They’re laughing at him. They’re finally laughing at that pompous ignoramus of a President. It finally took Rutherford B. Hayes to do it, but he’s done it. I posted yesterday about the Obama speech filled with false facts designed to show, at least in his own eyes, what a visionary he was, amongst which he said this:
There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ [Laughter]. That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore – [laughter and applause] – because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards [Applause]. He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.
Turns out that Hayes was one of the more accomplished American Presidents, and was as technically savvy for his time as he could possibly be. On top of everything else, it was Hayes who installed the first telephone in the White House.
Within a day, Hayes has come back as a focus of attack on Barack Obama inanities. First there are the posters, found here, of which the above is one example of many.
But then there are the tweets of #BarackObamasPresidentialFacts which are proliferating at an astonishing rate. These are the “top twenty” of the moment but there are more every minute. Here is one:
The mini-van was named after President Martin Van Buren. #BarackObamasPresidentialFacts
It has taken more than three years for the ridicule of what has been a truly ridiculous presidency to begin. The man who drove the American economy into a debt as far as the eye can see and has mishandled every foreign policy issue he has been asked to deal with is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
(Via Instapundit)
The linked article by Mark Steyn is a must-read, for those who might not yet have seen it.
Blogstrop
18 Mar 12 at 8:10 am
Pardon my sentence structure. I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill:
“English grammar is a system up with which I will not put.”
Blogstrop
18 Mar 12 at 8:13 am
Maybe this will precipitate a massive gestalt switch so prctically everone will realise that the sonorous phrases that rolled off the teleprompter from day one had zero content.
Rafe
18 Mar 12 at 8:15 am
Well you might laugh today. Come November you’ll all be crying as he slaughters Romney in the only test that really matters.
hammygar
18 Mar 12 at 8:32 am
Interestingly enough, it will be a free media that destroys Obama. If the press had held him to the same standards they had held the Republicans, his staff would have been more wary of his speeches and mistakes. But the continual free passes led him into error and hubris.
He thought the press protected him.
That was a mistake.
Winston Smith
18 Mar 12 at 8:48 am
Welcome back hammygar, thank goodness your threats of self-harm did not come true.
Pity is your trolling is as bland and stupid as ever.
Hey Hammygar, about the fact that among the millions Odumbo spends on people trained at the most expensive universities in the US, yet not one has the time or intellect to go onto Wikipedia to fact check his speeches?
Token
18 Mar 12 at 8:49 am
Hey, leave hammy alone!
He really, really likes ‘articulate, clean’ black men. (Joe Biden ™)
A lot. And in a way requiring lubrication.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Mk50 of Brisbane
18 Mar 12 at 8:57 am
Winston, this has been my observation as well.
Since the bulk of media have turned into limp-left groupies, lefty governments believe they can get bad legislation through un-watched.
The result is that conservatives are always better at government as they know they are always under heavy scrutiny.
Token
18 Mar 12 at 8:58 am
Joe Biden is actually the smart one.
Rafe
18 Mar 12 at 8:59 am
I laughed, rafe. My God, how I laughed! I laughed and laughed again!
Then I stopped larfing. Because you’re right…
Winston Smith
18 Mar 12 at 9:08 am
Boy, you lot are desperate for a gaffe on the other side, aren’t you? Dubbya used to embarrass the office on a weekly basis with shockingly dumb statements. Santorum and Romney are also spouting off damagingly brainless inanities on a regular basis on the campaign trail. Obama quotes Encyclopaedia Britannica and you desperately try to manufacture outrage about it. How pitiful.
m0nty
18 Mar 12 at 10:22 am
M8nty believes it is ok that Obama is a moron.
Token
18 Mar 12 at 10:26 am
Pffft, telephones. This is cutting edge, brought to you by Team Taubmans:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/white_supremacist/
Immortalised as Obama the Painter.
Ivan Denisovich
18 Mar 12 at 10:29 am
Sure Dubya could drop the ball but he was never praised to the sky by the progressive left as the saviour of the nation. How are they going to handle the disconnect between the image that they promoted and the reality? Which was clear enough from the start if you actually took the trouble to listen to what the guy was saying. Maybe lefties don’t listen to content, its just the vibe of the thing?
Rafe
18 Mar 12 at 11:19 am
Can you imagine what the Clintons say about Oboe in private!? I suppose it will come out some day.
The oboe has a rich, resonant sound but nobody expects it to make sense.
Rafe
18 Mar 12 at 11:26 am
I laughed out loud at this one.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 11:27 am
George Washington was named after Washington DC.
Boy on a bike
18 Mar 12 at 11:31 am
You’re kinda in bit of political trouble when people make fun of you like this.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 11:33 am
JC
18 Mar 12 at 11:33 am
Really, Montard?
