Hillary: I’d like to offer you a token of friendship, Sir Gay, a gift symbolizing a new era in U.S.-Russian relations.
Sergei Lavrov: Thank you, Madame Secretary. And it’s “Sergei”, by the way.
Hillary: Whatever. Anyhow, as you can see, it’s a “reset” button. I hope we got the Russian translation right.
Lavrov: Actually, no. This word – peregruzka – means “overcharged.”
Hillary: Hmm. Well, that’s about what I should have expected, I guess; Joe Biden was in charge of designing the thing.
Lavrov: I wonder…Does anything happen if I push the button?
Hillary: I don’t know. Why don’t you push it and we’ll find out?
Lavrov: Ok. Here goes!
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good! that will take care of the hillary problem as well ;)
ReplyDeleteDear Ms. Secretary of State,
ReplyDeleteThere is a large building right there in the middle of Washington, full of Russian people, many of whom speak and even read and write Russian, whose only job is to talk to other people.
It's called an embassy.
Maybe someone on your staff has heard of it.
Ms. Rice would have known immediately that the word was incorrect.
ReplyDeleteSwampWoman -- Ms Rice may be smarter than me. I would simply have assumed it was wrong since a Clinton and the State Department were involved...
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely difficult to see how they got this one wrong. Could have been worse, I suppose; some prankster might have given the gullible Clinton a button that said "Bite me, Vladimir."
ReplyDeleteOT: You might find this video clip amusing.
ReplyDeleteThe blog is pretty good too.
Whether they got it wrong, or this is some elaborate stunt to embarrass someone, the affair highlights the amateurs in charge of this country.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe not amateurs, but narcissists, thinking only of their personal gain. This was the sort of stunt I would have pulled in college.
Sorry to be nitpicking, but it really means "overloaded" like giving students too much homework, etc, definitely does not mean "reset"
ReplyDeleteOrion
Back in the bad old Carter years, Carter went on an official trip to Poland and in a speech said something like "I love the Polish people," a sentence his interpreter (who probably had one to many vodkas)translated into "I desire the Poles sexually."
ReplyDeleteOn another occasion at a cocktail party in the White House, the same guy (the translator, not Carter) ripped open the shirt of the Egyptian ambassador's wife, remarking that he had always wanted to see the pyramids!
Not even that got him fired.
How the US got to be the world's only superpower is beyond me. It was certainly not with the help of the State Department.
That looks like a South Pacific atoll test firing of the Hydrogen "super" rather than anything earlier. I believe quite a few good ol' WW2 scrap battleships went down in such testing.
ReplyDeleteSort of relevant: I can't resist re-telling the story (true or false) of Kevin Rudd in China years ago, when he was a diplomat, trying to say that Australia and China had achieved a "very special realtionship".
The yarn goes that he said (in well accented Mandarin) "Australia and China have achieved simultaneous orgasm".
To the great amusement of the Chinese present.