Skip to main content

The gaffes of 2012

The Age newspaper has listed the "best" gaffes for 2012. As one looks back at them many are as astounding as stupid...and just plain dumb and ignorant.

The political gaffes of the year are "awarded" to presidential contender, Mitt Romney...

"Gaffe-prone politician of the year

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had several clangers during the campaign.

In a CNN interview in February: "I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it."

At the Iowa State Fair in August, in response to someone in the crowd who said taxes should be raised on corporations: ''Corporations are people, my friend.''

At a closed fundraiser in Florida, leaked in September: ‘‘There are 47 per cent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what ... my job is not to worry about those people.''

And at the second presidential debate in October: ‘‘I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks?' and they brought us whole binders full of women." Cue one of 2012's best memes."

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?
Post a Comment
Read more

Intelligence agencies just can't help themselves

It is insidious and becoming increasingly widespread. Intelligence agencies in countries around the world, in effect, snooping on private exchanges between people not accussed of anything - other than simply using the internet or their mobile phone. The Age newspaper, in Australia, reports on how that country's intelligence operatives now want to widen their powers. It's all a slippery and dangerous slope! The telephone and internet data of every Australian would be retained for up to two years and intelligence agencies would be given increased access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter under new proposals from Australia's intelligence community. Revealed in a discussion paper released by the Attorney-General's Department, the more than 40 proposals form a massive ambit claim from the intelligence agencies. If passed, they would be the most significant expansion of the Australian intelligence community's powers since the Howard-era reform...
Post a Comment
Read more