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In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent writes:
This morning on ABC News, Jeb Bush unleashed what may be his most full-throated response yet to the rise of Donald Trump. The quote that will drive the headlines is that Bush said Trump wants to “insult his way to the presidency.”
But that’s not the most important part of Bush’s remarkable monologue. The more significant part of it was the challenge it represents to GOP primary voters.
To recap, Trump had mocked Bush for speaking in Spanish, claiming that he “should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.” Apparently it’s self-evidently ludicrous for a Republican presidential candidate to try to appeal to Latino voters by speaking their language. Bush’s response is worth quoting at length:
“Donald Trump is trying to insult his way to the presidency. It’s not gonna work. People want an uplifting, hopeful message. People come to this country to pursue their dreams. Sometimes they start without speaking English. But they learn English. And they add vitality to our country.
“To say you can only speak English is kind of ridiculous, if you think about it….This is a diverse country. We should celebrate that diversity and embrace a set of shared values. Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in those shared values. He wants to tear us down. He doesn’t believe in tolerance. He doesn’t believe in the things that have created the greatness of this country.”
What this shows, I think, is that Jeb Bush’s claim last year that illegal immigration is an “act of love” continues to be a seminal moment that perfectly captured the split among Republicans over the issue.
Indeed.
Jeb assures us:
Sometimes they start without speaking English. But they learn English.
Okay, but has Columba Bush learned to speak English yet? Has the Presidential candidate’s wife learned English well enough in her 40 years of marriage to be interviewed in English without pre-arranged questions?
I, personally, have never found video of the former First Lady of Florida being interviewed in English. I have found video of her uncomfortably reading a two-minute speech in English. But that’s all I’ve found so far.
It’s often said of Columba in the media that she’s a very shy person, and that’s why she avoids giving interviews in English. Yet, I’ve found video of her being charming in a Spanish-language interview. I’ve found video of her giving a speech on national television on the floor of the Republican National Convention … in Spanish. I’ve found video of her doing a TV commercial with her father-in-law, with her speaking Spanish.
I would hope she’s learned English well enough to converse in it in her 40+ years of marriage to Jeb. But I just don’t have evidence of that yet.
UPDATE: After a couple of months of asking, one commenter and one emailer, who might represent the same person or two separate sources, write to say they have conversed with Columba in English.
The most fundamental issue in politics is “Whose side are you on?” Jeb, who is not a particularly slippery individual, has given us much evidence that primarily he’s on the side of Mexicans, not Americans.
That strikes me as an honorable position, just not one I’d want in my President.
Look, Jeb has been reasonably straightforward about the fact that, emotionally, he prefers Mexicans to Americans. If we Americans are too dumb to figure out the implications of what’s Jeb’s been repeatedly hinting at, well, I guess we deserve what we have coming from a third Bush Administration.
You won’t be able to say Jeb didn’t warn us.
English
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Apparently “vitality” is the new “vibrancy”
They're reacting.
Imagine the pressure Columba is under nowadays to learn English. Eliza Doolittle and George VI never knew the like. Soon Jeb will accuse her of dooming his candidacy. She will burst into tears and he’ll remember why he loves her.
This description of Columba Bush kind of reminds me of the description of Wade Jermyn’s wife in H.P. Lovecraft’s Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
(now that I think of it, that story is kind of a twisted take on the “Yankee adventurer” historical dynamic that you’ve observed, although the Jermyns are actual Brits, not Yankees)
(now that I think of it, that story is kind of a twisted take on the “Yankee adventurer” historical dynamic that you’ve observed, although the Jermyns are actual Brits, not Yankees)"
You, sir, have just won the internet, as the kids say. Not only is that a GREAT (and rather obscure) Lovecraft story, but your using it as a point of comparison between the relationship of Jeb & Columba, is positively inspired.
+1.5
To say you can only speak English is kind of ridiculous, if you think about it….This is a diverse country.
