Every now and then, there have been articles about how FDR made this or that mistake, how he didn't end the Depression, or make it better. That the economy never got better, and nobody got back to work, though my grandparents and parents lived through it, and always told a different story.

No, the Depression didn't end until the purse strings really got loose when war was looming, and then we were in it. The massive spending by the government, the kind of spending we needed during the Depression, to get us out of it earlier, didn't happen until Pearl Harbor. But that is not to say that we were not working our way out of the Depression.

I don't think people realize just how bad things were on March 20, 1933, just as people don't know how bad things were on January 20, 2009, and as far as we have come, which we have, the hole is half way to China, figuratively and actually. In 1894-6 they called it a Recession, so instead of scaring people in 1929, they called it a Depression. This time they called it a Recession, because nobody remembers the Great Recession of 1894-6, but they do remember the Great Depression of 1929-41. This is a Depression. A rose by any other name, smells as sweet. Or in this case, stinks.

When I came across the following article, it occurred to me, that I have been seeing these articles a lot more over the last two years. It is another way of attacking Obama, bolstering the forces on him to not do any Rooseveltian rescuing. It is working. I have no idea what is going on in his head, or if he has lost his mind. Is he throwing out red herrings? Are there hooks in that bait? Is he suddenly going to turn the handle and jack is going to jump out of the box? He is so strange these days, you can't even say he has joined the Republican Party.