Posted on 09/07/2007 8:18:17 AM PDT by SmithL
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- President Bush had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day at the Sydney Opera House.
He'd only reached the third sentence of Friday's speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.
"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.
Bush quickly corrected himself. "APEC summit," he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).
The president's next goof went uncorrected — by him anyway. Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them "Austrian troops."
That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying "Austrian," the official text released by the White House switched it to "Australian."
Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out — the wrong way.
He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.
The event had inauspicious beginnings. Bush started 10 minutes late, so that APEC workers could hustle people out of the theater's balcony seating to fill the many empty portions of the main orchestra section below — which is most visible on camera.
Even resettled, the audience remained quiet throughout the president's remarks, applauding only when he was finished.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The AssPress bias is showing.
Raum’s idea of a good day at the theater involves Republican Presidents at the Ford Theater.
Meow!
At least he didn’t refer to him as “President Howard,” as Obama probably would have.
Not as bad as Lincoln.
It’s not Bush’s fault that Australia and Austria have names that are almost the same (like Slovenia and Slovakia, or Congo and Congo). Apparently Austrians sometimes have people asking them about their kangaroos.
At least he knows what the word “is” means. Why is a quickly corrected verbal gaffe news? (rhetorical question)
How petty can these a$$ clowns be?
They linguistically "profile" our president while using proper linguistic spelling and pronunciation for the names of Arab and Iranian terrorists. What a bunch of slimy AHs.
They love to dogbone those Bushisms, don’t they?
Morons. Forget the theater, it was a bad NEWS day.
They do not understand that "A" and "O" as vowel sounds , are nearly the same in a Texas accnted English.
The ASS Press simply can't listen properly.
They linguistically "profile" our president while using proper linguistic spelling and pronunciation for the names of Arab and Iranian terrorists.
BUahahahahahah!
What a bunch of slimy AHs.
These are gaffs? What petty small minded nerds they are in the press corps.
Ever notice how these media types get all hard over items like this. You almost need a condom reading this article.
Yeesh. Nothing about little mis-speaks is news. It just isn’t.
Happens to me all the time. I get there too late and I have to watch the movie without the overpriced buttered popcorn, hotdog, and a watered down Diet Pepsi.
Geez. I honestly was expecting that Jr. had barfed at the theater like his dad or something; something bad.
Not a few mistakes.
I should have known.
Their pettiness is limitless. Like the grains of sand on the beaches, like the stars in the sky - there are no known limits to the pettiness of the MSM ass clowns.
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