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Title: Obama ... Mangles History--- To Defend His Poor Record
Source:
news.investors.com
URL Source: http://news.investors.com/article/6 ... ry-in-defending-his-record.htm
Published: Mar 16, 2012
Author: MARK STEYN
Post Date: 2012-03-16 20:51:34 by BorisY
Keywords: yes we can, hope, change
Views: 3526
Comments: 9
Obama Mangles History To Defend His Poor Record By MARK STEYN Our lesson for today comes from George and Ira Gershwin: "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round/They all laughed when Edison recorded sound/They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother/When they said that man could fly/They told Marconi wireless was a phony ..." Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang it in the 1937 film "Shall We Dance?" Seventy-five years on, the president revived it to tap-dance around his rising gas prices and falling approval numbers. Delivering his big speech on energy at Prince George's Community College, he insisted the American economy will be going gangbusters again just as soon as we start running it on algae and windmills. He noted that, as with Wilbur and his brother, there were those inclined to titter: "Let me tell you something. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail — (Laughter) — they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. Llaughter.) They would not have believed that the world was round. (Applause.) We've heard these folks in the past. They probably would have agreed with one of the pioneers of the radio who said, 'Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan.' (Laughter.) One of Henry Ford's advisers was quoted as saying, 'The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a fad.' (Laughter.)" The crowd loved it. But President Algy Solyndra wasn't done: "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, 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." It fell to Nan Card of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio to inform the website TalkingPointsMemo.com that the quotation was apocryphal. Hayes had the first telephone in the White House, and the first typewriter, and Edison visited him to demonstrate the phonograph. But obviously Hayes isn't as "forward-looking" as a 21st century president who believes in Jimmy Carter malaise, 1970s Eurostatist industrial policy, 1940s British health care reforms, 1930s New Deal-sized entitlements premised on mid-20th century birth rates and life expectancy, and all paid for by a budget with more zeroes than anybody's seen since the Weimar Republic. Full Page « « First « Previous Page: 1 2 3 Next »
Poster Comment: algae - windmills - fill yer tires - eat yer peas
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