I am a big old windbag who dosen’t know my a** from my elbow.

Daily, we get more ammo to shoot at them.

At some point, these things have to get pointed out. It’s not just a one time thing which can be written off as overwork or something. This is continued screw ups.

Sooner or later, the truth will surface about the elite colleges with their narrow views about everything. I completed four years of undergraduate work and five years of graduate work and am still learning. I am seventy-five years old and will continue to learn until I die. Ivy league colleges give the impression that once you have graduated from one of them, you know everything about everything. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you don’t continue your studies all your life, you become as obsolete as your education, and limited. I received my first degree in 1954. Imagine how much has happened since then and not being aware of everything as it happens makes you as limited as someone who never attended college. For that matter, some of the most intelligent people I have enteracted with in my life never attended college. I have relied more on common sense than any of the formal education I ever received. It is great if you have both and sad when you lack either.

The One could have praised the Brits for there phenomenal progress in learning how to speak American, so we should be grateful for small favors.

is that Dubya had the advantage of the silver spoon raisin’ at the feet of a US Ambassador.

We knew he wasn’t great without the teleprompter, but how did he manage to have NOBODY from his past, who could have told the country that he was all hat, no cattle?

Actually, this one takes the cake! I suspect that no one on his staff would have thought he didn’t know this, it is available from the pool of general public knowledge most of us pick up by osmosis. Oh the hypocrisy of it all! The press- liars and hypocrites-every one of them!

JP, I lost faith with Carl Cameron during the election because of his bias.

when the French chick says she can’t move to Bora Bora because she does not speak Bora Boran, (hint, they speak French). I am telling you, this guy Obama probably never studied American History or Western Civilization. He hates what America stands for and I think he hates all whities. Let’s face it, look at how he has showered them with gag gifts and how he treated Brown when he came here.

Furnny, Obama is the big Europe guy, and Bush was the one who did the most for Africa and did not enjoy the Euros who treated him like feces. Obama is loved there because he does NOT represent America, not because he does. The man is a dolt and his press is so good he knows he doesn’t even need to try.

Remember when the liberals lambasted Bush daily and call him an “idiot?” Obama can’t think his way out of a paper bag.

You won’t see this gaffe reported on The John Stewart Show, or Saturday Night Live, or anywhere in the mainstream news media.

It boggles the mind that Obama did not know that the Austrians speak German…. one would hope that he has spent a good deal of his time at Harvard studying diplomacy,geography and especially history in order to know how to avoid the same mistakes of the past. . Apparently he did not.

This error is major - - not a slight one because it reveals either his ignorance or his laziness in preparing for this trip and the speeches he was to give. Either way, it’s disturbing.

I clearly recall that during his campaign, Obama derided the ‘ugly American’ saying we traveled in Europe and arrogantly neglect to learn the language of the country we visit. All of his speeches during this visit were in English, so I’m assuming he doesn’t speak anything else…. - - but of course, if you’re going to speak the language of the country you visit, you first have to know what that language is.

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is only so much coaching you can do. How on earth would they anticipate that Obama would volunteer such a gaffe? It certainly wasn’t an essential part of the answer: all it did was show his ignorance.

As a handler, you work on issues and keeping the various G20 nations’ policies straight. You just have to assume that the President of the United States, who possesses a postgraduate degree, has certain basic knowledge any sharp high school junior would know.

In Obama’s case, it comes back to bite you in the asp, but you just have to assume it or he’d never be “ready” to go anywhere or receive any foreign leaders . . . which, come to think of it, might be the best solution anyway.

Off the top of my head, we have the MSM trying to ignore or downplay:

1) Obama’s bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia
2) Clinton’s asking who painted the portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe
3) And now, not knowing that Austrians speak German.

Most Americans follow baseball closely enough to know that, three strikes and you’re out.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough evidence to convict the MSM of covering up for Obama and his administration.

This just smacks of the same petty crap the other side did to W for his entire term.. Yes the President should be informed about these things but it just seems a little petty to me.

If Sarah Pallin had actually not known that Africa was a continent, it would have indicated a massive ignorance of history, not just foreign affairs.

Same goes for this mistake; anyone who knows anything about the history of Europe is going to know that the language of Austria is German, just as they’d know that there are German-speaking people in parts of Checkoslovakia and France - that “trivia” has been at the heart of two World Wars in the last century.

It’s amazing to me that someone can get a pre-law degree without a fairly solid understanding of 20th century European history, at least enough to know about the creation of “Greater Germany” prior to the start of WWII.

West German. Obama can thank Reagan for that.

I bet he won’t do a town hall in Liechtenstein, nasty language that Liechtensteinian is to learn, complex verbs and all those tough vowels..

Austrian German is a distinct dialect of German, much like American English and British English are distinct dialects. Idioms often differ a good deal in different dialects.

Does The One think ‘Australian’ is a language also, and if he does would Wonkette write it up?

- JP

but I think the cut & paste about the German language must have a typo…there are definitely more than 10 million native speakers worldwide, given there are 80 million people in Germany alone and virtually all are native speakers, add in the Austrians, the Swiss that speak German, the northern Italians (Südtirol) and some of the other enclaves around the world, the number 100 million would seem much more realistic.

And the Austrian dialect is not in fact dramatically different form the Bavarian German dialect, and in written form and in the form used in journalism and newsreporting referred to as “high german” it is in fact identical, both countries falling under the grammar and spelling determinations of the “Duden”

I would interpret that he intended what “wheeling and dealing” meant for Austrians. Not in Austrian.

I know, I know Bush would never have gotten a pass. And living in Kehl it was really scary to see the Germans lining the streets with (figurative) palm fronds in hand to welcome Obama…

But maybe we should be nitpicking the “European Union is a success” line more than the Austrian one…..most Germans I speak with a very displeased with the EU and if it were up to them Germany would abandon it. That goes for most other Euros I speak with. When you ask, “are you a Euro” they always reply “No I am a ____ (Italian, Swede, ect)”.

Hell the EU jerks just passed a law that you can only have so much salt in Pretzel dough because the common man is to stupid to understand that eating a pretzel will give you a super dose of Sodium. The “I know, but you do not” bull is getting old real fast for those under control of the EU.