The White House Ballroom

" . . . But the biggest White House remodel to date started in the 1940s. That's when President Harry S. Truman fully gutted and rebuilt the interior in response to concerns about severe structural damage. When the Trumans moved into the Executive Mansion in 1945, engineers warned them that the building was on the verge of collapse. His family relocated to temporary quarters nearby during construction, which took around three years.

 
Other presidents have directed smaller projects, like President Barack Obama. He adapted an existing tennis court so it could be used for basketball. In his second term, President Trump has already undertaken several projects — including an entirely remodeled Rose Garden. That feature was first added by First Lady Edith Wilson in 1913 and updated to its most iconic form during the Kennedy administration." (WPTZ)

And here's what Teddy Roosevelt did to it.  https://www.whitehousehistory.org/theodore-roosevelts-white-house?  

And because of the hissy fits, the WH put out a complete list.  https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/white-house-ballroom-proud-presidential-legacy/?   

Let's face it, folks, If President Trump had regrouted the bathroom tile, the Demikratz would have been screeching because this is about hate, not remodeling, not even money, They stomp on the unborn, mutilate children, import sex slaves, allow thousands to be poisoned by drugs, ignore terrorists crossing our borders, and elected an auto-pen to lead us. Do you really think they are bothered by some bricks and mortar?

About Springfield, Ohio and a popular hymn

Complaints by the locals about imported migrant labor is not new to the U.S. Native born Californians were very hostile to the dust bowl agricultural workers (remember the Joads in Grapes of Wrath book?). In those days, and even when my family lived in Alameda in 1944, they were called Oakies and Arkies, pejorative terms then. Even my mom who was from Illinois didn't like them as she tried to stretch Dad's military pay while they bought what they wanted with government vouchers (or so she thought). In 1942, the Farm Security Administration (part of FDR's "New Deal") operated ninety-five camps with housing for seventy-five thousand people in California. The Library of Congress has an archive of photographs and books about those years and one photographer claimed in 1940 that the FSA camp at Visalia, CA had miserable weather and the local residents were grifters and corrupted. "I like it the least of the western states. My impression is that everything is commercialized, the police & city officials are corrupt grafters, there is little of that gracious western hospitality & most of the people are of that reactionary, super-patriotic, fascist-minded type. Practically every newspaper features a daily red-baiting article with 2 inch headlines that condemn [Democratic] Gov. [Culbert L.] Olson, the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], or Pres. Roosevelt."

Sounds like a true 2024 Democrat journalist, doesn't he? California and Minnesota even then had very active Socialist and Communist parties.

I know little about California's history or migrant labor. It's just one of those serendipitous things you find in the amazing LC collection while researching a hymn, and find it had been recorded in a migrant labor camp in Visalia in 1940, "Just a closer walk with thee." No one knows who wrote it, but it was the most popular and most recorded hymn of the 20th century.

https://genius.com/Patsy-cline-just-a-closer-walk-with-thee-lyrics  Patsy Cline

https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000132/  Library of Congress FSA recording

https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/just-a-closer-walk-with-thee    Details of publishing history

Biden's American rescue plan isn't

A hike in the minimum wage for federal workers to $15/hour is in Biden's American rescue plan. Don't fall for it. Only a tiny percentage of Americans work for minimum--it will make no difference, except for reluctance to hire inexperienced, slow workers. First minimum wage law was passed under FDR during the Great Depression. Threw many black families out of work; before that, blacks had lower unemployment than whites. They used their labor to outsmart the white workers and could bid low for jobs when everyone was desperate to work. Before government "help" blacks also had a higher marriage rate than whites. Now it's low for both. Black men had a higher marriage rate than white men until 1950, and black women had a higher marriage rate than white women until 1970. This affects education, health and wealth of children. And look at the government programs that ran amuck with the "War on Poverty." Liberals will blame the war on drugs and prison rates, or advocate for more education, but I blame the government's "help."

"The flagship of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933. It authorized the president to issue executive orders establishing some 700 industrial cartels, which restricted output and forced wages and prices above market levels. The minimum wage regulations made it illegal for employers to hire people who weren’t worth the minimum because they lacked skills. As a result, some 500,000 blacks, particularly in the South, were estimated to have lost their jobs." Cato Institute, Dec. 3, 2003

The Minimum Wage: Enemy of Blacks – The Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org)

On The Historically Racist Motivations Behind Minimum Wage (forbes.com)

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm?