Sorry, Mr. Sailer, but !J!e!b! is absolutely right.
Could you ever imagine a country teaching one language, and only one, to its immigrants?
Or worse still, making it compulsory?
You obviously agree with Eleanor Cliff on last week's McLaughlin Group that "having 200 languages in our schools is a good thing." I guess you and Ms. Cliff never heard of the Tower of Babel.
BTW I remember a conversation I had about 10+ years ago with a Serbian woman who worked for my Italian-American barber (the same one who informed me that it was not just Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII but also a smaller number of Italian-Americans and German-Americans, who get none of the publicity Japanese-Americans get) . She spoke a fluent English, her native tongue (Serbian I am guessing) and probably one or two other languages. She had several multi-lingual children, but she admitted to me that she thought knowing several languages was an impediment to mastering your native language, which was English in the case of her children at the time. Since I am basically mono-lingual in English with a good reading knowledge of French (from high school and college) and a reading and partial speaking knowledge of another language, I really have no independent opinion on that issue. It probably varies from individual to individual. Knowing foreign languages certainly did not impair the English language skills of Thomas Jefferson or John Quincy Adams.Replies: @a reader
“…one of them asked me a question in Spanish and I answered it. That’s the reality of America, that’s the goodness of America. That’s the kind of America we want,”
Why, I do declare! !Jeb! is indistinguishable from a SJWimp! He's a Democrat who will be happy to spend loads of bucks on language programs.
Then she is a massive underachiever, or just plain lazy, because in Texas Mexicans are almost universally bilingual.
But my observation in Asia is that an eager foreign husband will sometimes adopt his wife's language and she may then fail to become fluent in English.
The husband sometimes hints that he is clever or unusual in immersing himself in the new culture, although the underlying desire often appears to be make fresh start, to shrug off an old unsatisfactory persona.
(I have seen this mostly with slightly more accessible languages like Indonesian and Thai..)
“Donald Trump is trying to insult his way to the presidency.
At least Donald is insulting other candidates, who have millions of dollars and a staff with which to defend themselves; as opposed to iJeb!, who is insulting the voters, a group that is pretty much defenseless in this day and age.
Field Note: A gang unit member who specializes in Hispanic gangs told me “Graffiti is symbolic language. Many of the markings of gangs are symbols and they have symbolic meaning for gang members. Some of these symbols are so meaningful that disrespecting the graffiti can be lethal for the person who paints over it or disrespects it in some other way.
“If you come to know what the various symbols mean you can better understand the gangs’ language, come to view the gangs as a sub-culture, get to know who belongs to the various gangs, where they live, as well as what they may have been involved in, what they are doing, and what they are planning on doing.”
http://people.missouristate.edu/michaelcarlie/what_i_learned_about/gangs/graffiti_and_other_identifiers.htm
You know how people always say that, in America, the “conservative” party’s talking points are just the “liberal” party’s talking points from twenty years ago? This may be the purest example of that I’ve seen.
OMG!
I watched the “Girls and Substance Abuse” speech by Columba. It begins 22:10.
(Off topic – What about Boys and substance abuse? Is this important to anyone? Why is it seemingly always girls’ and women’s health issues?)
At any rate, Columba’s English is horrible.
Can you imagine having a First Lady who cannot speak English?
Frankly, no. But I don't think I'm going to have to do more than try to imagine it. I mean, seriously, is there anyone, anyone at all, who thinks Jeb could win a two-way race against Joe Biden? Biden is something of a comical figure, but he'd beat the pants off Columba's husband. In a race against Jeb, Jim Webb might actually manage to carry every state but Utah , which presumably Romney could still deliver to the GOP.Replies: @alcogito
Jeb! be like: Trump is being an meanie!
Columba also doesn’t like to pay her taxes. She was fined by US Customs officials for failing to declare $19,000 worth of clothes and jewelry she bought on a Paris trip:
In 1999, Columba Bush, the famously private wife of then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was detained and fined by federal customs officials for misrepresenting the amount of clothing and jewelry she had bought while on a solo five-day shopping spree in Paris.
