When they refer to themselves as “progressives,” radicals express their own basic truth: Their method of operation is always to move steadily forward, seeking a progressive series of victories, each new gain exploited to lay the groundwork for the next advance, as the opposition progressively yields terrain. Such is the remorseless aggression of radicalism that conservatives forever find themselves contemplating the latest “progressive” demand and asking, “Is this a hill worth dying on?”

The “forgotten depression” of 1920-21 was caused by a huge increase in the money supply for President Wilson’s war. When the Fed started to tighten at war’s end, production fell 20 percent from mid-1920 to mid-1921, far more than today.

Why did we not read about that depression?

Because the much-maligned Warren Harding refused to intervene. He let businesses and banks fail and prices fall. Hence, the fever quickly broke, and we were off into “the Roaring Twenties.”

But, the Fed reverted, expanding the money supply by 55 percent, an average of 7.3 percent a year, not through an expansion of the currency, but through loans to businesses.

Thus, when the Fed tightened in the overheated economy, the Crash came, as the stock market bubble the Fed had created burst.

Herbert Hoover, contrary to the myth that he was a small-government conservative, renounced laissez-faire, raised taxes, launched public works projects, extended emergency loans to failing businesses and lent money to the states for relief programs.

Hoover did what Obama is doing.

It is a simple unquestionable truth that no public official or other public person in the U.S. today could meet the minimal ethical standards of the founding generation of Americans. If the founding generation is the measure of wisdom, integrity, and patriotism, then present-day leaders don’t even make the farm team.

Gibbsy, Rahm and I have a little drinking game for that one. We all took surreptitious shots after the Big O said it toward the end of the the press conference. Woo, that Jagr burns doing down, but it made my big LCD just a bit brighter.

Really, plenty of problems reach the Big Guy’s desk that are easy. Like hiring TATUS’s undersecretaries, and hitting the “Reset” button on the State Department, and the Potbelly’s menu he was asking for. The one problem that we’ve kept off his desk – and perhaps the biggest one – Michelle’s Bloomies credit bill for February. Ouch. That’ll make the Netanyahu thing seem like a kerfluffle.

Obama, a moderate with far too much respect for the globalized financial class, is surely the unleft, unradical president. Which makes you wonder why left and right find common cause in saying otherwise.