POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Pri0rities

News has emerged that The Won has met once in the past 70 days with his theatre commander for Afghanistan.

So, it should come as no surprise that he's jetting off to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympics, despite the movement afoot to nix the prospect, considering the corruption in his home city (where, parenthetically, an honors student was just beaten to death, because of root causes). The likelihood is that this would be paid for with "stimulus" monies, and who knows how many Valerie Jarrett slums could be bulldozed and replaced with that money?

Michelle Malkin's been on the case of the career Chicago corruptocrats who stand to benefit most from such a boondoggle, and as much as I dislike Lula, for reasons outlined in the second of my posts today, I'd rather he kept the corruption down there.

Watch Danny Kaye - Wonderful Copenhagen in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Time For Me To Die

With apologies to REO Speedwagon, on the occasion of Obama rescinding benefits for WWII service of Alaska Territorial Guard.

I’ve been around for you
I damn nearly drowned for you
But I just can't get any relief
I’ve served with great pride for you
I’ve toiled and plied for you
But you still make me feel like a thief

You got me stealin' your funds away
Cause you just won’t give ‘em
Pissing the years away
And I can't relive ‘em
I make you mock
And you make me cry
You believe it's time for me to die

They said we’d work it out
They said that they had no doubt
That deep down you knew that we were due
Oh, but I'm tired of holding on
To a feeling I know is gone
I do believe that I have been screwed

I've had enough of the falsehoods
Of a one-way relation
Enough of ingratitude
And the Vineyard vacations
I make you mock
And you make me cry
You believe it's time for me to die

{refrain} Time for me to die
Oh, you’d like to see me set free
Time for me to die
Just sayin', that's how you’d like it to be
One last insult with your kiss goodbye
Guess it’s time for me to die

Obama, you think it’s...
{refrain}

It’s time for me to die

UPDATE: Ace is on this travesty, too, and Nice Deb helps put it into context.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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EspeRanting

Esperanto, the manufactured "global language," derives its name from the Spanish word for hope, with the same Latin root as esperance. Naturally, then, in the Land of Hopenchange, it's being touted as a second language at Change.Org's website. Shit you is a thing that I do not do.

Of course, multi-culty Obama had to admit on the campaign trail that he didn't have a second language, though goodness knows young Americans ought to be required to learn one (an assertion that I happen to believe is true). How Obama managed to pass the language requirement at Columbia University is one of those topics shrouded in the mist of misssing records. But why Esperanto?

Esperanto was the brainchild of one-worlders. When I lived in Coyoacan in Mexico City, among the lunatics who spent their days passing out information in the Plaza in front of Cortez's palace, on the gazebo, were passionate advocates of Esperanto. I asked them kindly, in Spanish, why this was so important to them. They replied, in Spanish, that English, which has become, at least for the time being, the lingua franca of the world, was a racist, imperialist language. Which made me laugh, considering the place that La Malinche holds in their cultural mythos. Not long after this episode, some young Mexicans and I got into an argument in El Hijo del Cuervo, a bar on the plaza, because I had the temerity to be discussing Shakespeare, in English, with a Mexican-American friend. I had to push one of them over a hedgerow when they attacked my friend as we exited the bar.

Obama's agenda of undercutting American exceptionalism seems to extend even to language. Esperanto has no great literature. It's based in no nurturing culture. It is as artificial as Klingon, and perhaps less well developed. Its only true function is typically progressive, in that it lets its advocates feel superior to the benighted around them. Take a look at the link on the page, Esperanto has many traits. What language does not have many traits?

Esperanto is a language. It is neutral because it doesn't belong to any single group of people or country. It is international and mainly useful for communication among people from several countries. It is egalitarian and easier to learn than national languages. It evolves and flourishes just like other languages, and can be used to express every aspect of human thought and feeling. It is relatively young, pioneered by Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof in 1887. A unique, rich and living language it is highly esteemed by many people throughout the world.