The incident left the Florida first lady deeply mortified and her husband politically chagrined. Jeb Bush said the first lady had misled customs officials because she did not want him to know that she had spent about $19,000 on the trip.
….
Apparently Columba likes to “shop ’til you drop” –
The ordeal did not stop her from spending freely, however. Less than a year later, she took out a loan to buy $42,311.70 worth of jewelry on a single day, according to records filed with the state of Florida by Mayors Jewelers.
That purchase was part of a pattern by Columba Bush of borrowing to buy tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry at a time from the South Florida store over a 14-year period. Documentation available online, which does not include the details of two transactions made less than six weeks apart in 1995, shows that she spent a total of more than $90,000 at the store.
….
This sounds like the mirror image of Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz. ¡Ay-yi-yi-yi!
For what it’s worth, my fiancée (who learned Spanish before English but who speaks English as her native tongue–sort of like Bill Buckley with fewer ten-dollar words) claims to have spoken with Columba at a reception circa 2011 or 2012. She says that Columba conversed entirely in English, with no apparent difficulty. I’ll agree, though, that Columba sure looks uncomfortable reading her two-minute prepared remarks in that C-SPAN footage.
Rafael Cruz, father of candidate Ted Cruz, would seem to be the perfect embodiment of what !jeb! is talking about:
From a Washington Times profile:
“In the speech at the summit, and many times since, the elder Cruz spoke about coming to America at 18 in order to flee the dictatorship of Batista’s Cuba. With only $100 sewn into his underwear, he took a boat to America and rode a bus for two days to Austin, Texas, where he was accepted to study at the University of Texas on a student visa. He got a job washing dishes for 50 cents an hour and taught himself English by going to the movies.”
Apparently he is now a pastor and makes his living as a public speaker (in English, I presume.)
Puerto Rico declares Spanish as official language
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/236430323/puerto-rico-declares-spanish-as-official-language
Steve it’s only fair to let your readers watch the video you mention of Columba Bush speaking her approximation of English as she reads a two-minute speech on “Girls and Drug Abuse”:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4544171/columba-bushs-broken-english-speech
One wonders how much she has progressed in 12 years. Remember she had been married to Jeb for 29 years at that time. If she hadn't lost that heavy accept by then, I doubt she has lost it now. I also wonder if she has slacked off on the English since Jeb is no longer in office. Clearly the only reason she was invited to give that speech was because she was the First Lady of Florida. It's been eight years since she has occupied that office. What has she done? Has she tried to acclimate more, or has she withdrawn into the Latin sub-culture? Since Jeb says Spanish is the official language of their home, I am betting on the latter.
Are the Bushes that stupid or that arrogant?
It is just plain outrageous and insulting that these people are considered viable.
In contrast to Jeb!,
I married a beautiful woman from Europe, but I developed no allegiance whatsoever to her country or to her particular people.
On the contrary, my wife is an extremely patriotic American Citizen. I like to tell people she is “one-hundred-and-TEN percent American,” because she is an example of the best kind of immigrant to this country: She is more American than I am.
She loves to see our flag everywhere. She often cries a little bit when she hears the Star Spangled Banner. (I’ve seen the tears well up in her eyes.) She took classes in American history in college. She understands and cherishes what our country is about, and the role it played in securing her liberty. She gets it.
She speaks and writes English at the graduate school level. (She likes to jokingly ask why something isn’t presented in her native language whenever she encounters Spanish translations on signs, government forms — and telephone recordings, “Para Espanol, marque de dos.”)
I’ve learned a few phrases in her native language, which I don’t have to use at all.
She earned a graduate degree in a STEM field at a prestigious American university. (She had already earned one at her own nation’s top institution.) She kicks ass and contributes immensely to this, her beloved country.
Compared to my wife, Columba Bush is an idiot — and so is Jeb!