Praying for the president and the election

Today I was thinking about the millions and millions of people praying for President Trump and the nation. It's really amazing. Maybe 70 million. Maybe not since FDR and D-Day has a president brought so many to this awareness that our country can be destroyed, but this time, from within. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer - Word Foundations  Check out this website for more articles and prayer concerns about what happened on November 3-4.

Another prayer group is Intercessors for America, TRUMP TEAM HAS A LEGAL STRATEGY, WE HAVE A PRAYER STRATEGY | Intercessors for America (ifapray.org)

Many Democrats are Christians. I wonder how they are praying? "Dear Lord, please let this election be legal so we can kill more babies in the name of women's health." or "Heavenly Father, Guide our chosen one who is under a black cloud for his activities with his family in China with the CCP."

Do not be afraid

This past week I've come to the conclusion that perhaps the President has understood the seriousness of this virus better than the scientists, his task force, Congress, the governors, the Mayors, the naysayers, his enemies in the press and even his most ardent supporters. He knows this is a battle that can't be won by science or talking heads on TV. It's a battle of the heart and mind.

The Bible refers to "fear" hundreds of times. First and most important, Fear of the Lord. Worship, respect, prayer.

Second, there are the "Fear not" passages. Command. Advice. Comfort.

Millions and millions of people across our nation and the world were praying for President Trump this week. Even Nancy Pelosi! From their homes, in their cars, in parades, on the sidewalks outside the hospital, on social media. Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and non-denominational Christians were united. People of other faiths, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and the "Nones." If they are serious about their faith, even Christians who don't like him, his personality and policies were praying for his recovery. That was the first use of Fear as used in the Bible.

And when President Trump left the hospital benefitting from high tech, new drugs and some low tech tender care, he told the nation and the world not to fear, don't be afraid of the virus. I think he knows who the real enemy is, and it isn't the virus. It's been the same advice every great leader through the centuries has known instinctively, or by studying history, or through divine guidance.

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

“I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:34

The hateful media ridiculed and criticized him for telling us not to be afraid of the virus. Facebook and Twitter were flooded with hate and despair. Would they have said that to FDR as he faced Hitler in the 1940s, or Eisenhower after his severe health problems in both terms in the 1950s? Did they tell JFK it's just too scary to make space flight trials to the moon? They know only the fear, anxiety and worry of the American people can accomplish what their party has intended all along. Retreat, defeat, and surrender.

It’s National Bible Week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PvxAOGYjY0

Byrds were #1 in 1965 with Ecclesiastes chapter 3

“National Bible Week in the United States is annually observed from Sunday to Sunday of Thanksgiving week. It has been so observed since 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the first national proclamation. In the years since, every president has issued a national proclamation, as have many governors and mayors, with U.S. senators and representatives also reading celebratory speeches into the Congressional Record.” https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/national-bible-week-and-the-hymnal

“Pleased to be chosen to help initiate National Bible Week, President Roosevelt agreed to host special events at the White House dedicated to the observance. In addition, a well-organized media campaign was planned, while religious, civic, and fraternal organizations pledged their support as well. To launch the event, a reading of the Bible was scheduled for December 7 on a national radio broadcast of the NBC network––the day before its official weeklong observance. On the scheduled day, Bible reading began on NBC, but to the horror of the nation, the reading was interrupted with the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Throughout the nation, radios were turned to NBC for reporting on the attack, and in between reports, network executives requested National Bible Association leaders to continue to read the Bible throughout the day. Who could have known, that on such a fateful day, America would need most the comfort of God’s Word, and what better preparation for a nation facing the horrors of another world war?”  https://christianheritagefellowship.com/bible-reading-interrupted/

Arthur Godfrey and FDR

I'm not an FDR fan, but I'm surprised I didn't see/hear more on the 70th anniversary of his death/funeral this past week. Was I napping? Was the TV off? The recording of the funeral has now been added to the Library of Congress under the National Preservation Act of 2000.

"Following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death on Thursday, April 12, 1945, the national radio networks suspended regular programming until after his interment on Sunday, April 15. In its place, they ...aired a round-the-clock stream of reactions from home and abroad, including formal tributes, memorial services, and live coverage of the journey of the funeral train bearing the president’s body to Washington, D.C. On Saturday, April 14, a solemn funeral cortege made its way through the streets of the nation’s capital from Union Station to the lawn of the White House, with relays of radio announcers describing its progress.