How about you list some, the, eh?
Mk50 of Brisbane
18 Mar 12 at 11:35 am
Still a winner.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 11:38 am
This is the best Obama screw-up since AttackWatch
Token
18 Mar 12 at 11:41 am
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/reagan-cited-same-rutherford-hayes-anecdote-as-obama
AJ
18 Mar 12 at 11:49 am
AJ
It was Reagan’s fault.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 11:52 am
Can you imagine what the Clintons say about Oboe in private!? I suppose it will come out some day.
The venom that would come from Hillary. Woe betide anyone who denies her god-given glory.
John Mc
18 Mar 12 at 11:53 am
Sound like that claim by The Atlantic been thoroughly fact checked.
Did The Atlantic ring the Reagan Library to check this before it made the statement?
Given that, I’m willing to give The Atlantic the benefit of the doubt that it is all true, you know:
(1) something someone recalls
(2) from a biography of a third party
(3) from a speech in 1985 is true.
Token
18 Mar 12 at 11:58 am
Seeing I’ll never have a twitter account:
Andrew jackson’s son, Stonewall, formed the first LGBT support group.
lotocoti
18 Mar 12 at 12:00 pm
Little known fact:
He was named after Grover Cleveland.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 12:00 pm
So Obama plagiarises Reagan. LOL
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 12:02 pm
No need to imagine.
Bill Clinton told Ted Kennedy that Obama ‘would be getting us coffee’ a few years ago.
Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must ‘kiss my ass’ for his support.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 12:03 pm
The speech: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38235#axzz1pDxqI0Ip
AJ
18 Mar 12 at 12:04 pm
Well to be fair to the Community Organiser in Chief, he has at least achieved the goal of education.
He has managed to take a relatively obscure President, Rutherford B. Hayes, and achieve credit for Hayes’ achievements where known was well-known before – because people have been prepared to fact-check the walking teleprompter.
Here’s to a well-informed body politic !
Myrddin Seren
18 Mar 12 at 12:05 pm
Great research AJ, I’m glad I gave The Atlantic the benefit of the doubt.
Token
18 Mar 12 at 12:07 pm
I may be reading this wrong, but Ronnie looks like he was simply using the Hayes anecdote to set himself up for a soft jibe at his own expense:
- Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the National Technology Awards
February 19, 1985
“…one of the last times that this grand old mansion played host to an event concerning technology was back in ’76 – 1876.”
“That’s an amazing invention,” he ( Hayes ) said, “but who would ever want to use one of them?” He was talking about a telephone.”
“I thought at the time that he might be mistaken. [Laughter]”
‘I thought at the time’……1876;
Little clue that the audience may have been laughing with Ronnie, not at Hayes ?
It’s schtick. Probably too ironic for the Obama teleprompter wunderkids to have figured out.
Myrddin Seren
18 Mar 12 at 12:38 pm
Thomas Jefferson invented the airplane.
Infidel Tiger
18 Mar 12 at 12:44 pm
Herbert Hoover was invented the vacuum.
Infidel Tiger
18 Mar 12 at 12:46 pm
If Reagan used the same story, he was only trying to add to the fun while saying something serious about Steve Jobs. There would have been no point we were supposed to take from it. It was just a frequently repeated bit of apocrypha; nothing hinged on it.
But Obama meant this as a real live lesson for us all. There was this former president, he was saying, who could not see the potential for the telephone. He on the other hand has this great vision thing, that he can bring us non-carbon, non-nuclear forms of energy at similar costs to coal and oil.
In this case, Obama means it. He wants us to learn, when in fact it is he who is the ignorant party. His example is not an example. It is just a mistake, a bit of ignorance or an outright lie told for effect.
But the point is more wide than that. Go back to Mark Steyn’s original article. There are more than errors about Hayes but about others, with the example of Christopher Columbus once known to every educated person. For Obama to be arguing his own vision for technologies that have no imminent potential for practical low cost use, and to pretend that he can see farther than the rest of us based on no evidence whatsoever, really is insulting. He likely being the stupidest, and certainly the least well educated person in any room he enters, it is grating and irritating to have to listen to a single word he says since his only approach is to talk down to the rest of us as if he is the only intellect in the room.
Steve Kates
18 Mar 12 at 12:47 pm
Good Catch, MS. The Reagan comment wasn’t meant for accuracy, it was mean to illicit a laugh.
Simpleton AJ and other assorted affirmative action kid defenders of course missed the joke when they read it.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 12:48 pm
Obama has also said that Austrians speak “Austrian” and that America invented the automobile.
