Payback — It's a Rutherford

@reidepstein The irony is rather stunning. Cue the “unexpectedly high demand” rationale

— Josh Lederman (@joshledermanAP) November 19, 2013

“Obama’s conference call on Obamacare goes about as well as HealthCare.gov rollout:”

So, not only does the Obamacare website itself not work, but the site that hosts the conference call to discuss the non-functional site also doesn’t work. Of course, that didn’t stop the grandiose claims about how many OFA loyalists were on the call. Just as predicted by Josh Lederman of the Associated Press, they led off with a claim about so how many people were clamoring to get into the call.

Karmic payback — it’s a Rutherford, Barry:

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?’ That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.”

— Mr. Obama, in March of last year. The response from the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler now seems charmingly naive after all the corruption and incompetence that has emerged regarding the Obama regime over the course of the last year and a half:

The quote cited by Obama does exist on the Internet, but we would expect the White House staff to do better research than that. (This line was in the president’s prepared text, so it was not ad-libbed.) But the trouble is, historians say that there is no evidence Hayes ever said this. Not only that, contrary to Obama’s jab, Hayes was interested in new technology.

According to Ari Hoogenboom, who wrote the definite biography, “Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President,” Hayes entertained Thomas A. Edison at the White House. Edison demonstrated the phonograph for the president. “He was hardly hostile to new inventions,” Hoogenboom said.

Hayes, in fact, was such a technology buff that he installed the first telephone in the White House. A list of telephone subscribers published in the article “The Telephone Comes to Washington,” by Richard T. Loomis, shows that the White House was given the number “1.”

“We would expect the White House staff to do better research than that” — yes, as with appeasing foreign tyrants, I’m sure when it comes to historic gaffes, the motto of the White House staff is most definitely Neville Again.