There is no such thing as a neutral language. All languages function to filter and organize the welter of impressions we receive through our senses. You could say that English is a neutral language, because it is less "gendered" than the Spanish from which Esperanto is largely derived. English is international, as was French before it, and Latin before French. Esperanto may evolve in its peculiar linguistic hothouse, but I've seen little evidence that it flourishes. No language, in and of itself, "can be used to express every aspect of human thought and feeling," which is why Shakespeare was such a great creator of neologisms, and why English borrows so many terms and expressions from other languages. Esperanto has no innate advantages. To think so is poppycock.

But poppycock is what's on offer at Hopenchange. Perhaps there's an expression in Esperanto for "sour grapes." I wonder from where they derived it. Some expertise in any foreign language gives one access to a different mentality, and a different personality. There are many besides English, Spanish and Italian that I wish I had, but Esperanto's not on that enormous list.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Conversation in God’s Waiting Room

Geriatric Jewish Woman with Bone Cancer: I always wondered if one of the souls murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust might've gone on to find a cure for Cancer.

Geriatric Catholic Man with Macular Degeneration: I wonder the same thing when it comes to all of the aborted babies. Maybe a cure for MD.

UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE

Geriatric Jewish Woman with Bone Cancer: Well, a woman has a right to do what she will with her own body.

UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE

Geriatric Catholic Man with Macular Degeneration: Usually, one can only own something they've bought or created. Do you own anything you haven't bought or created?

Geriatric Jewish Woman with Bone Cancer: I don't follow, doctor.

Geriatric Catholic Man with Macular Degeneration: We are tenants. I neither bought nor created my body. Can it be said that I own it?

Geriatric Jewish Woman with Bone Cancer: We'll have to agree to disagree.

Geriatric Catholic Man with Macular Degeneration: We'll find out the right of it soon enough, I am afraid.

Enoch_Root

AKA. Bobby Donn Brubaker (the most popular man in Mesa, AZ), the Umbrella of Terror, Jack Ketch.

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Some Things Neglected Over the Weekend

Patterico notes that, besides the errors in her impassioned defense of Roman Polanski, Anne Applebaum neglected to note a glaring conflict of interest in the case. Switzerland arrested Polanski over the weekend, and may extradite him to the US, where he's been wanted for decades.

Ric Locke continues his excellent work with a post on murdered census worker Bill Sparkman, and Stacy McCain is off to Kentucky to unravel the story, which has been prone to reporting errors.

Kirsten deconstructs the Homeric failure of a celebrity-laden PSA for ObamaCare.

Chavez Club Member Lula says that Brazil will not comply with the wishes of Honduran coup-mongers, as Obama continues not to meddle in the affairs of hostile dictatorships, while meddling in the affairs of small constitutional democracies in our hemisphere. That's in keeping with his practice of gagging those who don't endorse his radical agenda.

Jimmie Bise says that conservatives are spending their money unwisely. Can't say I disagree. He also notes that Michigan is merrily headed down the road blazed by nannystatists in the UK. And Dan Riehl adds that babysitters are now a civil right.

Jules considers Sec. Gates' characterization of Obama as cerebral and deliberate . . . on the issue of Afghanistan, where he seems inclined to take the advice of Joe Biden over that of his generals, just as he prefers Eric Holders' to 7 previous CIA directors'.

Donald Douglas notes that, inconveniently, Canadians are beginning to consider a private health care option.

And finally, at NRO, Lowry discusses one of the ways in which a President of Necessity became a President of Convenience.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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What I’d Like To See on TV

A show about a wacky enclave of well-off radical academics near a major university, as seen through the eyes of a day laborer, Manuel Labrador.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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R.I.P. William Safire

Former Nixon speechwriter, Pulitzer prize winner, and NY Times columnist William Safire died today.  He was 79 years old and had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Requiescat in pacem Sir, and may God speed your soul to heaven and grace your family with the strength and comfort they need in this time of grief.

Rocketman