What's Really Important

So I just got finished reading Denise Williams' amazingly insightful article about Michelle Bachmann, entitled "Another Day, Another Bachmann Gaffe". It's over a year old, but it's still relevant. Here's an excerpt:

Congresswoman Bachmann this time, trying to make a point about regulatory burden and high taxes, totally blows history. She blames FDR for the "Hoot-Smalley Tariff" and how that turned a recession into a depression.

Small problem - actually a couple of them...the Smoot-Hawley Act (named after Senator Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis Hawley) was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover in June of 1930. FDR wasn't in office until January of 1933. Future legislation had watered it down to nothing by 1934. Here's a helpful timeline of depression-era stuff.

Here's a video of the embarrassing gaffe:



Oops, wrong video. Still waiting for her article on Biden, which I'm sure is coming in the future.

Anyway, let's review the real important stuff first. Michelle Bachmann mispronounced the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and incorrectly stated that FDR was the one who passed it. Unforgivable, I must say.

Now for the less important detail: Denise Williams', um, rebuttal of how the Smoot-Hawley Act didn't deepen the recession. She states that it was watered down to nothing by 1934. Correct. It was the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 that effectively ended the Smoot-Hawley Act.


So let's see. The worst of the depression occurred from 1929 to 1933, when real GDP declined every single year. So basically, the Smoot-Hawley Act did deepen the recession. The point wasn't about who passed it, it was about government regulation, which Denise Williams even admits when she states that Bachmann was "trying to make a point about regulatory burden and high taxes". But why try an actual rebuttal when you can point out what's really important: mispronouncing the title and attributing the wrong President with its passage?

When the right makes a mistake, pounce...

When the left does it, it's just an honest mistake.

Here we can see how both sides are treated equally when they make mistakes

Mark Halperin, Co-writer of Game Change – No found donations; however, in October 2004 Halperin sent to ABC News staff a memo about coverage of the U.S. presidential election directing them not to “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable”* and that both John Kerry and George W. Bush used “distortion” in their campaign, but that Kerry’s distortions were not “central to his efforts to win.”

*my emphasis

OMG The Republicans are teh evil!!!

Of course, some crazy person on the right (especially the TEA party) threatens or hurts someone from the left, or even if they are not right-leaning, it's a big deal.  When the leftists are the ones threatening the Republicans, it's just a few "bad apples".


Well, at least we all know that the loving left would never resort to violent imagery...