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GJ Loft ME CA FL IL NE CT MI's avatar

There are several excellent TR quotes in the letter:

"Instead, he believed the American people must create a strong federal government that could exert public control over corporations."

Wall Street hated TR but he was a populist and the people loved him.

Excellent letter today Heather, but I'm a big TR fan. I can't imagine how much more control the corporations and the richest hundred or so Americans would have today if it wasn't for TR's bold actions 100 years ago.

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Sandra P. Campbell's avatar

Doris Kearns Goodwin did an excellent bio on TR that I highly recommend. I'm sure there are others equally good. He was - like all humans - a mixed bag. He managed to be both a man of his time, and yet far ahead of it. We need his like in Washington today, for sure.

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Marj's avatar

It was an awesome read! I think of the tragedy of the loss of his mom and wife within hours of each other and how he could not bear to see his daughter.

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Peter Burnett's avatar

But there are still so many individual buccaneers, so many privateering corporate pirates messing around with US national policy at home and abroad.

We may in part owe the existence of the current Putin regime to the activities of these loose cannons. It was they that deliberately humiliated Russia when she was down, they that delivered "more shit for your face" -- quoting Bill Clinton to Boris Yeltsin.

They bear huge responsibility for the failure of democracy in Russia. Their activity so strengthened the defeated Communist Party that Yeltsin et al. had to doctor national elections to sideline the CP. The beginning of the end for democracy. Next came the installation of Putin.

Even this dangerous crook could have been handled more skilfully... as so many other s.o.b.s have been. Even without becoming another OUR S.O.B like Anastasio Somoza...

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Pat Russiano's avatar

Our Democracy may have died long ago Gary Loft. The right leader at the right time. That’s how I view “old President Biden”

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