And they call Bachmann "The gaffe queen"?

One of my dearest friends recently moved back to her home state of North Carolina after 40 years in DC. Although an avowed liberal she is open-minded and has conservative friends (other than just me). The other day she said that NC governor Bev Perdue (a democrat) was stupid. Then she said that Michele Bachmann was "so stupid she could be elected governor of North Carolina." I asked her to give me examples of Bachmann's stupidity and she cited two of the examples that I had earlier posted on my blog (the mix up regarding Lexington and Concord and saying John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa). She however knew that all the founders were not pro-slavery because of the Quakers. I then said well at least Bachmann did not think there were 57 states. I was incredulous when she said "Now who would say that?" I said Barack Obama and she did not believe me so I sent her the following. By the way, it occurred to me that if George Bush had said it, she would know it. This simply shows how we are shaped by what media sources we listen to and read. I told her that this was only a sampling of Obama's gaffes. I could easily have sent her 20 more.

Obama gaffes

1. "I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon.
2. Not knowing (or ignoring) the royal etiquette in the toast to the Queen.
3. "The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries." --Tampa, Fla., Jan. 28, 2010.
4. "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems." –attempting to make the case for government-run healthcare, while simultaneously undercutting his own argument, Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11, 2009
5. "One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world -- Navy Corpse-Man Christian Brossard." –mispronouncing "Corpsman" (the "ps" is silent) during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2010 (The Corpsman's name is also Christopher, not Christian).
6. "The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system." --in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers, Washington, D.C., July 20, 2009.
7. "It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian, wheeling and dealing." --confusing German for "Austrian," a language which does not exist, Strasbourg, France, April 6, 2009.
8. "No, no. I have been practicing...I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." --making an off-hand joke during an appearance on "The Tonight Show", March 19, 2009.
9. "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances." --after saying he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepared to take office, Washington, D.C., Nov. 7, 2008.
10. "What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith..." --in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who jumped in to correct Obama by saying "your Christian faith."
11. "I'm here with the Girardo family here in St. Louis." --speaking via satellite to the Democratic National Convention, while in Kansas City, Missouri, Aug. 25, 2008.
12. "Let me introduce to you the next President -- the next Vice President of the United States of America, Joe Biden." -- Springfield, Illinois, Aug. 23, 2008.
13. "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong."
14. "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people.
15. In London when he signed the guest book at Westminster Abbey. Obama reportedly asked someone nearby what the date was and they told him "May 24," assuming incorrectly that the leader of the free world would know what year it was (2011). Instead, Obama wrote in his leftist scrawl "24 May 2008."
16. How about the movie DVDs for Prime Minister Gordon Brown that wouldn't work on British players, and the iPod for Queen Elizabeth II thoughtfully pre-loaded with some of the Real Good Talker's own speeches.
17. “First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.“
18. Not only does Obama not know how many states there are, he also doesn’t know where they are. During the 2008 primary campaign, he explained why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” Obama’s home state of Illinois, and not Arkansas, shares a border with Kentucky.
19. Remember when he claimed that the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama resulted in his birth? “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma because some folks were willing to march across a bridge. So they go together and Barack Obama Jr. was born”. The only problem was that Obama was born in 1981 four years before the march at Selma.
20. How about his speech in Missouri when he said that one of the problems in the Afghan war is a lack of translators because “if they are all in Iraq, then it is harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” Well it would be hard to use them anyway since Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish while Afghans speak Pashto and Farsi.