Obama Hits all the Wrong Notes
July 9th, 2008 — -
– “You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish“
Pandering. Missing the point. Getting the realpolitik entirely wrong. Sounding like the Holy Harvard man that I hoped he wasn’t…And to think I sort of liked the guy.
Speaking before supporters in Georgia on Tuesday, Barry O. painfully sputters the following:
“We live in a global economy. And, you know, I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, ‘We need to have English- only.’ They want to pass a law, ‘We want English-only’…
Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English – they’ll learn English – you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.”
Now, I love foreign languages. I study them, I’ve tutored them, I regularly listen to programs in French, German, Italian and Spanish. So you can put away your pointy finger. Yes, I love foreign languages.
But what does Obama think he’s running for? Harvard Class President, circa 1968? Or President of these United States.
Let me ask O’barry a question:
How will years of Spanish or French language education help in solving the problems of:
- The falling Dollar?
- Declining world markets and wallet-breaking price hikes?
- US dependence on Chinese Manufacturing?
- The Iraqi f.u.b.a.r?
- Iran and its leader’s love of threatening to annihilate Israel?
- The Nine Trillion dollar US debt?
- Illegal Immigration?
- A broken and co-opted political system that makes sane, feeling people run screaming “sanctuary!” when exposed to politics via the American media?
Rhetorical questions, maybe. But here’s a solid one for Barry.
- What’s the most important, but most poorly spoken language now being taught in US high schools?
- What is the language in which too many adults now lack proficiency?
- What is the most misspoken language in the United States?
Need a hint? It’s the language currently being misspoken and tortured by too many actors, athletes, musicians and TV personalities on a daily basis…
It’s the language most abused by one George W. Bush, the Resident President of our United States of America (a country which never favored bi-lingualism, because it sat squarely across the width of the North American Continent, and which also fought a Civil War to ensure the continued existence of its “more perfect union”).
Hey, I love speaking and listening across the lingual dial. But Esperanto is dead, and so are the 60s. How about we fix one problem at at time, Harvard Man?
July 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Expect many more “wrong notes” from Obama.
But, he’s not such a bad guy, is he? I mean, he’s a good public speaker. And he gives us “hope”, right? That “hope” wasn’t just a political calculation to make up for the last seven years, was it? No. Couldn’t be. Nobody would do that.
I’m sure that Obama, along with all those brave Democrats will fix the things that have gone awry in the past seven years, even though the Democrats in Congress voted for all those horrible things. Oh well. Just a coincidence, nothing to worry about.
When the election’s coitus-like euphoria has worn off, we’ll really get to see President Obama’s true colors. Watch the Dumbocrat electorate reel in shock, and make excuses when Obama acts more like a Lieberman than a Kucinich. Same old game. When are people going to wake up?
July 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English – they’ll learn English – you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.
What’s up with the doublespeak? He says “you need to make sure your child can speak SPANISH”. Spanish, specifically. Then he says “we should have every child speaking more than one language. Just what is Mr. Obama trying to communicate here? Why Spanish?
July 9th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I guess the “party of the people” thinks its “people” are not US citizens?
July 11th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Obama is a politician - bottom line. Expect many more missteps along the way.
Lesser of evils in my opinion. I mean, McCain?! I used to think he was the best the Republican party could get before I heard of Ron Paul. Then he went stomping around the flag and ridiculing the Democrats for everything he was at one time a proponent for when he wanted the GOP to moderate itself and connect more with the people. Then it came to looking more conservative than Huckabee in order to win the party nomination and he couldn’t jump fast enough.
We do need to compete globally, but Spanish isn’t the one answer. We need kids that know Chinese, French and for political reasons, Arabic and Farsi.
And yes, proper English, so kids can function in their own society first, then in the wider world.
Why, Liam, are you so surprised that Barack is pandering? He’s a politician that plays the game, just like all of them. He wouldn’t have made it this far with so little practical experience if he didn’t.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’d take Popeye (McCain) over Shifty (Obama), if McPops would take Romney as VP. I’m looking for a history of success in business, dealing with people, adversarial politics, and diplomatic but meaningful (and tough enough) foreign relations.
I liked Barry O. because I thought he’d bridge our US racial/economic divide…
But I think I was falling prey to the message of “hope,” and missing the message of experience and political philosophy.
I’ve experienced one tripled-talking president in my lifetime, and I don’t need another Clinton, of any color or gender, in office.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
It doesn’t matter who’s in office.
The same corporate and military interests and agendas will be adhered to, whether it’s Grandpa McCain, Barak Hussein or that woman with the grating voice (don’t count her out yet…well, wait until after the Democratic convention. Seemed she was making some sort of connection between Robert Kennedy’s assassination and Barak Hussein. Nah. That’s just crazy talk).
It looks very much like we’re moving into the “good cop” scenario for President. I’ll be surprised if BHO isn’t “elected” (sorry if I don’t believe in the integrity of those voting machines). It’s time for BHO to play his role (he’s already been doing so). The browbeaten Democrats will take anything he and Congress decide to shove down our throats (much like Clinton was able to). We’ll take it because he’s a “Democrat”. We’ll take it because he gives us “hope”. Barf.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
“We do need to compete globally…”
What the hell does that mean? Are we not competing globally right now?
Who are we going to compete against?
Why do we need to compete? And for what?
This kind of soundbite comes straight off the corporate news. It’s glassy-eyed and braindead.
Why don’t we cooperate globally?
July 12th, 2008 at 10:49 am
All the wrong notes -
Compete globally!?