On the question of technology, it will be recalled that Joe Biden argued a few years ago that President Roosevelt responded to the Depression in 1929 by going on television and addressing the country.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 12:53 pm
HOTAIR.COM: Rasmussen: Santorum leads, but Romney trails Obama in four core states
“Conventional wisdom — particularly as articulated by Karl Rove and Ann Coulter — still says Mitt Romney is the most “electable” GOP presidential candidate. The MSM repeats that notion ad nauseum, too. After Rick Santorum won Mississippi and Alabama, for example, MSNBC.com ran an article with the headline, “Romney’s electability doesn’t help him break through.” The Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote a piece headlined, “Rick Santorum hoping ideology will trump electability,” as though Rick Santorum lacks electability. Two examples among many.
But a Friday poll from Rasmussen Reports suggests Romney might be less electable and Santorum more so than Rove, Coulter and the MSM would have voters believe.”
FORBES: Governor Romney’s electability
“..conservative pundits, and Ann Coulter are apparently convinced that Governor Romney’s nomination is essential if President Obama is to be defeated in November. An accompanying argument is that the President’s reelection team and other supporters would love instead to run instead against Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich. If you believe the former proposition, you are very likely to believe the latter.
Despite the wisdom and erudition of many proponents, there’s some room for skepticism. Here’s why:
With any luck and absent Republican loss of the House and failure to capture the Senate, the economy will slowly recover even if the President is re-elected. It could look better by November in any event.
Along with entitlement spending in general, the central long-term issue confronting the electorate will be the Affordable Care Act — President Obama’s signature legislation — unless it is substantially overturned by the Supreme Court this summer.
Because key features of the Affordable Care Act mimic the Massachusetts health care reform law championed by Governor Romney, his nomination would substantially neuter this central campaign issue. He would be unable to effectively lever opposition to the health care law in media campaigns or in the Presidential debates.
The President clearly wants to campaign against Wall Street and the “1 percent.” Governor Romney would be an easy mark. Senator Santorum would not. It might be difficult to win an election with a campaign based on bogus allegations that Senator Santorum wants to prevent women from practicing contraception.
Governor Romney has given some excellent speeches. He does not excel at moving listeners or articulating a clear conservative vision. Senator Santorum evinces more passion. Newt can speak with passion and talk circles around anyone on policy.”
JamesK
18 Mar 12 at 1:11 pm
http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/07/obama-thinks-emperor-hirohito-signed.html
Ivan Denisovich
18 Mar 12 at 1:13 pm
Oh. My. God.
That was Hirohito on the foredeck of the Missouri, hey?
LOL. I guess they all look the same, right Barack?
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 1:20 pm
A question for Monty. Please explain.
Sure Dubya could drop the ball but he was never praised to the sky by the progressive left as the saviour of the nation. How are they going to handle the disconnect between the image that they promoted (maybe the image that they actually SAW) and the reality?
Rafe
18 Mar 12 at 1:32 pm
Was this blog around while Ronald Reagan talked about an alien invasion helping to bring the world together?
Steve Kates’ assessment:
is good to know, so that we don’t have to bother ever thinking that anything he says about Obama is in danger of anything approaching a realistic assessment.
steve from brisbane
18 Mar 12 at 1:44 pm
No but it was around when you backed Tim Flannery’s contention that alien entity Gaia would soon become sentient and physically manifest for all to see.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 1:46 pm
The people a President deals with are very smart and extremely well educated, which is why they get to be in the same room as the President. He is not in their league and if you think he is, you have been paying no attention to what he says or what he does.
Steve Kates
18 Mar 12 at 1:51 pm
Reagan – the man who sold arms to Iran – brave chap!
Max Scream
18 Mar 12 at 1:52 pm
As opposed to liar-steve™
LOL!!!
Now the real question is whether it’s chutzpaz or sheer stiupidity from steve?
Probably both.
JamesK
18 Mar 12 at 2:00 pm
Abraham Lincoln invented the limousine. Henry Ford downsized it.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 2:08 pm
Maxie the Squealboy’s getting weirder and more incoherent.
One of my sons just read what he’s posted on this thread and said:
“I think he’s been donkey-raped in the face.”
Then he laughed.
Mind you, I have absolutely no idea what the hell he meant with that bizarre comment…. but it sort of sounds right in describing the Squealer.
Mk50 of Brisbane
18 Mar 12 at 2:47 pm
Maybe Obama & his writers were depending on the dumbing down effect of the public education system over there a little too much.
I’d still like to hear from the teachers of that College. Why were their students applauding such nonsense? Aren’t those teachers embarrassed?
“Nothing is more probable,’ said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, ‘I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.’”
(C.S. Lewis. ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’)
“Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
(C.S. Lewis, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’)
Ellen of Tasmania
18 Mar 12 at 3:16 pm
Why wouldn’t students applaud the glorious Dear Leader?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100011181/loyal-american-children-break-into-spontaneous-praise-of-the-dear-leader-barack-hussein-obama/
Ivan Denisovich
18 Mar 12 at 3:35 pm
IT
I thought Hoover built the dam, you know, the big one in the US. So he invented the vacuum cleaner, too.