Arthur Godfrey, a local broadcast personality with many years of experience covering public events in the area, was added to the CBS national broadcast team. As the last announcer on the route before the White House, he gave beautifully detailed and dramatic descriptions from atop a bank building at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue for nearly half an hour, with his tone changing from solemn and journalistic to personal and emotional. When the caisson bearing the president’s body came into his view, Godfrey was dumbstruck, finally murmuring "God help me to do this" and choking out a few more sentences before breaking down on the air, forcing CBS to return to the studio briefly before resuming coverage on the White House lawn. Godfrey, a veteran of 15 years in radio, was deeply embarrassed by this incident, but soon became one of the country’s most popular broadcasters when he started his national morning show on CBS. His emotional coverage of this event now helps to illuminate the depth of the nation’s grief over Roosevelt’s death."

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-041.html

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt carried a gun due to death threats

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt has lunch with students at the Ohio State University on November 13, 1959.

Notice the purse under her arm in the first photo? Did you know, in her later years, Eleanor Roosevelt was a "pistol packing" liberal? Pictured in the second photo (discovered at the FDR Library) is her pistol permit. Former First Ladies did not have Secret Service protection until 1964 and Eleanor had numerous death threats against her and a bounty for her head by the KKK for her outspoken support of civil rights throughout the 1950s. It is said that she always carried a gun in her purse when she traveled. Tom Betti spoke with tour guides at great length at her home in Hyde Park, New York and they insist she target practiced and was ready to defend herself! She was never afraid of anyone, but prepared to defend friends, herself, and what she believed in. One thing is clear from her ID photo, don't mess with Eleanor!

Courtesy of Columbus Landmarks Foundation

https://www.facebook.com/ColumbusLandmarksFoundation

The 1942 Stuart Chase playbook for a strong, centralized government

Stuart Chase worked for President Roosevelt. According to Wikipedia, Chase, born in 1888, was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. Chase's thought was shaped by Henry George, Thorstein Veblen and Fabian socialism.  In 1942 he wrote a little book called "The Road we are Traveling."  He summarized the causes and outcomes of WWI and the Great Depression.  He wanted a new system of government that was socialism, but not called that (we were at war with 2 socialist countries), and which wasn’t capitalism because he believed that created the Depression.  So he named it System X.  If you look through the list (download from internet), you see we have it.

1. Strong, centralized government.
2. Powerful Executive at the expense of Congress and the Judicial.
3. Government controlled banking, credit and securities exchange.
4. Government control over employment.
5. Unemployment insurance, old age pensions.
6. Universal medical care, food and housing programs.
7. Access to unlimited government borrowing.
8. A government managed monetary system.
9. Government control over all foreign trade.
10. Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production.
11. Government regulation of labor.
12. Youth camps devoted to health discipline, community service and ideological teaching consistent with those of the authorities.
13. Heavy progressive taxation and hidden taxes on nations wealth.

page 95

                        

BO and FDR, two peas in a porridge

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) compared Obama favorably to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) after the SOTU speech last night. She might want to reconsider. To get elected, FDR promised he would be a fiscal conservative in 1932 after the liberal Hoover set the stage for really big government intervention in the economy after the crash of 1929 creating many new programs.  But FDR made things worse and kept the country mired in a Great Depression that lasted over 10 years. Our grandparents kept reelecting him—just like today’s know nothings reelected Obama last November despite his failures to turn the economy around.

Eleanor, his wife, was actually unhappy when things started to turn around during WWII because all the men and many of the women were employed in the war effort. (Even her most love-struck biographers acknowledge this.)  She wasn't done planning every detail of citizens' lives yet.  And like Obama, FDR hurt the little guy first with new excise taxes on everything from gum to movie tickets.  In 2009, Obama raised cigarette taxes, even though it was long ago proven that the poor do not respond to punishments in order to improve their health, and in 2013, he’s raising gasoline taxes 18%, which won’t stop the rich from taking trips, but will certainly hurt the middle class and low income driving to work.

How the New Deal hurt millions of poor people

Do Presidents not learn from history?

Actually, President Obama has learned the lessons from the 1930s Great Depression well.  The Great Depression was extended by FDR who raised taxes each time there appeared to be a fragile recovery.  FDR also campaigned against the high government spending of Hoover (like Obama and Bush), and to this day Hoover is blamed.