We’ve outsourced all our work! We manufacture not-a-thing we use anymore. We’re not competing with Spain, Mexico or Bolivia for jobs - we’re competing with OUTSOURCING.
We don’t need to learn Spanish, we need to re-learn the value of manufacturing more of what we use, in country, and having some feeling of integrity and pride nationally.
We’ve got more than enough disenfranchised people here who might like to have factories built in their towns to produce the goods we so greedily eat up.
We’re in a blind addiction pattern - the kids lining up to buy NEW (New) iPhones, well, they’re googling themselves out of learning anything meaningful out of the world, while they cough up $920 dollars for a piece of metal and plastic so they can watch YOUTube all day long, and performs other acts of public masturbation.
“But it’s “Only” $200 dollars,” you say? No it aint. Thats a Two-year plan at 30 dollars a month you’re signing up for.
Meanwhile, the thing is made via slavery. We don’t build them here, we build them in our secret Asian markets. Apple doesn’t have to disclose where, precisely, or what they pay. Why should they? It’s all the great “international revolution of commerce” promised by Bill Clinton, and the rest of the Free Traders.
It’s slavery. We’ve exported our labor, and our pride in doing any of our own work.
We don’t need to learn Spanish. Learn as many or as few foreign languages as you like. It’s good for the soul, and the mind, to be versatile, and to know that language has history, and is analogous from place to place.
But we don’t “need” to learn any particular “language” right now, except that of national identity, local work, and a little bit of pride in being able to do more than re-watch ‘webisodes’ of masturbatory crap online, at any hour of the day or night.
So says me!
July 12th, 2008 at 11:18 am
On the other hand, here’s a company that’s getting a few things right:
Toyota to build Prius in the USA and slash truck output:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080710/us_nm/toyota_dc
What a breakthrough. Imagine that, we can do our manufacturing here. We can cut our dependence on slave-labor by re-importing work. We can re-discover what it means to be a nation of builders, of skilled workers, of crafts-people, instead of a nation of fat-arsed, pharma-addicted, litigious, infantilized cry-babies, who actually WANT the Central Government to take care of their EVERY NEED, provide them with health insurance, gas vouchers, bird-flu vaccines, identity tags, and free Wi-Fi.
You know what we NEED, Senator Obominable?
We NEED to get to greening our cities. Covering our skyscrapers with plant boxes, putting solar panels on the billions of available square feet found in our cities.
We NEED to get some energy and money going into the major rail corridors that have been abandoned in the age of the auto.
We NEED to get cities to invest in public transportation lines where there are none, to put trains back on mainstreet.
We NEED to stop feeding all our edible grain and soy to Cows, Pigs and Chickens, and start feeding it to people. We need to get out of this historically tiny pattern of eating like kings at a coronation Every Meal of the DAY.
We do not NEED to learn Spanish, or any other language, except the language of Sane Policy:
Bring work back, reduce expenditures, build public transportation, green our cities, stop whitening our rice and leave it brown and healthy, stop wasting all our edible food on grazing animals and let the market normalize the price of beef (rather then keeping it artificially low with massive subsidies).
Needs.
Puedo aprender lo que tu quieres, on your own time. Wann Sie Deutsch sprechen lernen wolen, denn lernen, o forse, si la bel’italiano ti piace, beh, vai, apprenderlo.
But that’s a want. NEED is listed above and below:
* Give us the tools and incentives to Green Our Cities;
* Build our Cars and Electronics Here;
* Stop throwing our food out the cow’s Asshole;
* And get out of Dick Cheney’s Shite KBR “War for Peace.” ( http://iraqforsale.org/ )
We’ve got enough of a war right here, in making sure our nation doesn’t spend two decades or more in the drunk tank.
So says me, (so say we all).
August 5th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Liam wrote: “I’ve experienced one tripled-talking president in my lifetime…”
Only one? You must be the luckiest man in the world. What country do you live in?
In less than two weeks, I will begin my 41st year of living in America, and I’ve experienced — let’s see — LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II — a total of 7 triple-talking, warmongering, corporate boot-licking, Constitution-watering, lying crooks who should have been in the “big house” rather than the White House.
And is Barack Obama any better? I hope so, but I seriously doubt it. As far as I can tell, he’s just another well-groomed stooge for the same industrial complexes who’ve been running this country for as long as I can remember.
Do you honestly believe that the President of the United States is our leader? Personally, I think Bill Hicks was right. When you’re elected President, they take you into a room with a video screen, where you’re shown a film of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before (which looks suspiciously like it was filmed from a vantage point on the grassy knoll,) and then the lights come up and a voice says, “Any questions?”
In my entire lifetime, we’ve had exactly one President who wasn’t an utter scumbag (Jimmy Carter,) and what they did to him politically made the Kennedy assassination look like a friendly game of paintball.
I have all ideas that Barack Obama is “the one”. And I don’t mean that he’s the President who will set the country back on the right path. What I mean is that he’s going to be the President who finally causes Americans to realize that America is not a democracy, but a fascist state operating under the illusion of democracy. When (note that I didn’t say “if”) he becomes President, and then turns around and pushes the EXACT same agenda of Bush, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and LBJ before him, I have a hard time believing that even the dumbest American (and that’s saying a lot, ’cause we’re QUITE dumb,) will be able to somehow force himself to swallow the illusion that our leaders are elected rather than hand-picked for us.
But then again, maybe it is unwise of me to underestimate the stupidity of Americans. After all, you’ll never go broke betting on American stupidity.
— Gos
August 5th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Great post, Gos.
I agree with everything in it.