Clever president.
kae
18 Mar 12 at 3:40 pm
and why not? Obama’s Folksyland is the Happiest Kingdom of Them All.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 3:44 pm
…he invented the vacuum cleaner, too.
LOL.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 3:47 pm
It’s true, Dubbya always set low expectations – albeit even the lefty media praised him as a saviour of the nation post-9/11, if you recall. He may have been dumb as a field mouse, but he possessed rat cunning. Nevertheless, he failed to meet even those low expectations in retrospect, now that we know how he presided over the bubble that is bankrupting America.
Obama has to deal with the disconnect between his hope & change campaign rhetoric and his record. He has actually changed a lot, but there’s not a whole bunch of hope to go around at the moment. The media will chip him for that a lot more, once the GOP travelling circus finishes its juggernaut of destruction. He’ll get his fair share of bad press, don’t worry about that.
Obama only has to be the person the GOP puts up against him. He’s flawed, like any candidate (yes, even Reagan). Obama has Romney and Santorum covered, though. Romney is disconnected with the 99%. Santorum is disconnected with reality.
m0nty
18 Mar 12 at 3:59 pm
Beat, not be.
m0nty
18 Mar 12 at 4:01 pm
Max Scream
18 Mar 12 at 4:03 pm
Thank you, Mk50, for the free kick against Dubbya.
m0nty
18 Mar 12 at 4:03 pm
Only been one term, but The Top 20 Obama Gaffes The Press Would Like You To Forget
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 4:08 pm
Bush mangled sentences, Obama mangles the truth.
Infidel Tiger
18 Mar 12 at 4:11 pm
JFK was named after the airport his parents conceived him in.
Infidel Tiger
18 Mar 12 at 4:29 pm
John Quincy Adams so named due to his mother’s craving the fruit during pregnancy.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 5:03 pm
LOL IT.
kae
18 Mar 12 at 5:04 pm
No. No I don’t recall that.
Because it never happened.
C.L.
18 Mar 12 at 5:06 pm
they went out of their way to blame him in fact and more than uncomfortable number refused to rule out the Administration that caused it.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 5:14 pm
Punterland in 1984 never really thought so. In fact they thought he was pretty darned good.
This monster, is a fucking mandate.
JC
18 Mar 12 at 5:17 pm
Johnson & Johnson started in memory of Andrew and Lyndon B.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 5:24 pm
Grover Cleveland invented jazz.
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 5:25 pm
he fell for it! Good grief.
Thanks Monty, proof that Bush derangement syndrome never goes away.
I am no longer surprised that lefties mistook inarticulateness (which is actually surprising in a politician) for stupidity in Bush, and articulate mendacity in Obama for intelligence.
It proves the observation that lefties have the intellectual depth of a car park puddle.
Mk50 of Brisbane
18 Mar 12 at 5:26 pm
#BarackObamasPresidentialFacts Woodrow Wilson lost at sea while attempting to escape with Tom Hanks from a deserted isle
Gab
18 Mar 12 at 5:50 pm
Hayes invented the Hayes modem, making him the inventor of teh internets.
Boy on a bike
18 Mar 12 at 6:08 pm
Hayes invented a unique method of preserving, by sun-drying, various stock fodder.
wreckage
18 Mar 12 at 6:23 pm
But I thought Al Gore invented the internet.
I’m so confuzed.
kae
18 Mar 12 at 9:21 pm
I don’t know what joke book Bob Hawke got his famous ” No Australian child will be living in poverty by 1990″ quote from but I’m still laughing.
Maybe it was the same book that Gillard used to joke with us “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”?
Splatacrobat
18 Mar 12 at 10:38 pm
There will be no GST, quoth the Bard in trackie-dacks.
Max Scream
18 Mar 12 at 11:05 pm
Oooooooooh. Max Scream brings the max burn.
wreckage
18 Mar 12 at 11:48 pm
There will be no GST, quoth the Bard in trackie-dacks.
Until the people voted him back in when he said he was doing it anyway. Said he was doing it BEFORE the election, so we all knew what we were getting if he won. Which stands in stark contrast to his successor but one.
Go away, you mendacious little weasel.
perturbed
19 Mar 12 at 10:38 am
Grover Cleveland had a city named after him, as did his friend, Kermit Detroit.
James Monroe was named after a city in Liberia.
Albury Shifton
19 Mar 12 at 5:50 pm
[...] in March, not so long ago, there was made mention how the American President had misspoken about one of his predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes. About [...]
Making fun of the left at Catallaxy Files
6 May 12 at 11:44 am