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There are some things so amazing, so unbelievable, so jaw-dropping that their sheer frequency requires a man to begin cataloging each sweet, sweet occurrence. I am such a man, and this is such a catalog. read the rest »
Can you imagine the political fallout if Bush had told his detractors to shut up so that he could do what he wants?
Trying to make a cute play on words since his quick presser was a day before Cinco de Mayo, President Obama wished everyone the equivalent of “Happy Four of Five!” It’s in the first few seconds of the official White House Youtube clip:
Mary Katherine Ham, on why she notes such a gaffe with unapologetic glee:
…because if Bush had made such a blunder, it would have been the basis of a four-part MSNBC investigative series on the malapropism’s deleterious effects on the Republican Party’s attempts to woo Hispanic voters, Mexican-American relations, and our “place in the world.”
…
This from a unilingual man who’s embarrassed that more of us can’t speak French. If only he were as conversant in Spanish as he is in noted non-language “Austrian,” this wouldn’t have happened.
At the National Academy of Sciences:
“Sorry, I just noticed I jumped the gun here. Go ahead and move it up.” Crickets…
Yep. He was giving instructions to his soon-to-be-unemployed teleprompter operator live on national television. No worries, though. We all know he’s the most erudite, eloquent orator of all our Presidents. He’s certainly not an empty suit talking head in these pressers. No, he’s just honing his impression of a umpire at Wimbledon.
Nothing like our Ruler setting a good example for the commoners, am I right folks?
According to CBS, the President spent over 9000 gallons of fuel dashing across the country on Earth Day in order to help regular people celebrate it. What did we get out of it? A tree planted by Obama. And speeches in front of highly-underproducing, seriously experimental, nascent green energy technologies. These progressives just don’t seem to understand: Government investment in politically popular, economically unpopular and unproven technologies does not reap for us good things. Just look at the whole ethanol debacle and the increase in world hunger for which we have to thank corn fuel.
I can’t wait to see the gifts brought to us by the Big Gov’t push for artificially constraining the use of proven technologies like coal and nuclear in favor of feel-good peripheral energy sources like wind and sun.
Probably because it’s not a language, but no biggie.
It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.
Or as Jim Treacher put it, in Tweetstrian:
Remember when Bush said “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian”? It’s not a language, you rube! Whoops, I meant Obama.
In an unprecedented push for Government power, President Obama has apparently begun seeing himself as the new Decider. Wrote CNBC:
In an extraordinary move, the administration forced the departure of Rick Wagoner as CEO of General Motors over the weekend, and implicit in Obama’s remarks was that the government holds the ability to pull the plug on that company or Chrysler.
Can you hear the thuggery, kids? Looks like this Corleonian administration wants to put the squeeze on public enterprise. (Read: public enterprise never used to mean the government gets to intervene on behalf of the people, only that it was publicly traded. When people stopped believing the company would be profitable, they could sell their shares. Profitable companies rose and poorly performing companies fell according to the demands of a hungry market. That was all before Government began determining the desires of the citizenry, most notably through large-scale picking of winners and losers.)
Someone help! The radical, foaming, gay-bashing, progress-hating Reich-wingers have taken to poo-pooing the Great Orator for the most insignificant of issues with pronunciations, with some really obscure words no less.
I’m pretty sure only the horoscope-seeking rubes in the backwoods on Appalachia know what the constellation “Orion” is. You’d pronounce it OAR-ee-on, too, right? Multiple times, right? Me too. So why on earth would those cocky executives at Orion Energy Systems expect him to pronounce their silly company name correctly. Name your company after something real! Nobody’s even seen the stars for years; quit being stuck in the past with your head in the sand, company-namers.
We should cap their pay.
According to ABC’s Jake Tapper, Obama’s appearance on Leno tonight went a bit awry:
Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he’s gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.
He bowled a 129, the president said.
“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.
It’s “like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.
It shouldn’t really matter except that our leaders help foster a post-modern environment where meaning (and therefore, offense) is determined not by the speaker’s intent but by the listener’s interpretation.
If you watch with a half-effort, you might even be able to see exactly when his teleprompter stops working.
From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, where he is also keeping track of “Obamateurisms.”
“There are those who say that the plans in this budget are too ambitious to enact. To say that, uh … they say uh, in the face of challenges, uh, that we face, we should be trying to do less than more.”
In the face of challenges that we face? It’s facing those challenging challenges that really challenge us to our face.