My history teacher recently read us a list of quote that have all apparently been attributed to George W. Bush, from the start of his senatorship to today, I suppose.
Anyway, some of them sound ridiculous, and a Snopes search turned up nothing.
If it helps, one of the quotes was: “All of our imports come from outside the country” (or something).
The start of his senatorship?
The start of his senatorship?
Anyway, some of them probably are. All of them? Not having the list available, I’d have to say its doubtful. For instance the Bush Dyslexicon attributes to Bush many quotes that were attributed to Quayle, etc.
No doubt he actually said it. His presidential campaign was the motherlode of malapropisms. One of my coworkers has a “Bushism A Day” calendar. 365 really stupid and/or nonsensical things the W said, all with source cites. I bet they had a hard time narrowing it down to just 365.
Davebear:
Without hearing this list, you harbor no doubt that it’s accurate… even when introduced as dating from the first days of his “Senatorship?”
Doesn’t the mere mention of Bush’s service to the Senate suggest that maybe there’s some error associated with the list?
The accurate quote is funnier:
“The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.”
Attributed to George W. Bush, Jr.
Verdict: Accurate. It’s close to the real quote, spoken in Beaverton, Oregon on 9/25/00: “more and more of our imports come from overseas.”. Oddly, it is quite similar to Keppel Enderbery’s notable quip that “traditionally, most of Australia’s imports come from overseas.”
The Bushisms feature is from Slate. Places and dates are cited. A quote close to yours can be found on that page:
On third reading, could he of been talking about imports from Canada and Mexico diminishing but “more and more of our imports come from overseas.”
Anybody have a Nexus account?
hawthorne, didn’t see your quote until I posted my second. Your quote supplies more detail.
Could Bush of been talking about oil imports when he made that remark. Was he commenting about oil imports from the Americas versus Middle East? In that light the remark makes perfect sense.
If you follow anyone long enough, you’ll have a collection of inappropriate or misspoken lines. Especially when taken out of context. My college roommate actually had such a file on me. :rolleyes:
I’m certainly no fan of either of the Bushes, and I definitely think Bush Jr is a red and white tablecloth short of a picnic, but this is just stupid. Compare this to the Britney Spears quote where she says that her career has let her go to lots of overseas places, like Canada. So:
Either “overseas” means actually “on the other side of a sea”, in which case Bush’s quote isn’t dumb and Britney’s is, or “overseas” means “in another country”, in which case Bush’s quote is dumb and Britney’s isn’t. Can’t have it both ways.
If you ask me, it’s the former.
scr4’s right, of course. It’s just that Mr Bush - like his father - has an aptitude for these things. Most of the quotes on the page I cited have clear meanings that were slightly mangled. It doesn’t mean the man’s a fool. But boy, he’s got the touch.
AcidKid, the problem with that interpretion is the word “foreign” in the previous sentence. I think it’s pretty clear that he got a little confused between saying “we import more and more of our oil” and “more and more of our oil comes from overseas”. Easy to do. But if you are well known and you do it a fair bit, someone starts to write them down. And they’re funny.
I understand what you’re saying even though your interpretion does not hang of the word foreign. Venezuela, from which the US imports a lot of oil, is foreign but not overseas.
Let me put it another way:
Are the US imports of oil, from the Americas (North and South America of foreign but not overseas countries) done through US companies, decreasing? Are the US imports of oil from overseas through “big foreign oil companies” increasing?
See the difference, especially since Bush is an American oil man. His concern (perhaps) in that speech is not the importation per se but the importation through “big foreign oil companies” that get their product overseas and not in the Americas.
I can assure you that 100% of the oil imported from Venezuela does indeed come “over the sea”, as there is no pipeline from South America, nor do tanker trucks carry it up the Pan American Highway. If Bush apologists want to split semantic hairs in defense of his intellect, then they must accept the same pedantery in return.
The US imports more oil from Canada than any other single country.
Canada is the United States’ largest oil supplier and the fifth-largest energy producing country in the world.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada
I heard they’re working on nuclear anthrax, too.
Did you know that in Canada a blow job isn’t considered sexual relations?
o·ver·seas
ADVERB: Beyond the sea; abroad.
ADJECTIVE: Of, relating to, originating in, or situated in countries across the sea.
Note that this definition from http://www.bartleby.com/61/15/O0191500.html does not include the word play “over the sea” for transportation of goods from countries that are not overseas. A lot of oil from Alaska is transported via tanker. Does that make Alaska an overseas exporter to the US?
I don’t mind the pedantery, but I think you’re incorrect here. Whether the oil comes “over the sea” is not relevant concerning whether Venezuela is overseas from the US, just as a product can be shipped from California to New York, by way of the Panama Canal, but that doesn’t make the states overseas from each other.
From dictionary.com:
Given that there is a land connection (more or less) between the US and Venezuela, one is not “beyond the sea” from the other. Personally, I’ve only heard the term, in the context of the US, applied to Asia, Europe, Africa, and Austraila, never to other countries in North America or to South America.
P.S. On preview I see AcidKid has made much the same point, but I’ll go ahead with this post anyway.