LaRouche stated: "[George Bush] has shown that mental incompetence: A man who says, as President of the United States, in a time that the national credit of the United States is in jeopardy, that U.S. government bonds are worthless, nothing more than worthless IOUs, that man is obviously mentally ill. And I think that mental illness is sufficient cause to remove him from office. The only problem in removing George from office is that, you've got to get rid of Cheney, too! Because Cheney is a sociopath, a killer! And you cannot have that guy in the White House."

At the time that LaRouche delivered his address, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators, representing the majority of that body, had just successfully put down what was explicitly recognized as an attempted coup d'état by Vice President Dick Cheney and company, by defeating Cheney's so-called "nuclear option." LaRouche identified that group as the nucleus of a bipartisan concert of action that could be mobilized under his leadership to launch an economic recovery.

However, as George Bush's already very tenuous grasp on reality grows weaker in the face of mounting opposition from even his own party, Cheney is being increasingly driven to try to hold the situation together, and block the emerging bipartisan cooperation by any means necessary....

...pdf version

Latest From LaRouche

'THE KEY TO THE UNITED STATES IS THE UNDERSTANDING — OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IMMORTALITY'

Here is Lyndon LaRouche's address to the European LaRouche Youth Movement Summer Academy on June 23, 2005. The nearly hour-and-a-half presentation before some 70 young people, was followed by some three hours of open discussion, which is not included here.

New: Proposed Rail Development Corridors in the Indiana-Ohio-Pennsylvania Industrial Belt

This Week in History

June 26 - July 4, 1936

FDR Nominated for Second Term as President

More than 100,000 people jammed into Franklin Field at the University of Pennsylvania when President Franklin Roosevelt arrived, on June 27, 1936, to accept the Democratic Party's nomination for a second term as President. It was one of the most hard-hitting speeches of Roosevelt's career, an answer to the disturbing events which had challenged the nation over the previous nine months.

The American economy had been improving since Roosevelt's New Deal programs had begun to take effect. Payrolls had doubled, the cash income of farmers had almost doubled, and both stock market and real estate values had risen. But, the more that conditions improved, the louder and more strident became the personal attacks on President Roosevelt. These attacks came from the major investment banking houses, major corporations, and their propaganda outlets, the American Liberty League, and many of the major newspapers.

On Feb. 25 of 1936, a conclave of FDR-haters gathered at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington to cheer former Democratic Presidential candidate Al Smith as he stated that "There can be only one capital—Washington or Moscow." Smith had sounded one of the main themes of the anti-New Dealers, and that was that Roosevelt was taking American down the path to a socialist or Communist dictatorship. The Chicago "Tribune" ran a headline that said "Moscow Orders Reds in U.S. to Back Roosevelt," reporting on a speech made by Earl Browder which was reprinted in Russia. The other anti-Roosevelt theme was that he was leading the country to bankruptcy.

Governor Philip LaFollette of Wisconsin said that the vengeful reaction against Roosevelt's program was like the drunk you picked up from the gutter, who now resented you forever because you had seen him in such an embarrassing position. Roosevelt liked to tell a different story on the same theme. A man in a silk hat fell off a pier and was drowning in the ocean. A bystander jumped off the pier and saved him, but the drowning man's silk hat floated away. The bystander was thanked profusely by the man for saving his life. But three years later, the same man attacked the bystander for not saving the silk hat.

One of the ways that the now-rescued man tried to regain his silk hat was demonstrated by the DuPont family, many of whose members had attended Al Smith's diatribe and were reported to have great influence with him. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau noted in his diary that he had been informed by a banker in strictest confidence that the executives of General Motors, in which the DuPonts had heavy interests, had been selling the dollar short and buying British sterling.

Another side of the attempts to destroy the New Deal was provided by the actions of the Supreme Court in 1936 to return to deregulation of the economy. On January 6, the Court had declared that the Agricultural Adjustment Act was unconstitutional because it was a scheme to impose federal regulations in a matter reserved to the states. The AAA had paid farmers to produce less, using funds collected from taxes on those companies that processed the food. The majority opinion was written by Justice Owen Roberts, a former corporate lawyer who had had as his client the Philadelphia affiliate of J.P. Morgan.

The Roosevelt administration rightfully saw the decision as aimed specifically at federal regulation, for a state legislature would find it very difficult to regulate farm production unless other states followed the same policy. Agricultural policy had to be national. Although the Supreme Court's next move was to uphold the Tennessee Valley Authority, it soon moved on May 18 to strike down the Guffey-Snyder Act, which had tried to improve conditions in the coal fields through collective bargaining, wages and hours provisions, and price controls.

Although the government lawyers had proved that strikes in the coal industry affected the railroads, and therefore interstate commerce, the Court's majority ruled that such "incidental effects" on interstate commerce were not enough to justify federal regulation. Ironically and tellingly, the Court had previously held the coal industry to be enough involved in interstate commerce to require a federal judge to sentence striking miners to jail.

The straw that broke the camel's back, and even shocked many Republicans, was a High Court decision in June that invalidated the New York State minimum wage law for women. One-third of the 48 states had adopted laws like that of New York. Three of the four conservative judges who voted to overturn the New York law had been corporation lawyers. Their decision more than implied that the states, just like the federal government, were not allowed to regulate industry. Hours after the decision was handed down, Roosevelt commented that "The 'no-man's-land' where no government can function is being more clearly defined."

The other area where danger to America lurked, and one which was linked to the attempts to destroy Roosevelt's reassertion of the American System, was the international situation. In October of 1935, Mussolini's troops had entered Ethiopia. In March of 1936, Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, and France did nothing. The rise of Francisco Franco in Spain brought the possibility that fascism would overcome the legitimate government, and in July the Spanish Civil War began. Congress had extended the Neutrality Act for another year, but Roosevelt knew that a weakened economy would not prepare America for a future war that might have to be fought.

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