"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." --Bishop Desmond Tutu

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

That's some powerful stupid you got there, lady...

Leave it to GOP Representative Michell Bachmann to come up with some very powerful stupid.



Ahhh, Ms. Bachmann? It's Smoot-Hawley, darlin'. Not "Hoot-Smaley." And it was a tariff act signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover. According to Wikipedia
In May 1930, a petition was signed by 1028 economists in the United States asking President Herbert Hoover to veto the legislation, organized by Paul Douglas, Irving Fisher, James TFG Wood, Frank Graham, Ernest Patterson, Henry Seager, Frank Taussig, and Clair Wilcox.[6][7] Automobile executive Henry Ford spent an evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto the bill, calling it "an economic stupidity".[8] J. P. Morgan's chief executive Thomas W. Lamont said he "almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot tariff."[9]

Hoover opposed the bill and called it "vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious" because he felt it would undermine the commitment he had pledged to international cooperation. (Hoover was right. The international community levied their own tariffs in response after the bill had become law.) However, in the end, Hoover bowed to pressure from his own party and business leaders and signed the bill. [10]

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke against the act while campaigning for president in 1932.
Smoot-Hawley was a Republican idea!!!! Bachmann is one stupid person.

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