KRESKIN

Posted on | by Ed

You know how I feel about making predictions.

There is relatively little to be gained by being correct and quite a bit of embarrassment to be endured on account of a spectacularly incorrect prediction.
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Sometimes the effects of bad predictions are greatly magnified by proximity to the event that disproves them.
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Did the lauded economist Irving Fisher ever live down saying "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" three days before the great crash of 1929? Can you imagine how many times George Will has been taunted for having written "Liberalization is a ploy…the Wall will remain" on Nov. 9, 1989 – the day the Berlin Wall came down? Talk about humiliating.

Now imagine that you are a law professor who turns the opportunity to write an op-ed for syndication and you use this opportunity to go on an extended bitch session about the failures of the current President. Then imagine that you say something like this…

Meanwhile, on foreign policy – another Carter weak point – Obama also looks worse.

Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as "reformers") took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.

…and the column was published on the same day that the President authorized a high-risk mission that ended up accomplishing something George Bush tried to do nine years ago. I bet you'd feel pretty embarrassed. Unless of course you're Ol' Perfesser Dumbass, who inhabits a world in which facts are so irrelevant that butchering them is of no consequence to the smug perception of one's own brilliance.

24 thoughts on “KRESKIN”

  • HoosierPoli says:

    But it's Bush's hard-nosed approval of torture and total botching of Afghanistan that led to this! So really, Bush deserves the credit, even though until two days ago we had completely blocked those eight years from our memory.

    Osama: Great job W!

    Deficit: George who?

  • Erin says:

    From comedian Mike Drucker: This has to be the first time in history that old white men tried to take credit from a black guy for someone getting shot.

  • fauxpopuli says:

    When Glenn Reynolds wants a picture of his future, he imagines a keyboard throwing objective reality in a human face–forever.

  • Sluggo says:

    The Obama administration needs to stop talking. The story seems to change hour by hour and this could(not a prediction) come back to bite them/us.

    All that needs to be said is " Luca Brassi, er, Osama bin Laden sleeps with the fishes".

  • acer says:

    That sack of shit Alan Greenspan was dead wrong about almost every economic prediction he ever made. His only skill in life was selling his "Maestro" hype to lazy journalists.

    Insty will need to update his shtick now that it's not 2003. But no journalist is lazier than him.

  • ProgressiveATL says:

    How the heck did Harlan get an op ed? Seriously, how?

    So I went poking into paper of note, ends up they want to keep terror alive (good fit for lizard brains), so their crush on the Glenn makes sense.

    The Examiner's own soap box piece today beseeches Obama to hold hands and skip alongside fragrant flowers with Bush the junior… wait that was the oil king, the one the Bush family loves so much… Obama? No oil, no sugar, so arm-in-arm it is.

    Look at this and tell me you don't break into song too:
    "Why do birds suddenly appear, every time, you are near… "
    http://www.godammit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/bush-and-abdullah-holding-hands.jpg

    Re Bin Laden, "Instability in the Muslim world has reached a level that makes Bin Laden redundant."
    http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME03Df02.html

  • c u n d gulag says:

    This seems to run in his family.

    I think it was Reynolds great, great grandfather who predicted that Custer would win overwhelmingly at Little Big Horn without a single casualty.

    What a PUTZ!!! And this couldn't happen to a bigger putz.

  • jeneria says:

    I own the Kreskin board game.

    I have friends who are saying the entire op was a sham because Obama won't release the graphic photos and videos of the man's death. Apparently frat boy chanting needs to be augmented by graphic visages of a man's brains blown out of his head.

    And hardly anyone is talking about all the intel we were able to find in the mansion on computers, hard drives, etc.

  • Janus Daniels says:

    "… how many times George Will has been taunted for having written…"
    Never.
    This has been another edition of Sad But True.

  • Monkey Business says:

    Ed, how have you been writing this long without realizing this fundamental truth: to the professional political class and their enablers, facts and truth are not and essential part of the job.

    For an example, let's take Jon Kyl.

    Jon Kyl is a Republican Senator from Arizona. Several weeks ago, Jon Kyle stood on the floor of the United States Senate during an argument for defunding Planned Parenthood and claimed that 90% of Planned Parenthood was abortion services.

    This is a staggeringly high number, sure to shock anyone listening. It is also staggeringly wrong. It's actually about 3%, which seems downright tiny. However, 3% doesn't support Senator Kyl's hypothesis, which is that Planned Parenthood does nothing but abort babies.

    Now, the backlash from this was fierce. People accused Senator Kyl of being full of shit, which he was and is.

    Senator Kyle stated that his statement was not intended to be factual in nature. Basically, he intended to lie to support his narrative. Moreover, he had it stricken from the Congressional record.

    To sum up: a United States Senator took the floor of the Senate, lied, was called on the lie, stated he had planned on lying, and then had the lie removed from the official Congressional record.

    To people like Senator Kyl, facts are irrelevant. They have no place in his rhetorical argument, because they don't support his position.

  • Ruthie says:

    Geez, Ed–the way you were ranting, I thought it was some liberal intellectual from Harvard! From "Instaputz," it's merely more of the same.

  • Barry says:

    Of course, Ronald Reagan provided arms and training (with taxpayer money) to the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan. St. Ronald compared them to our "Founding Fathers" and dedicated a space shuttle mission to these freedom fighters.

    No adverse consequences there at all. It is alway Jimmy Carter's fault. I wonder how they think Stealth fighters and bombers came into production? Ronald Reagan scripted them?

  • Alec says:

    My ex=Governor Bridge Fail Pawlenty can certainly one up that with both sure genius and total classiness:

    T-Paw-

  • Alec says:

    “The intelligence people come in and brief him in the morning, he’s probably looking for a pair of Depends, and so I think he’s in over his head on a lot of levels and a lot of ways, and that’s reflective of how he thrashes about and in some ways almost reacts incoherently to these security situations.”

  • Charlie says:

    What is never mentioned by republicans is the American CIA deposing an elected leader in Iran and installing the Shah in order to make hundreds of millions in oil profits at the expense of the innocent Iranian people, or that Reagan committed acts of treason by going behind Carters back by offering Iran arms to hold the hostages until after the election.

  • A.J. says:

    "…accomplishing something George Bush tried to do nine years ago."

    Whut? You are going to have to educate me on that one. Just where did Bush ever go after bin Laden in this manner?

    I think the sentence might have been better written as, "…accomplishing something George Bush PROMISED to do nine years ago (and didn't)."

Comments are closed.