One [sic] puppy

Being a poor web lackey myself, I often wonder about the poor White House transcript lackey who has the unenviable job of parsing his boss's good ol' boy verbal folksiness into actual, readable English. Many White House transcripts of Bush speeches contain a plethora of [sic] edits whereas other times they "scrub" what the President actually said and published what he perhaps meant to have said (but didn't have the intellectual capacity for his brain to properly synapse it) in their official transcript. Without a hint of Orwellian irony of course. We all know how fun it is to use The Google on The Internets, so let's search for the usage of [sic] in White House transcripts. We then find some good ones from the past year:

This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th.* [sic]

10/11/2006
Ah he meant September 30th. To be fair "Februrary" does sound a lot like "September".

Through your love of family and community you help unite us as a people. Through entrepreneurship and innovation you have strengthened our economy, creating jobs for other [sic] and thereby contributing to the opportunity of this nation.

5/12/2006

And this is a very important mission for our country. It's a public/private partnership. Our federal government has committed $250 million [sic]*

9/25/2006
so it's actually $230 million, what's $20 million worth anyway? About 1.5 hours of War in Iraq.

And I will also be able to welcome Dave Erbe, who is a youth volunteer. He volunteers to help the wounded and injury [sic] military personnel at Walter Reed. David, thank you in advance for doing what you're doing.

6/23/2006

You know, the call can come when it's least expected, as it did for Officer Larry Cox of Chillocothe, Ohio. A 19-year-old [sic] veteran of the police force, Officer Cox was off-duty when he stepped up to help fellow officers in pursuit of a suspect.

5/15/2006

So, welcome to Washington, D.C. [sic] I think this is our fifth visit. Every time, I've left our visits inspired by your vision.

9/20/2006
you can't blame the poor lackey for just assuming there's something wrong with that one

"It is interesting what's happened to the Democrat [sic] Party," said Bush. "You know, I'm reading a lot of history these days."

10/20/2006 well we're all glad you've decided to read books other than My Pet Goat, but it's the Democratic Party. He makes the same mistake so many times that after the fourth time, they just stop noting it...