Are Doomed to Repeat it..

So said Santanya , or Churchill,or whoever.  Sources conflict but the message stays the same.

I'm watching the address to congress the other night, much to the consternation of the murmur wife who asks why I just don't read the transcript later, to which I reply that would be the same as reading a play instead of seeing it.  Another murmur maxim: politics is like theatre except way more expensive with way less talent.

Anyway, as speeches go it was well delivered, and true to form it gets an A on style and an F on substance, the latter being validated by the market reaction to the utter avoidance, as usual, of any substantive details.  Will his entire presidency consist of campaign bromides?  

I've collected a few comments on the speech from people smarter than me on which I will comment later but this post is about the histroy stuff. 

First, does he or his entire speechwriting team really not realize the automobile was not  invented in America?  This might help explain why he won't release his grades.  We can write that off as a slip but the other stuff, specifically on the railroads and public schools, wasn't so obvious, and as a result will now probably be taken as gospel. 

When I first heard it I had to chortle; was the railroad and public education really the best they could come up with for government success stories?  I have an ongoing challenge for anyone to show one example where government involvement didn't make a problem worse.  After watching the naked emperor the other night the challenge remains unmet. 

Not only did he get the success part wrong but his implication that they were the result of federal government initiatives to stimulate the economy were dead wrong too.  That takes him from wrong to exactly wrong.  (but notice, I refrain from calling him a liar, a courtesy I dare say would never have been afforded George Bush by our liberal brethren had he uttered the exact same falsity) 

Thank God, and Al Gore, for the internet because fact-checking is pretty easy.  Even better, if you wait a bit someone else does it for you. 

This, courtesy Joseph Rosenburger at American Thinker, who sets the historical record straight in some detail ;  I'll tease with his conclusion

Private enterprise is catalyzed by three essential enablers: The protection of private property, an efficient honest marketplace, and a monetary policy that maintains the value of the nation’s currency.

The Obama Administration is making a no-holds-barred assault upon all three by raising taxes on the most productive (the 2% already carry over half the freeloaders that voted for him on their backs), by confiscatory tax rates on businesses and corporations, and by inflating the money supply.

American greatness is a result of limited government, something our current Occupant seems incapable of grasping.

to RTWT: More historical obfuscation from Obama's address to Congress

All this goes remind of another murmur maixm; politicians may or may not be stupid, but they sure think we are.