"It's ok, he didn't mean that about Starbucks"

Grumping about language

I added this to Mick's post on Anatreptic about the use of French in the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics:

Less than 1/6th of Canadians self-identify as ethnically French, but they have successfully conducted a parasitic racket against the rest of the country for several decades with the connivance of the political and media classes. The same parasitism is used by Francophones in Belgium and the EU, but the scale of Quebec's achievement is most impressive. I tend to agree with De Gaulle, 'Vive le Québec libre!', that is let Quebec secede. Of course it doesn't because that would end the lucrative racket as well as all the bullshit of involuntary bi-lingualism.

On the point about Spanish, sure let Spanish be freely used everywhere in America (and Urdu in London) except where funded by taxes, ie all government. If the ATM forces me to press a button to transact in English, that's fine as long as I have a choice to change to a bank that wants my business more. Let there be a free market for language.

In fact English is the language of freedom. It's the most expressive, most unruly, most adaptable, most omnivorous, most mongrel of languages with the untouchable advantage of Shakespeare. For the most part we think and dream the thoughts to which our languages pre-dispose us and English itself may be why we are still free (sort of). The threat isn't Spanish or Mandarin but Newspeak and the corruption of language and thought by terms such as 'diversity' or 'abuse' or 'appropriate' or 'tolerance' or 'hatespeech'. Therapyspeak is one gateway drug for Newspeak, but there are plenty. The weapons of freedom in this crucial war are English and the Internet. Keep English sharp and the Internet unruly.

A link to "Politics and the English Language" is called for.

Geography lesson

Manchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia.

Investor's Business Daily:

…..nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power.…..nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines…..at least China is a real place, as opposed to the phantom ZIP codes and congressional districts in which the administration has claimed to have created jobs….The irony is we leave vast reserves of job-creating domestic oil, coal and natural gas locked up as we sacrifice our economy to the Gaia, the goddess of climate change, something China has wisely refused to do.

Powerline:

If the Obama administration were actually trying to damage our economy, it is not clear that it could do a better job.

The view from my window

The forecast is continuous snow until Al Gore cries "uncle". Oh dear, I'm booked to fly from Newark to London tomorrow.

Morning rant #9, bet on America

The past year points to a bright future for America. The country has been sick for decades, maybe since Calvin Coolidge. Its sickness is the enormous government tapeworm digesting enterprise into the whole crap sandwich of debt, tax codes, bought votes of public employees and welfare dependents, affirmative action and and and. Kill that tapeworm then America will thrive. But the worm is deeply entwined and it takes maximum pissed-offness for the productive voters to get angry enough to yank it out.

If Obama had been a cleverer politician like Tony Blair, say, then liberalism would persist maybe to the point of killing its host. In Britain the 'Conservative', David Cameron, will probably be PM by May. He sees himself as the heir to Blair. He personifies the triumph of liberalism. He is a soi-disant conservative who buys into the liberal theology of EU membership, Warmism, imposed 'diversity', nationalised health and most of the other bollocks. Cameron probably doesn't believe that stuff any more than he believed the conservatism he used to espouse. He just thinks he's more likely to get elected by the BBC/Guardian brainwashed swing voter. Meanwhile many ideological conservatives are likely to vote for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), both from principle and in dreams of a hung Parliament where call-me-Dave is dragged to a populist anti-EU stance.

Anyhoot Obama's move to control the last remaining facets of free enterprise has provoked America's immune system to produce antibodies sufficient to fight the underlying sickness. And it only took 12 months. That says America's immune system is in good shape and that says America has the best political culture providing it's sufficiently provoked and providing there exists the internet. Indeed the internet may be as big factor in America's recovery as Obama's provocations. I've been saying for a while "Better Obamanism then renaissance than McCainism then decline."

What this rant is rambling up to is that America will boom in the near future. The strongest indicator of health is how a body deals with sickness and these 12 months show that America is the healthiest kid on the block. Try hosting a Tea Party in China. So roll up, roll up, fill your boots with the Dow Jones Index at 10,000!

Pre-socializing America

I've written in favour of George Bush for his personal quality and his political bravery. The hobgoblins of the left invented a demon called Bush for a scapegoat, so its a public service to defend him,

BUT

I must link to Michelle Malkin's "Things I don't miss about George W. Bush" for a cold shower. The phrase "pre-socialized the economy for Obama" will linger.

The other Superbowl ad

I rented this product for a week last year and thought it was wonderful.

“I’d rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty"

In a recent post, Bah! Humbug! for buddhists, I wrote:

This has been a low, dishonest year in American politics. To Nile Gardiner's neat ranking of Obama's 10 worst foreign policy blunders, I'd add this shining turd of appeasement - cancelling his meeting with the Dalai Lama 'to keep China happy'.

Obama appeased China ahead of the Copenhagen Global Warming Jamboree and got America predictably dissed there. Now that the Chinese know for sure that the assistant-law-lecturer-in-chief is weak, they're raising the stakes against the next scheduled meeting with the Dalai Lama so when it takes place, there will be a breach with real consequences instead of a merely diplomatic breach if Obama had adopted Bush's practice from the off.

This stuff is so elementary. But not trying the 9/11 mastermind in downturn Manhattan is a no-brainer, you'd think; saying 'corpsman' instead of 'corpseman'; '57 states'; bowing to foreign kings; endless self-reference.....look, can anyone think of one smart thing this guy's initiated? One?

The cod psychology of a weak leader is that after rejection by tyrants they've hugged and purred to, then he over-compensates. That's the danger with Obama. He'll get into a tactical stand-off when it's much harder for an adversary to back down without loss of face. Result, the tactical stand-off ends as strategic defeat for America led by a poseur.

Quiz time

As US/China relations implode, name a single country with which America has better relations than under Bush. Sudan, maybe? Ok name 2. Note, the UN is not a country.

Damn Photo Competitions!

I compare the winning shot and runner up shot in last week's Daily Telegraph photo competition, theme 'Bridges',  with images found by a quick search on Flickr to show that the winning shots are familiar treatments of famous scenes:

My shot of London Bridge that should have won!

I did win a couple of weeks ago to my surprise with the theme 'Tall'.

Dissing Las Vegas

The remarks of the Las Vegas Mayor, Oscar Goodman, should be heeded. He's a defense lawyer who represented the most notorious mobsters in Vegas and appeared as himself in Casino. I've just ordered his biography, Of Rats And Men. If he says "You're a real slow learner", a wise man will take notes: