Tell Us Something We Don't Know

[Minimalist]

Hoover sat on his republicunt ass while the Great Depression happened around him.

'God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible.'  

[Anomalocaris]

I think because of trump, there will be a high chance, say 70%, the US will lose Puerto Rico in my life time.  There will probably be 50/50 chance the US itself will break up, or at least have a severe secession crisis that would fundamentally alter the legal basis of the state.

[Chad32]

Hoover sat on his republicunt ass while the Great Depression happened around him.

Yeah, I imagine he sucked.

[Anomalocaris]

Hoover sat on his republicunt ass while the Great Depression happened around him.

Yeah, I imagine he sucked.

Hoover was a very capable man whose vast and impressive skill set by mischance did not include any significant facets that would have equipped him to be an effective president at his moment in history.   But his public service through his long life was nonetheless of impressive scale and caliber.

The mere mention of the words public service says all that need to be said about what distinguishs even the worst president in American history before 2016 from the historically unique lesson in how democracy could occasionally defy expectation and underperform virtually any other form of government that is personified in trump.

Other forms of government may have sunken lower, but none even came close to attaining such depth from so high a starting point in so little time.

[Minimalist]

You know, Ano, Captain Edward Smith was generally regarded as the finest commanding officer with the White Star Lines.  What history remembers him for is that the Titanic sank beneath him.

General George Custer had a remarkable career during the Civil War but he is remembered for the very bad haircut he got at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

History has made its judgement of Hoover.  This appeared in today's Times.  Talk about timely.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opini...ss&emc=rss

Never mind restoring a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. The spirit that really hovers over this White House is Herbert Hoover’s.

But that’s unfair to Hoover, whose soul can now rest easy that he is no longer the worst Republican president ever. In the grip of the Great Depression, the 31st president was under intense political pressure to sign the Tariff Act of 1930, better known as Smoot-Hawley after its Republican authors in Congress. Hoover himself was a somewhat reluctant protectionist. And while 1,028 economists signed a petition imploring the president not to sign, he could not then know that “Smoot-Hawley” would become a byword for economic folly. Between 1930 and 1933, the value of global trade declined from $4.9 billion to $1.8 billion.

The darker echoes of the 1930s are sounding louder. The shadow of Hoover grows longer. We know how this movie ends. If Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow had a gram of self-respect he’d resign.

But this gang of pricks has no self-respect and no sense of shame.