I’m not a fan of FDR, but here are some reasons I should give him some credit:

FDR could have nationalized the banks in 1933 and war industries in the 1940s. Instead he prevented runs on the banks and called in captains of industry to help run the war effort.

 

Fluent in German, he listened to Hitler on short-wave radio and recognized by 1938 that he was a monster that must be destroyed. Alerted by Albert Einstein’s letter to the possibilities of nuclear fission, he said, "We can’t let Hitler get this before we do," and authorized the spending in secret of something approaching 1 percent of gross domestic product on building the atomic bomb.

 

His judgment in picking military leaders — Gens. Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Adms. King and Nimitz — was unerringly brilliant. His decisions to invade North Africa in 1942 (against all military advice), to concentrate on the European theater and not the Pacific in 1943 (against the Navy’s urging), to stage the cross-Channel invasion in 1944 rather than 1943 (despite British and Russian pressure) all look very good in retrospect. It wasn’t so easy to make them at the time.

This video made reingnited my interest in Mt. Everest and mountaineering in general. Here’s the description:

Dr. Kenneth Kamler recalls his harrowing experience on a climb towards the summit of Mt. Everest in 1996 when a lethal 2-day storm kicked up. The event, documented by writer Jon Krakauer in his bestselling book Into Thin Air, would lead to the deaths of eight climbers and leave several others — including Kamler — stranded and fighting for their lives.

In this presentation, Kamler explores the effects of the disaster, the rescue, and the relentless drive of human survival.

Check it out.

Wow! The Democrats really, really, really screwed up with the Stimulus bill last year. A New York Times/CBS poll found that just 6 percent of Americans believe that it created jobs.

I thought maybe the Dems were being strategic and structuring the stimulus so that money money would be spent this year, helping to heat up a warming economy and would therefore help them in the 2010 elections. But the stimulus hasn’t work to create real jobs or as P.R. to make people think it created jobs.

But I’m just shocked that ony 6% of Americans think that it created jobs. That tells you why the Democrats are struggling right now.

Vancouver Inukshuk, originally uploaded by dr5.

Right now, she’s in Vancouver, B.C.

Obama was lying when he claimed that the health care negotiations would be televised. That’s no surprise. Obama has no desire to be open or transparent (but he would like people to think his Administration is open and transparent). Regardless of Obama’s broken promises, Mickey Kaus has some perspective:

C-SPAN BFD: Complaints about the Dems failure to televise or otherwise open up the House/Senate health care negotiations seem near-completely hollow (as were Obama’s promises during the campaign). Real legislative deals are always most efficiently cut behind closed doors, where the principals can be candid and concession-minded without fear of embarrassment, and where they can’t grandstand. … That’s life.  It’s not like we don’t know what the issues are, or that we won’t find out how they’ve been resolved ….If the Dems let C-SPAN cover the negotiations they’d just have to find another room nearby in which to hold the real negotiations first. …

 

In essence, understandably desperate Republicans (aided in this case by MSM reporters looking for a bit of cheap, non-ideological adversarialism) have now adopted, for tactical reasons, one of the most immature goo-goo liberal fantasies: the idea that "open meetings" on high-profile issues produce actual legislative transparency (as opposed to another layer of fake transparency). Next they’ll be complaining the negotiators don’t exhibit enough race and gender diversity. …

I don’t know if I agree with one of the key underlying assumptions in this article—that “most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs.” Obama and his advisors may believe that, I don’t know. But only a fool would think that developing countries would voluntarily harm their economies and their citizens by agreeing to cap CO2 emissions:

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.

 

The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies.

 

But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.

War is not the answer. Glib signs are the answer.

Ron Bailey reports from the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen:

I spent the day waiting with thousands of others in subfreezing cold to try to get into the proper building to obtain our credentials for the official United Nations Climate Change Conference. I clocked about 5 hours in line while my housemate, in town representing a Colorado NGO, waited 10.5 hours and was also turned away. The conference chaos makes one wonder how anyone expects the U.N. to run the world’s climate if it can’t manage a queue?

It turns out the U.N. accredited three times as many non-governmental organization delegates for the conference as the conference center could hold.

The views from space are boring, but from land, they are very interesting:

Eight months ago the Obama Administration ousted former GM CEO Rick Wagoner for Fritz Henderson. Now Fritz has been forced out as well.

Fritz’s daughter isn’t very happy. Here’s what she wrote on GM’s Facebook page: 

HE F*****G GOT ASKED TO STEP DOWN ALL OF YOU F*****G IDIOTS. I’M FRITZ’S F*****G DAUGHTER, AND HE DID NOT F*****G RESIGN. WHITACRE IS A SELFISH PIECE OF SHIFT [sic], WHO CARES ABOUT HIMSELF AND NOT THE F*****G COMPANY. HAVE FUN WITH GM, I HOPE TO NEVER BUY FROM THIS GOD FORESAKEN [sic] COMPANY EVERY [sic] AGAIN. F**K ALL OF YOU."