By the spring of 1937, production, profits, and wages had regained their 1929 levels. Unemployment remained high, but it was slightly lower than the 25% rate seen in 1933. The American economy took a sharp downturn in mid-1937, lasting for 13 months through most of 1938. Industrial production declined almost 30 percent and production of durable goods fell even faster. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938.

The top tax rate in 1938 was 78% and on capital gains it was 30%. They were 24% and 12.5% in 1929.  Who knows how quickly the country could have recovered if Hoover and FDR had none thrown the federal government into the mix?   Even some of the programs put in place by FDR were declared illegal or ran out, but he launched a “progressive” socialist plan that we have to this day.

http://top-federal-tax-rates.findthedata.org/

Obama and FDR

           

We scratch our heads that people still support Obama despite his failures in the domestic economy and the foreign scene, particularly the Middle East where he’s interfered in civil wars and lost more American soldier in 3 years than Bush did in 8 . Yet, Americans kept reelecting FDR during the Great Depression (including my sainted mother), and unemployment was as high as 25% and in 1942 he imprisoned or put in camps almost a million Americans of Italian, German and Japanese ethnicity. There's just no accounting for political blinders.

FDR particularly hurt blacks and poor with minimum wage legislation which is always a job killer at the bottom ranks; lots of minor taxes that hurt the poor the most—like movies and candy; also wouldn't support anti-lynching legislation, snubbed Jesse Owens and Joe Lewis, allowed unions to keep out blacks; manipulated public works programs for votes. But . . .to this day he is revered by blacks and minorities. It seems people found him charming and believed his lies. Sound familiar?

Bush-Obama, Hoover-FDR

President Clinton likes to bask in the glory of the brisk economy of his years (like he did in the convention), when with a Republican Congress government spending was cut more than any other president's term in modern history.  There was a slight recession at the end of his term and beginning of Bush’s but not many remember since it was 9/11 that really sent the economy spinning.  In the final 2 years of Bush's term he was weakened by a Democratic Congress and tried bailouts and redistribution to turn around the economy (it's odd that Obama bad-mouths him so since he loves that too, but FDR did the same to Hoover). Hoover didn't cause the Great Depression--the Fed did that by inflating the value of money--and it isn't even part of the government. To goose the economy in 1932 Hoover not only increased government spending, but increased taxes by raising the marginal tax rate from 24% to 63%, and then FDR took it to 79% and then 83%, extending the Great Depression by many years. Bush and Obama had plenty of history to go on for their failed policies since 2007-2009 wasn’t our first rodeo, but they blew it.

I could give you pages, if not books, of citations, but you wouldn’t read them, so here are just two cites.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577450910257188398.html

http://www.mtpioneer.com/March-deal-Hoover.html

You lived through ARRA, now compare it to FDR's programs

Happy Days are Here Again

Ronald Clark, a blogger and retired systems engineer for the Navy from Indianapolis, Indiana writes:

Back when the depression was going and America was suffering badly, Franklin D. Roosevelt mounted a Presidential campaign that featured the song, "Happy Days Are Here Again" with vague promises of a transformation of America into a place where the Government would take care of the people. He was elected with "Happy Days Are Here Again" ringing in everyone's hearts and ears. This was the start of real socialism in America and if you are so inclined to research the era, you will discover everything that FDR did during his years as President, made the depression and suffering much worse. The depression was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity (never let a crisis go to waste) to gain power for the Federal Government to implement policy that would never be accepted during normal times. His nanny Government also was responsible for extending the depression in America while the rest of the world recovered quite rapidly.

In other words, it was WWII that ended the American depression, not the entitlement, utopian policies of FDR. There is even strong evidence that FDR made decisions that forced the US into war in order to recover from the depression with his socialism policies firmly in place.

I know, not pretty, but mostly true.

The "Happy Days Are Here Again" theme during the FDR era is the same utopian Flim Flam that people ate up then and is the same as is the "Hope and Change" utopian nonsense that gullible people are gobbling up today and believe the Government can create jobs and take care of them. The point being, that the same disastrous results are occurring as in FDR's day and one must wonder if all of these unnecessary wars nowadays are an attempt to recover as FDR used WWII to recover. (Sorry, the wars nowadays are not big enough to effect the desired change.)

There really is no free lunch, someone must pay and we are now paying with our treasure, freedoms and jobs.

Happy Days

Original recording used in the 1930 MGM film Chasing Rainbows and recorded by Leo Reisman with vocals by Lou Levin.

Is Obama campaigning Like It's 1936?