By the way, my wife enthusiastically supports Donald Trump for president.
Yes, she agrees that Trump is a character, not perfect by any means. She chose him for the same reasons I did — his clear positions on immigration and foreign trade — the two things that together are destroying the United States from both directions.
She also appreciates the fact that Trump is not politically correct. She sees PC as a sad weakness in current America and Western Europe. She and her family were too busy surviving under a leftist dictatorship to develop this particular leftist weakness.
My wife and I fly in the face of the MSM’s condescending claim that Trump supporters are the usual gang of Joe Six-Packs or whatever. We respect Joe Six-Pack and the American Middle Class. They are the core of America that must be preserved and protected. They are the ones being destroyed by lopsided foreign trade with cheap labor countries and by insane importation of cheap labor at home.
We consider ourselves proudly American middle class. We believe this encompasses the vast majority of our people of all educational and income levels. We know where we came from. We hold no pretenses of being anything else, no matter how much we achieve.
We are enjoying a lot of good laughs and serious conversations during this early election season — thanks to Donald Trump and the Several Dwarves.
With a President Yeb, we’ll get another Spanish Inquisition. And it will be conducted in Spanish.
OT –
http://www.propublica.org/article/asians-nearly-twice-as-likely-to-get-higher-price-from-princeton-review
One thing that Trump’s run has established, if nothing else, is that there will never be a Jeb! Administration. Even if he still manages to wrench away the nomination, a lot of us will stay home on Election Day, or write-in Bernie, or Trump, or anyone else. The Inner Party will then realize their original script for 2016 in which Bush graciously loses to Clinton. They are in a panic now because Trump is refusing to play by that script, and appears to have a chance of spoiling the movie ending.
Obviously being a mostly monolingual country has been an enormous advantage to the US.
Is he running for President or conducting a workshop for Residential Advisors at college Orientation?
¡Jeb! for Associate Dean of Student Life and Director Multicultural Outreach Services!
OT kind of
Transgender Mexican can’t be deported after DUI felony because he will “face torture” in Mexico for being trans, based on his own testimony of being assaulted by police.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-court-transgender-illegal-immigrant-cannot-deported-mexico-234359720.html
Transgender Mexican can’t be deported after DUI felony because he will “face torture” in Mexico for being trans, based on his own testimony of being assaulted by police."So Mexicans are so Homophobic that they violently torture World War Ts for simply being World War Ts? So why do SJW SWPL types want to continue letting these anti-Gay bigots come into the U.S by the masses?Why don't they want more socially liberal Scandinavians for example to immigrate into the U.S instead of Mexicans? After all Scandinavians are SJW SWPL on steroids. They love World War Ts, Cisgender Gays, mom & pop art house theaters, the environment, coffee shops, gender neutral toys for children, recycling, vegan dishes, etc.
I doubt she can speak English. Some Mexicans just refuse to learn English and Jeb probably isolated her enough or kept her around her own people so she never had to.
But yeah Jeb identifies more with Mexico, he’s certainly the guy that would bring about the NAU if given the chance. Hence all the effort to make him POTUS, there is more riding on his election than just the Bush family legacy given his brother was involved in the NAU as well.
BTW Jebbie reminds me of a special ed kid that is trying punch above his class and failing. He wouldn’t have married a Mexican serf unless it’s all he could get(I’m sure Columba didn’t marry out of love, she saw a meal ticket out of poverty). I suspect in high school he was a girl repellant due to his stupidity. Even though he came from a wealthy and well known family there had to be something off about the boy to go this route. Normally the rich boys in school don’t have a problem attracting girls. Evidently he did.
Steve, in your latest posts you’ve judiciously (and tastefully) made the case for Bush’s peculiar self-identification. It reminds me of a friend who went to Japan in the late ’80s and thereafter became possessed by the spirit of Japanese esthetics and manners. It’s harmless in private practice, but weird as a public expression.
