In attacking his critics as “flat earthers,” Obama screws up.
Yes, people who, unlike him, actually understand the math and physics (and business prospects) of alternative and conventional energy are “flat earthers.” Once again, the man is impervious to irony. And how insufferable this kind of thing is.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Heh: “Obama in Tucson & today: “Make sure we talk with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds, you Flat-earthers.”
[Update a few minutes later]
Where Obama gets his history.
Doesn’t explain the Rutherford B. Hayes slander though. And against a man who was wounded four times freeing Obama’s ancestors. Wait, what?
[Update a while later]
Don’t know much about energy, either. The US has sixty times as much oil as Obama claims.
It’s almost as though he just makes stuff up.
[Update mid afternoon]
#BarackObamasPresidentialFacts:
“Purple Hayes” was the first Jim Hendrix song about a president.
They’re hilarious. I think I’ll steal MfK’s from comments and add it to the mix.
Everybody screws up once in a while.
But few people are so consistently wrong…
But errors that are particularly hypocritical such as using erroneous history and science to criticize someone’s supposed ignorance of history or science, or hurling slurs as part of an appeal for “civility”, are particularly worthy of remark.
Frankly, I’m a bit tired of an ignorant chump lecturing me (indirectly, here because I share similar views with the Republican party stance on alternative energy and how it’s currently being developed) on being a “flat-earther”. Obama’s alternate energy efforts have failed hard. There’s no other way to describe their outcomes. He’s not in a position to brandish the knowledge/sophistication stick.
This.
I mean is it really that hard for a bunch of over educated and over paid speech writers to do what my 10 year old grandson would do for a school report; use Google? Or is it that the White House is so divorced from reality that facts would just get in the way of their current narrative? Either way, this doesn’t make them look good.
Will the left Palinize Obama for historical ignorance? Will the media? Will anyone hold Obama accountable for anything?
See you in November.
You kniw Chris, in the real world, we have a name for somebody who so consistantly gets things so factually quantifiable wrong so often, we call them ‘idiots’.
I am sure in athe sense of raw intellect, I.E. the ability to take Barack Obama as a Tabula Rasa, I.E. totally mind-wiped and educate him, he would prove capale of rational thought, but the model MK 1 BHO as issued is an idiot. GIGO.
It’s pretty bad to screw up when condescendingly insulting your opponents for being ignorant.
As Bertrand Russell once wrote, “The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Or
Crash Davis: You be cocky and arrogant, even when you’re getting beat. That’s the secret. You gotta play this game with fear and arrogance.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: Right. Fear and ignorance.
Crash Davis: [exasperated] No. You hayseed. It’s arrogance not ‘ignorance.’
Google Dunning-Kuger
I was hoping you’d post something about alternative energy today so I could include a link to this story of yet another green energy boondoggle (with “stimulus” cash, no less) not working out as promised.
I’m still waiting for evidence that Obama is intelligent at all, much less that he’s as intelligent as we were told in 2008. This can be his theme song:
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
Don’t know much about geography
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra
Don’t know what a slide rule is for
But I do know that one and one is two
And if this one could be with you
What a wonderful world this would be
Now I don’t claim to be an “A” student
But I’m trying to be
So maybe by being an “A” student baby
I can win your love for me
Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
La ta ta ta ta ta ta
(History)
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
(Biology)
La ta ta ta ta ta ta
(Science book)
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
(French I took)
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
What makes you think Obama had any ancestors in the U.S. at the time of the Civil War?
Apart from his mother’s side, that is, and I don’t think they needed freeing.
Ummm…that was the point. An inside joke.
Comparing the use of oil to not wanting a telephone was interesting but going from oil to windmills and solar panels seems to be like going from the internet to the telegraph.
Investing in green tech is fine in moderation. Who knows what will come out of the research but spending more money doesn’t mean that innovations will come faster. If one were to make a graph of spending and innovations, it would probably be like the laffer curve. That is of course if innovations were predictable, which they aren’t.
We a far past the point of efficiency in funding green tech research.
Just for starters, the US constitutes 7.3% of the world’s land area, excluding Antarctica. Considering that the modern oil industry started here, it is improbable that we all happen to have very little oil compared to everywhere else that didn’t start the modern oil industry.
Given that we’re pretty certain we have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, when shale and tar sands are included, you can also bet that the entire world should have 1.4 trillion / 7.3%, or 19 trillion barrels, not the 1.38 trillion of proven reserves.
Unfortunately, Geology don’t work quite that way George.
Well, how about this one. North America has over 16% of world oil reserves, of which the US has 2%, or one eighth? Do Canada and Mexico (175 bbl and 139 bbl) really each have seven to nine times more reserves than the US (19 bbl), or are we looking an artifact of tax and environmental laws?
That 2% number is all in the way you count it.
Irrespective of oil, if we got off of this carbon nonsense, we could replace every drop of oil we import in 5 years by using F-T conversion on Coal and not break a sweat doing it.
George, look at how much Coal the US has vs the rest of the world.
Hayes’ election bore remarkable similarities to that of Bush in 2000 — though I understand that in Hayes’ case, settlement of the Florida dispute involved actually hanging some guy named Chad.
