offered suggestions for a radio address to the American Legion on the second day of his presidency. The draft includes the line: “As new commander-in-chief under the oath to which you are still bound, I reserve to myself the right to command you in any phase of the situation which now confronts us.”

“Command you in any phase”? This was dictator talk — essentially telling World War I veterans that they would be his black shirts (Mussolini’s private army) and he might order them to guard banks from bank runs, quell disturbances, or do anything else he wanted.

But the radio speech FDR delivered did not include this power grab. It was instead an abbreviated version of his famous “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Inaugural Address from the day before when he said he would work with Congress to enact a broad agenda to fix the economy. Even his ill-fated court-packing scheme was a bill (that lost), not an executive order...

https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/tsar-trump-thinks-hes-the-state?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email

For what it's worth, this is the Studebaker Dictator:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Dictator

[janice shell]

One of the first articles about Trump's video, from Israel:

https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/02/26/trump-shares-gaza-ai-video-showing-him-netanyahu-sunbathing/

[janice shell]

There's been a good deal of reaction at X, BSKY, and in the Israeli press. This is from the Jerusalem Post:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-843779

And I'd somehow missed the lyrics till now:

In the backdrop, a song can be heard featuring the lyrics, "Donald Trump will set you free, bringing the life for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear, Trump's Gaza is finally here."

"Trump's Gaza is shining bright, golden future, a brand new life."

"Feast and dance; the deed is done. Trump Gaza number one."

Just grotesque.

And no one from the White House is denying it's from him.

[fuagf]

easing the urge...