Your inference about his wife’s English-speaking skills makes me wonder: Doesn’t Jeb see that there will be a reckoning? Isn’t he concerned that such a revelation would expose the fatuousness of his current line about immigrants eventually learning English?
BTW, if Trump makes a statement in the next two weeks questioning Mrs. Bush’s English facility, that will be proof positive that he’s an iSteve reader.
And if she then comes out with a prepared statement in decent English, it would be disastrous. Let it come out by itself. Yeb has made her a centerpiece of his campaign; he can't turn around and hide her now.Replies: @Steve Sailer
That strikes me as a perfect distillation of current American electoral politics, from the persona-shaping of the candidates to the mechanism of choice that governs individual voters.
Steve, you’ve covered a lot of interesting territory this past week. Didn’t you tell us to expect lighter postings because you had a house-guest coming over?
In the ABC News interview, Jeb blinks uncontrollably while declaring that immigrants learn English. Liar’s tell?
The reason I don’t speak any Danish is because my Dad didn’t speak any Danish. The reason he didn’t speak any Danish is because his father, the child of immigrants from Denmark, absolutely refused to allow that language to be spoken in his house by anyone, including respected elder family members from the old country. “We’re Americans, goddamn it,” he was heard to growl.
I married a beautiful woman from Europe, but I developed no allegiance whatsoever to her country or to her particular people.
On the contrary, my wife is an extremely patriotic American Citizen. I like to tell people she is "one-hundred-and-TEN percent American," because she is an example of the best kind of immigrant to this country: She is more American than I am.
She loves to see our flag everywhere. She often cries a little bit when she hears the Star Spangled Banner. (I've seen the tears well up in her eyes.) She took classes in American history in college. She understands and cherishes what our country is about, and the role it played in securing her liberty. She gets it.
She speaks and writes English at the graduate school level. (She likes to jokingly ask why something isn't presented in her native language whenever she encounters Spanish translations on signs, government forms -- and telephone recordings, "Para Espanol, marque de dos.")
I've learned a few phrases in her native language, which I don't have to use at all.
She earned a graduate degree in a STEM field at a prestigious American university. (She had already earned one at her own nation's top institution.) She kicks ass and contributes immensely to this, her beloved country.
Compared to my wife, Columba Bush is an idiot -- and so is Jeb!
By the way, my wife enthusiastically supports Donald Trump for president.
Yes, she agrees that Trump is a character, not perfect by any means. She chose him for the same reasons I did -- his clear positions on immigration and foreign trade -- the two things that together are destroying the United States from both directions.
She also appreciates the fact that Trump is not politically correct. She sees PC as a sad weakness in current America and Western Europe. She and her family were too busy surviving under a leftist dictatorship to develop this particular leftist weakness.
My wife and I fly in the face of the MSM's condescending claim that Trump supporters are the usual gang of Joe Six-Packs or whatever. We respect Joe Six-Pack and the American Middle Class. They are the core of America that must be preserved and protected. They are the ones being destroyed by lopsided foreign trade with cheap labor countries and by insane importation of cheap labor at home.
We consider ourselves proudly American middle class. We believe this encompasses the vast majority of our people of all educational and income levels. We know where we came from. We hold no pretenses of being anything else, no matter how much we achieve.
We are enjoying a lot of good laughs and serious conversations during this early election season -- thanks to Donald Trump and the Several Dwarves.Replies: @Lagertha, @Bill
Mentioning wives from former left-leaning countries/areas: when will Melania’s Slovenian background come into play? When will the MSM have to eat crow when a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model can speak more languages than all the candidates!
Based on her early studies in design & architecture at university, she probably had to have English language down (U was in Slovenia, but that doesn’t matter). After her career took off in Italy before she arrived in NYC, how many more languages did she learn?
I knew Columba will become a problem for this campaign. Speaking several languages and speaking English well is such an asset, and, as a First Lady, I’m sorry, but you have to get my respect – the fact that C is shy or not is irrelevant. Erhhhmm! – am also an immigrant with several languages also in my quiver!
