Word: blunderer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...biggest blunder was made by Angelo Sepe, 37, a mob-connected hood who was on parole from an armed-robbery conviction. Unable to resist enjoying his new wealth, he ordered a sporty 1979 Thunderbird -and paid for the car with $9,000 in cash. He also bought a new Cadillac for his girlfriend. Before he picked up the T-bird, however, FBI agents fitted it with an eavesdropping bug and a small radio transmitter that constantly signaled its whereabouts. Sepe's next mistake was to boast about the Lufthansa caper to passengers in his car -taped conversations that...
...only a handful of operatives in Tehran who spoke Persian, has once more been revealed as utterly inadequate. The U.S. embassy myopically refused to let members of the mission make friends with the opposition, lest this seem to undermine the Shah. Policymakers in Washington were guilty of the classic blunder of confusing a nation with its leader, however intelligent, well briefed and even intimidating he might...
...decline of traditional religious belief among educated people, the weekly observed: "What happened in Jonestown, Guyana, is a ghoulish cautionary tale for these people who, in these differing ways, are seeking God in a secular world. In that search for God, it is all too easy to blunder into the arms of Satan instead." Added the Vatican news paper L'Osservatore Romano: "Christianity is a religion of life, not of death." West Germany's Stuttgarter Zeitung philosophized less cosmically: "It was not just a symptom of America or its system's shortcomings. Mystic sects and pseudoreligious groups...
...major political blunder that undid Griffin last week. After announcing, in the spring of 1977, that he would not seek reelection, he began playing hooky from his Senate job, missing 216 roll calls that year. When he later changed his mind and entered the race, his dismal attendance record haunted him, even though he previously had a well-deserved reputation as a Washington workhorse. Exclaimed Levin repeatedly during the campaign: "If any one of us missed 216 days of work in a year, we'd be fired!" Michigan voters agreed...
...past, McIntyre this year relied almost exclusively during his campaign on radio, print and personal handshaking, but not TV, which may have been his most serious blunder. He also erred in feeling that voters would view this race in the same way that they had his earlier elections: as a challenge by a dangerous extremist. But unlike McIntyre's earlier opponents, the attractive aviator did not come across as a radical. This apparently was enough to prod moderate Republicans to return to the G.O.P...