An excerpt from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's radio Christmas greeting to the nation, December 24, 1939:
A Christmas rite for me is always to re-read that immortal little story by Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol." Reading between the lines and thinking as I always do of Bob Cratchit's humble home as a counterpart of millions of our own American homes, the story takes on a stirring significance to me. Old Scrooge found that Christmas wasn't a humbug. He took to himself the spirit of neighborliness. But today neighborliness no longer can be confined to one's little neighborhood. Life has become too complex for that. In our country neighborliness has gradually spread its boundaries—from town, to county, to State and now at last to the whole Nation.
For instance, who a generation ago would have thought that a week from tomorrow-January 1, 1940—tens of thousands of 'elderly men and women in every State and every county and every city of the Nation would begin to receive checks every month for old age retirement insurance—and not only that but that there would be also insurance benefits for the wife, the widow, the orphan children and even dependent parents? Who would have thought a generation ago that people who lost their jobs would, for an appreciable period, receive unemployment insurance—that the needy, the blind and the crippled children would receive some measure of protection which will reach down to the millions of Bob Cratchit's, the Marthas and the Tiny Tims of our own "four-room homes."
In these days of strife and sadness in many other lands, let us in the nations which still live at peace forbear to give thanks only for our good fortune in our peace.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—Merry Christmas:
Let me take a break from my own personal war on Christmas (and the family crowded into my house) to wish you all a Merry Christmas!
My son, after refusing to tell us what he wanted for Christmas beyond "toys", spent the last two days telling everyone that Santa was going to bring him a "truck". We had already bought him a bike.
So I just got back from rushing to several toy stores looking for a frakin' truck. Shelves were stripped bare, and time was running out.
But I finally found one. I suppose this is what Christmas memories are made of, huh?
I'll definitely take it.
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Tweet of the Day:
BREAKING: Newt Gingrich to launch new campaign in Utah to preserve the sanctity of third marriage
— @TheDailyEdge
On
today's "classic" Kagro in the Morning show, we were witnesses to the unraveling of the conservative coalition, and just maybe the Gop itself.
Greg Dworkin reviewed recent polling on brand problem for the Republicans. A message problem, not a messenger problem. Then, Republican rigidity: they're simultaneously refusing to compromise on guns, taxes, the Fiscal Thingy, and pretty much everything. Are they really a political party? Then, more on "constitutional hardball," and how the Bush administration used it to screw things up, maybe forever.
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