Plus Ca Change . . . October 21, 2014 ELEANOR’S TAKE Jim Burt: “I saw the following in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time, about FDR and Eleanor, and was reminded of current events. The paragraph describes a syndicated column Mrs. Roosevelt wrote recounting the reaction of congressional Republicans to FDR’s famous ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, in which he articulated the principles for which Europe’s democracies were fighting Hitler and in which he proposed Lend-Lease: In the column [that Mrs. Roosevelt] wrote the afternoon of the speech, she angrily observed that the Republicans had failed to applaud the president’s address. “It looked to me as though those men were saying to the country as a whole, ‘We are Republicans first. We represent you here in Congress not as citizens of the U.S. in a period of crisis, but as members of a political party which seeks primarily to promote its own partisan interest.’ This is to me shocking and terrifying.” “The Republican of today are still sitting on their hands in the face of popular proposals and obstructing the responses of our government to crises. Some things apparently never change.” ☞ Ah, but they do — if we take the time to vote. VEST OR VOTE Have you seen this ad urging African-Americans to vote? Did you know that on average one African American is killed by a cop, security guard, or vigilante every 28 hours? An interesting discussion follows the clip. THE DEATH TOLL Not counting the one American who contracted it abroad (Ebola aside, what kind of hospital sends someone home with 103-degree fever and intense abdominal pain?), the U.S. death toll has now climbed to zero and can be expected to continue to dominate the news.