While I do understand where you are coming from on this one, I think that you must admit that the man just doesn’t seem all of that bright. Now I realize that the type of skill that are involved in studying and taking tests/writing papers differs from those needed to sound eloquent in public and think on your feet, but the bottom line is that if he was just some dude that you heard saying these things down at the local pub that you would assume that he wasn’t all that bright and informed.
Having said all of that, I am going to beg the folks on the Left to pretty please stop opening these kind of pointless and substance free threads. All that you are doing is alienating the sane folks that share your ideology and further convincing our Loyal Opposition that we are, in fact, loonies that can be dismissed out of hand. This is not the path to success.
That New England dialect/pronuncuation is an established manner of speaking that is determined not by lack of education but by place of birth - and it’s not even completely saturating up there; you’ll find plenty of Bostoners who don’t say “Bwahstin” or New Yorkers who don’t say “Loahng Guyland”. “Nuke-yular” is mispronunciation regardless of who else in the corporate world thinks it’s appropriate. And hell, if academic/corporate success determines acceptance, does “potatoe” become acceptable merely because a VP spelled it that way? Are we now to let in “subliminable” and “Kosovarian” because GWB said them?
Meanwhile, “cah” vs. “car” is a question of regional dialect, so if you’re going to use this argument as an analogy, care to provide some evidence that “new-klear” vs. “nuke-yular” is a regional difference?
Catsup and Ketchup are two different spellings of the same thing. Regardless of that, though, last I checked this was a question of pronunciation, not spelling (and catsup has been around a touch longer - (17th century, and the original didn’t even contain tomatoes).
And that’s precisely why I’m taking this time to educate you.
For one, you should be able to recognize the difference between a regional pronunciation and an improper pronunciation.
Why is it a prerequisite for arguing that Bush is an idiot that one have a masters from an elite school? And does this “I’ll only listen to arguments…” apply to any other topics?
I fully understand what you’re saying. I certainly don’t think anyone who identifies themselves as a liberal is a moron. But I have to take that first response seeing as anyone considered a conservative is labeled as such.
As to University degrees, I never put much stock in them. Hell, Bill Gates dropped out of college and is now one of the richest men in the world. All from his work in his mother’s garage. I qualify for Mensa, yet nobody knows my name. I could probably get a Harvard degree, but I can’t afford the tuition. I’m fine with that. There are many men better than me that haven’t earned a degree worthy of the Blue-bloods.
I hate to hijack this, but I can do anything a local software company needs done. They just won’t hire me unless I have a degree from a University. I’ve been using computers since I was 9 (1982) so I have a little experience. Yet, no job without a degree.
Maybe this is going into a screed on emphasis on a piece of paper. I’ll stop now.
Bullshit, duffer. Papa Tiger went to IBM programming school in 1967, has no college degree of any kind (even though he’s taught college level courses in computer science), and has been steadily and well employed in the computer field since that time. Don’t give me this “they won’t hire me without a degree” crap.
Folks, I think duffer is just trying to replace the late unlamented county for coming along and shitting pointlessly and randomly in threads to piss us off. Looks like he’s succeeding.
And speaking as someone who does have a Master’s degree from “Harvard or a comparable school” (hell, we alumni think Harvard’s vastly overrated ), I’ll repeat what GorillaMan said: Bush is an idiot.
First: you wanna explain the tiny discrepancy here (other than the possibility that you’re markedly differentiating between a BA/BS and a Master’s)?
Second: I took Mama Tiger’s comment to mean not that you were a sock (reach much?) but that in his absence you were trying out a form of posting closer to his (post without a: understanding responses or b: trying to be cogent/reasonable) than usual.
Third: “First, I don’t drop shit in the Pit. I stay here and defend what I say.” Sometimes it’s much wiser to retract something. You don’t have to pretend you’re perfect all the time. You don’t have to fight to the point of pettiness just to get the last word in. You don’t have to defend everything you say even when innocent bystanders are telling you to drop it. You also don’t defend every single thing you say (shall I come in with cites?;)) anyway, so where you’re getting that from is beyond me.
There are these things called…scholarships and financial aid. Many people get them. Even me, which is why I was allowed to attend Oxford despite a distinct lack of blue-bloodedness. And there are many men better than me, too.
Oooh, oooh! Since I have a master’s degree from Oxford, am I permitted to call Bush a moron? Thanks for that loophole. I know full well my degree don’t mean shit really, but, hey, anytime I can take a free shot* at the leader of the Free World, I’ll take it.
[sub]*Note to Secret Service: do not take this literally[/sub]
I could care less if Bush can pronounce Abu Ghraib. I would bet money there is more than one way to pronounce that in Arabic. And John F. Kennedy called a certain Caribbean nation “Coober” for goshsakes…and I believe he was a Harvard man with a Yale degree.
But it does really make me wonder if this is the first time he really has ever mentioned the prison’s name out loud. I imagine privately, he calls it “that jail where the bad stuff happened”.
Slight hijack…“aks” or “ax” for “ask” is not only an African-American form - I have heard white people from around New Orleans use the same pronunciation.
In Arabic it’s أبو غريب - hope that comes out right.
To pronounce it well, you have to choke back the ‘a’ in ‘abu’ so it comes out something like ‘uh-boo’. Then you need to pronounce the ‘gh’ and ‘r’ sound by adding a noise as if you’re hawking up phlegm (try saying ‘ggghhhhrrr’ for starters). Failing this, just use a hard ‘gr’ noise as in English.
For the “aib” bit, you’ve got a couple of options. What many Arabic speakers might use is two separate sounds, “ay” as in “ay caramba” and “ib” as in “bib”. However, most Iraqis seem to run these together, somewhere between the ‘ibe’ in ‘imbibe’ and the ‘abe’ in ‘babe’.
So, a reasonable pronounciation from an English speaker, taking into account the Iraqi could get would be something like ‘uh-boo gribe’. A more mainstream Arabic pronunciation might be something like 'uh-boo griy-ib", with the tricky ‘gh’ sound.
What Bush said was absolutely awful and changed each time. The closest he got was something like ‘ab-oo garreb’. A real failure from his advisers, and it does lead me to believe he’s never really discussed the topic, at least not in these words.
Generally, I don’t make that assumption. However, I don’t think that I would be overstating the case if I said that the overwhelming majority of the folks attacking Bush for what amounts to lame reasons do fall on that end of the political spectrum.
Substitute “Anti-Bush” in my posts if that clarifies anything, by all means. The only point that I am trying to (badly it would seem) make is that there are many many valid and serious issues surrounding this administration that we should be focusing on. Adding irrelevancies to the debate only serves to turn it in to so much noise. That is not an effective strategy.
Bush may often sound like a maroon, but I would like to think that the finest institutions of higher education in the U.S. do not give away Masters degrees, but if you have any evidence or anecdotes as to how Bush got his without doing the work, I’m all ears.
Well, see, his daddy’s cronies (who are associated with the Illuminati, Masons and the Draconis) projected “mind control beams” in to the professor’s brains forcing them to give W passing grades. This was during the time that they were also plotting the construction of the Denver International Airport as a command center for some overly complex secret society’s plot. :rolleyes:
), I’ll repeat what GorillaMan said: Bush is an idiot.