Quote Of The Day: "Five Years From Now, When I'm Not President, I'll Buy One Myself" – Obama On The Chevrolet Volt

I always laugh when people accuse President Hoover of doing "nothing" in the wake of the 1929 crash, and that this caused the Great Depression. In reality, he took several steps to prop up the economy, most of which prolonged what should have been a short and sharp recession that was needed to correct the excesses of 1927-29. President Hoover propped up failing companies, pushed through the biggest federal income tax hike in history up to that point, and jawboned companies to keep wages high. He signed into law the Hawley Smoot Tariff to "protect" American industry in 1930. He ordered the Federal Reserve to throttle the money supply out of fears of inflation (when the real problem was DEflation). The result was 25 percent unemployment by 1933. It's painfully apparent now that the country would have been better off if President Hoover HAD done nothing. But then, many of these people were, in 2008, squawking about how President Obama would repudiate every awful action taken by that dunce Bush - ranging from foreign policy to fiscal decisions - and that this would usher in a new era of hope and change. What I've seen is more of the same - we've basically had the third term of the Bush presidency, with some very amusing hypocrisy early in his term (several nominees forgetting to pay their taxes, for example). In some cases, President Obama has gone ever farther - authorizing the U.S. government to commit assassinations overseas, for example, or using U.S. forces in Libya. Haven't heard much of a peep from the usual suspects about those two actions.