Flibbertigibbet

Poor Li'l Bushy

I'm not one to spend a lot of time ranting about how idiotic George Bush is. I don't know, it just seems A) too easy and B) inessential to the larger issue of the inherent destructive nature of conservative ideology, but I just can't help this one.

Daily mail: Bush confuses Austria and Australia in latest gaffe

For George Bush, it was a gaffe waiting to happening.

The similarities in sounding between Australia and Austria led Bush into an embarrassing blunder down under.

The US president thanked Australian premier John Howard for visiting 'Austrian troops' in Iraq.

There are no Austrian troops there, although Australia has 1,500 military personnel in the region.

He continued his blunders by then confusing the organisations of APEC and OPEC.

Talking at a business forum on the eve of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Mr Bush also told Mr Howard: "Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit."

As the audience laughed, the US president corrected himself and joked: "He invited me to the OPEC summit next year."

Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

I remember in fifth grade, getting into an argument with Jeremy J-- about this. I had remarks that I think Australia would be a cool place to live and he said he didn't like Australia because that's where Hitler was from. Astonished, I pointed out his error and followed up with the fact that Austria had since also products Arnold schwarzenegger. (Arnie was a badass to us fifth graders at the time.)

Anyway, he insisted I was wrong and I insisted that I was right. I think I punched him in the head at some point and then mocked him pretty mercilessly until we retired to his house to play Contra or whatever.

Ah, childhood.

It just occurred to me: Jeff Foxworthy should test Dubya to see if he's smarter than a fifth grader.