Last week, Senator McCain seemed to reveal that he does not know how Social Security works.Today, he seemed to reveal that he does not know how the geography of the Middle East works either.
UPDATE:
.....From McCain gaffes pile up, by Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei (Politico):
• … Diane Sawyer…asked whether the "the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent.”
.....McCain responded: “I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border." The ABC posting [noted]: “Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.”
.....Unfortunately for McCain, that wasn’t an isolated slip.
.....Among the other lapses:
• “Somalia” for “Sudan”: As recounted in a reporter’s pool report from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus on June 30, the senator said while discussing Darfur, a region of Sudan: "How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?"
.....Senior adviser Mark Salter corrected him: “Sudan.”
• “Germany” for “Russia”: A YouTube clip from last year memorializes McCain referring to Vladimir Putin of Russia — following a trip to Germany — as “President Putin of Germany.”
• This spring, McCain said troops in Iraq were “down to pre-surge levels” when in fact there were 20,000 more troops than when the surge policy began.
• Also this spring, McCain twice appeared to mistake Sunnis and Shiites, two branches of Islam that split violently.
• In Phoenix earlier this month, McCain referred to Czechoslovakia, which has been divided since Jan. 1, 1993, into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He also referred to Czechoslovakia during a debate in November and a radio show in April.
• In perhaps the most curious incident, McCain said earlier this month that as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he had tried to confuse his captors by giving the names of Pittsburgh Steelers starting players when asked to identify his squadron mates. McCain has told the story many times over the years — but always correctly referred to the names he gave as members of the Green Bay Packers.
7 comments:
Clivejames.com has an excellent essay on politicians gaffes.
An educational example right up DtB's alley;
"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world".
-Dan Quayle
Don't be missing out on BO's gaffes, he's got some doozies too!
There is entirely too much attention paid to gaffes, as they are called. Complete misrepresentation of facts, as W does, is one thing. An occasional slip of the tongue is not enough to warrant this drive by approach to media reporting, though. T least with Obama, we have an intellignet, well spoken, and thoughtful person, and that's quite a change from the last few years.
Worrying about mere gaffes is indeed unreasonable. But worrying about a persistent pattern of sometimes-alarming gaffes, especially in the case of an elderly candidate, is not.
A pattern of lies is troubling too. Today it has been reported that BO claims to be on the Senate Banking Committee. He is not.
A slip of the tongue is one thing, but an outright lie is something else.
A lie has two components: that what one says is false AND that one knows that it is false when one says it.
Mere verbal slips, of course, are uninteresting, unless you're a Freudian, in which case you're in the wrong century.
Note that the phrase "a deliberate lie" is silly since, normally at least, something isn't a lie unless the speaker knows his statement is untrue. (Recall Professor Frankfurt's distinction between BSers and liers. A lier knows the truth. A BSer doesn't care.)
That's why it is usually difficult reasonably to infer that someone is lying in a given instance, although there are exceptions, e.g., McCain's recent football team gaffe, the circumstances of which point to lying.
So what you're implying is that BO doesn't know what committee assignments he has so he isn't lying.
That's a crock...he just runs his mouth and makes stuff up. This isn't the first time he's done this either.
Of course, BO has a long way to go to top that "unusually good liar", Clinton.
McAmnesty isn't lying either. It's definitely senility. This country is in trouble folks.
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