Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Historical FAIL

Wow. Michelle Bachmann claims FDR used the Hoot-Smalley tariffs as economic policy, but brought about the Great Depression instead. Only a few problems.

1) FDR's Presidency came several years in to the Great Depression, and did not precede it.

2) It was called Smoot-Hawley, not Hoot-Smalley.

3) Those also predated the FDR Presidency, and were signed in to law by a Republican President, one Herbert Hoover.

But then, linear time has never always been a problem for these people.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As pointed out in the same story, Bachmann also earlier in the same day said that the Swine Flu outbreak in the 70s happened under Jimmy Carter, rather than Gerald Ford. (And it wasn't just an off-hand reference either - it was crucial to her narrative linking Obama and Carter together).

She's what my dearly departed grandfather would refer to as "an idjit". Really, I hope her constituents are watching her and enough of them take notice in a couple years to boot her out of office and replace her with someone less embarrassing.

--NonyNony

Jennifer Smith said...

Maybe she suffers from the same speech impediment that resulted in 'NU-CU-LER'.

Liam said...

2) is called a phonemic paraphasia and is a super common linguistic error. It's very possible she knew the correct name and simply made a paraphasia.