More information is coming out about the alternate universe Michele Bachmann comes from: it turns out that in Bachmann's timeline it was FDR's Hoot-Smalley tariffs that turned an otherwise run-of-the-mill recession into the Great Depression.

Now, of course, in our universe this was called the Smoot-Hawley Act and it was signed into law in 1929 by Republican President Herbert Hoover. Moreover, here on Earth-1 FDR didn't even take office until 1933, at which time the Depression was almost four years old.

We've got to find some way to send Bachmann back home.

In my email: 'Pennyland: Echoes of the Great Depression,' a film by Frank and Eddie Thomas featuring (among other things) snippets of FDR's first inaugural address and the Walker Evans photos from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Feels timely.