Yes, and like FDR, he'll drag this out to achieve his political ends--more government in our lives.

FDR needed more revenue to support his big-government schemes. More importantly, he needed a villain to explain why, given the passage of his New Deal legislation, government spending and regulations, the economy was still struggling.

So he proposed raising taxes on the rich, which he dubbed a “Wealth Tax.” As he explained to Congress in June 1935, “Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent the unjust concentration of wealth and economic power. … Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods.” President Obama couldn’t have said it better himself.

Obama: Campaigning Like It's 1936 - Forbes

Obama's New Old Jobs Program

It's busy work Mr. President. The stimulus (ARRA) didn't stimulate--that one mile of sidewalk in my neighborhood didn't produce anything the community couldn't afford. And FDR's WPA didn't create jobs it was a relief program for able bodied workers. And no business can take a "tax break" if they don't have a product or a market--and you've killed both.

On a visit to Asia, the late economist Milton Friedman observed workers digging a canal, using shovels. He asked a government bureaucrat why they weren't using modern excavation machinery. The answer: "You don't understand. This is a jobs program." Friedman replied, "Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give the workers spoons, not shovels."

Gov't Is Job Killer, Not Creator - Investors.com

Obama’s Jobless America

The Bush Obama recession is starting to look a whole lot like the Hoover FDR Depression. FDR extended Hoover's attempts to right the economy for a decade by diddling the federal government with a variety of socialist schemes, some of which we're still struggling with (like a poorly planned Social Security trust fund), or were resurrected during the Johnson years for the "war on poverty." When a foxhole is won against poverty, liberals just dig a a new hole in which to throw money.

Morning Bell: Obama’s Jobless America | The Foundry

May Jobs Report Is Troubling as Unemployment Rate Increases | The Heritage Foundation

Food insecurity--a buzz word for government waste

The December 1, 2010 JAMA has a commentary by two MDs on "Addressing food insecurity; freedom from want, freedom from fear," beginning with an appeal of the four freedoms of Franklin Roosevelt (4 term president who extended the Great Depression and took us into WWII). The four freedoms were made famous by Norman Rockwell's paintings for Saturday Evening Post in 1943. The authors, with no citation and apparently very young, claim that the number of underfed Americans, aka "food insecurity," is on the increase.* Let's set aside for a moment that term, which is so squishy it might as well be a pool of quicksand. Two of the four freedoms, freedom from hunger and freedom from fear, if they haven't been achieved through the market, will never be achieved under our present hyper-regulated economy.

First, "hunger" must continue in order to support a massive government bureaucracy that was created at the end of WWII to maintain prices for farmers who had geared up to support the war effort. Before that, hunger was very much a local problem handled at the town and county level or by charitable organizations. Second, FDR's interference in the economy in the 1930s, beginning with extending some of Hoover's social policies, made the Great Depression worse. It's bizarre that Bernanke and Obama and their economic clutch of advisors think more of a bad thing is better, and they are just continuing a failed solution that didn't work then, and won't work now. Third, we'll hardly get rid of fear because over half of the American public fears the encroaching, nanny state government, most specifically losing their representation in Congress to either an over-bearing law making Supreme Court, or an overarching Presidency who just appoints whoevery he wants without confirmation or election to put in place a wide variety of regulations affecting the environment, the economy, the education system, the health-care system, or social behavior. Now that is REAL FEAR! It's much more substantial than lack of calories or fresh fruits and vegetables.

I have some Great Depression balanced and nutritious ideas for today's "food insecure."  First, eat at home; second, learn some basic cook skills.

Red beans and rice

navy beans cooked all day with a soup bone

Macaroni and cheese

Scalloped potatoes

Cooked oatmeal with raisins

Bread pudding

Water instead of soft drinks

A mess of greens--collard, turnip, kale, etc. as a side dish

**This term was introduced in 2006 by the USDA to indicate reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet, or disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake. No hunger is necessary for this term to apply.

Bernanke's Depression experiment

How many people get to play with the lives of 300 million people, and maybe the world's population, to see if their PhD thesis works?

Yesterday the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report and the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the 19th month in a row that the unemployment has been over 9 percent, a post–World War II record. Obama used to wave the figure of 8% unemployment on his fear flag of "hope and change." But B & O (Bernanke and Obama)have the Great Depression to look to for a guide, don't they? It seems the only problem these people see with the FDR years was that the government didn't interfer enough with more, and that's why FDR extended the problem for a decade.