I was going to do another torture post but.....

As I said, if she didn't exist I do not know what I would do. This woman is a one woman wrecking crew. It's like in her hands 'teh stupid' is a cosmic force. To continue the metaphor, she would be like a Herald of Galactus. Except instead of serving some galaxy spanning, world devouring force of nature. She instead serves the forces of stupid (h/t Dumpbachmann).

"We were led to believe that we would see great change, immediate change, and all we're seeing is a prolonged effort, because just what happened in the 1930s with FDR.

"The more the government spent, the more the government regulated, the more the government put up tariff barriers -- trade barriers -- the more government intervened, the longer the recession occurred. And as a matter of fact, the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early '20s. Yet, the prescription that Coolidge put on that, from history, is lower taxes, lower regulatory burden, and we saw the roaring '20s where we saw markets and growth in the economy like we never seen before in the history of the country.

"FDR applied just the opposite formula -- the Hoot-Smalley Act, which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions, and then, of course, trade barriers and the regulatory burden and tax barriers. That's what we saw happen under FDR. That took a recession and blew it into a full-scale depression. The American people suffered for almost 10 years under that kind of thinking."

That is right, 'Hoot-Smalley'. Now I might forgive that sort of thing if it wasn't also a cultural touch stone for my generation (Ben Stein's intonation of it made you wanna know what it was!).

Mrs. Bachmann of of course was referring to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. I know it is fun for some to try to pin the blame for the Great Depression on FDR, but seriously this act was written by two republican senators, and was passed by President Hoover in 1929. FDR would not become president until 1932 (technically '33, but I am sure you get the point.). I won't even get into how the profligate spending and lax regulation during the '20s was a root cause for the great depression.

Obviously we need to spend way more on education. History in particular seems to be tough spot for some 'conservatives.

-Cheers