I think Benjy may have focused a bit to hard on the technicalities of Obama’s albeit fuzzy history. It would have been a much sharper critic to point out that Obama was touted in 2008 to be some grandmaster of compromise certainly does use a great deal of divisive language toward the opposition. Also, attacking Republicans by saying they think alternative energy won’t work is a straw man. I would wager that most of them understand that it works from a physical science perspective. But I can butter my toast behind my back and that works too. It’s not practical or efficient, however, to expect that every slice of toast I butter will be behind my back every single morning of my life. From that perspective green energy doesn’t work from a economic/business standpoint. Someone who’s the leader of the entire so called free world needs to consider that 100’s of millions of people need reliable energy to maintain a certain standard of living. It’s just not apparent that green energy will be able to realistically meet those demands despite how many X billions of dollars you throw at it.
I tried to post that on the TPM site but some reason the login button ain’t working for me.
Speaking of the TPM site, I was amused to see the number of irony challenged posters who couldn’t wrap their brains around the idea that a guy making fun of his opponents’ supposed ignorance ought not get the facts wrong in himself. The whoosh sound was loud enough to break glass.
Yea, especially considering Obama is supposed to be, “the smartest guy in the room….” All those people making comments about his supposed Spock anima should have realized the lofty expectations they were setting forth.
If Sarah Palin had said it (or any of the other stupid things Obama has said), it’d be trotted out as proof positive that she’s a slack jawed, mouth-breathing moron.
Even when she says something correct (Paul Revere’s Ride) she’s called a slack jawed, mouth-breathing moron.
Even when she says something correct (Paul Revere’s Ride) she’s called a slack jawed, mouth-breathing moron.
Yes, she’s called that by people who are self-identifying their own ignorance and hatred. She isn’t nearly as ignorant and they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe.
Thing is that I bet a lot of people believe that Columbus was fighting flat-earthers (even though he was not). Partly, I might add, because of that very cartoon (a classic)….
“..she’s-a round she’s-a firm…she’s-a fully packed!…”
” she’s-a flat like your head…”
So it wouldn’t surprise me if Fearless Freep and his script-writers were merely pandering to the lowest common denominator….after all they don’t think too highly of the populace in the first place.
And the pony-tailed, bow-tied, bespectacled bum-kissers who know better but love Freep anyways snicker at the double joke:
1) opponents are flat earthers and
2) not even smart enough to know that Columbus’ opponents were not flat earthers.
What really bothers me is that I don’t hear enough pro-drillers succinctly and clearly pointed out that the moment the US government removes the impediments for exploration and drilling, those hated reviled speculators will do what good speculators always do and drop the bidding price.
According to Daniel Boorstin’s “The Discoverers”, Columbus’ proposal was submitted to peer review by scholarly persons, who all believed the Earth to be a sphere but disputed his low-ball (excuse the pun) estimate of the Earth’s circumference and believed to be true a value that was much closer to the modern measurement.
In the end, the bad merit score for his proposal didn’t matter because the monarch gave him a special appropriation. Because of political considerations. Having to do with rival Portugal.
Paul, that’s right. Chris could not sell the project because there was no point in spending the money – they had a land path to where the goods were.
But then that path was blocked, and all of a sudden there were no spices with which to hide the stench of Ferdinand’s fetid, putrid, rotting, steak.
Well, can’t have that.
So then a water route running due West looked pretty good. But the King, IIRC, only ponied up for 2 out of the three ships/crew. I forget, just now, where Chrisoforo got the scratch for the third vessel.
And yeah everyone had read the same sources as CC and knew the range of values and also pretty much accepted Eratosthenes calculation. Didn’t matter – anything to do one in the eye of the Portygee.
Not that I’m expecting sound thinking from Romney or Santorum, but either of them should pound that oil price drop after the erroneous report of opening the strategic oil reserves.
Obumble said just last week several times that there were NO quick fixes for gas / oil prices. But even an unsubstantiated report that is seconds old caused a $2 a barrel drop over 15, short, minutes. Then, something we ALL know happens, was openly mocked by an unbelieving, snarking POTUS.
That won’t play well when Joe and Jan Average cancel their pilgrimage to Disney Mecca, because of gas prices. Especially when they’ve gotta tell the kids they aren’t going.
As I said, they probably aren’t smart enough to drive this home.
There are no magic bullets now watch as I pull this algae out of my hat.
Hah, someone pulled out an old article about Obama from the Illinois Herald. In it he says that we need to reshape America so that it isn’t so mean-spirited and racist. “Hey, why are you racist, flat-earthers who are too stupid to know how to use a telephone so mean-spirited?”
It’s nice to know that Obama has defied reality for so long. It really gives me Hope (TM) for the direction he’s taking this country.
Thanks to Obama, Rutherford B. Hayes has become the new hottest internet meme. Who’da thunk it?
How will he explain this to Sasha and Malia?
Oh Snap!
This reporter can’t do simple arithmetic, and he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the words “up to” or “crude”. If we assume the words “up to” mean “absolutely there” (and you’d have to be a fool…), we still get less than 20 years’ worth without the shale. Keep in mind our oil consumption doubles every 35 years, so now we’re talking less than 100 years if we went ahead and strip-mined out Green River. If you can calculate interest rates, you can calculate exponential growth.
Shale oil isn’t crude oil; 1/6 of the Green River shale will get you anywhere from.45-1.8 barrels of shale oil per ton, before you refine it, and that’s all after you drain the Colorado River and start strip-mining. Yeah, there’s a lot of shale there, but it’s not what this reporter thinks it is.
I, for one, spent a lot of time in that area growing up, and I don’t want to see it strip-mined. It’s a gorgeous place. But that aside, assuming you’re willing to tear up the Rockies to keep using oil, the math doesn’t back up the article.