Who doesn’t prefer Mexicans emotionally to Americans?
Americans are emotionally stunted. Corporatized, Facebooked, red necked, ghettoized, mass media derived.
It must be the immigrants not learning the Queen’s English causing all the problems, though.
From your lips to gods ear!
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4544171/columba-bushs-broken-english-speechReplies: @TWS, @Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY), @iSteveFan, @Currahee
That was painful. Even reading from a script she sounded like she was just reading phonetically and made dozens of painful errors. Much of the time she was barely understandable. No she probably is not very comfortable in conversation in English.
“My wife and I fly in the face of the MSM’s condescending claim that Trump supporters are the usual gang of Joe Six-Packs or whatever.”
Agreed. I think many Trump supporters are well-educated and fairly affluent. I think the MSM is trying to associate supporting Trump with uncool, Bad people.
Esto no puede permanecer.
I think the only English she can say is(to Jebez)
“Hey boss, the plan the plan.”
I think big gringo men married to small Mexican women tend to project their sexual dynamics onto politics. There is some of this to Fred Reed as well.
It’s about big gringo dominating small Mexicanez with love. So, Jebez doesn’t see illegal invasion as aggression on America. He sees it as more opportunity for big gringo to love the small mexicanez.
Bush is right, the issue is race not language. The issue is being turned into a third-world dump, not whether the third-worlders grunt the language. “Won’t learn the language” is a cuckservative whine, like “I’m only against ILLEGAL immigration.” It’s subservience to the oppressor to avoid confrontation over his racism. If something as low as learning the language is the threshold you’ve pretty much conceded that citizenship is worthless, and that your heritage is worthless.
Check it out: the Saudis line up vehicles for Syrian refugees:
https://twitter.com/carolelee/status/639521976160272384/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
oh wait…
“This description of Columba Bush kind of reminds me of the description of Wade Jermyn’s wife in H.P. Lovecraft’s Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
(now that I think of it, that story is kind of a twisted take on the “Yankee adventurer” historical dynamic that you’ve observed, although the Jermyns are actual Brits, not Yankees)”
You, sir, have just won the internet, as the kids say. Not only is that a GREAT (and rather obscure) Lovecraft story, but your using it as a point of comparison between the relationship of Jeb & Columba, is positively inspired.
+1.5
I watched the "Girls and Substance Abuse" speech by Columba. It begins 22:10.
(Off topic - What about Boys and substance abuse? Is this important to anyone? Why is it seemingly always girls' and women's health issues?)
At any rate, Columba's English is horrible.
Can you imagine having a First Lady who cannot speak English?Replies: @Kevin O'Keeffe
“Can you imagine having a First Lady who cannot speak English?”
Frankly, no. But I don’t think I’m going to have to do more than try to imagine it. I mean, seriously, is there anyone, anyone at all, who thinks Jeb could win a two-way race against Joe Biden? Biden is something of a comical figure, but he’d beat the pants off Columba’s husband. In a race against Jeb, Jim Webb might actually manage to carry every state but Utah , which presumably Romney could still deliver to the GOP.
In the fairly short, two-paragraph (14 sentence) response quoted above, Bush manages to include the following tiresome propaganda nonsense:
– People want an uplifting, hopeful message.
– People come to this country to pursue their dreams.
– they add vitality to our country
– This is a diverse country.
– celebrate that diversity
– embrace a set of shared values
Of Trump, Bush says, he:
– wants to tear us down
– doesn’t believe in tolerance
– doesn’t believe in the things that have created the greatness of this country
The very word "tolerance" implies that something might be intolerable.
The word "hate" has undergone severe meaning inflation recently. "disinterest in" or "distaste for" are phrases that were formerly more accurate as substitutions. Only very, very occasionally was the the word "hate" even applicable.
"celebrate". Please, keep the damn noise down!
"embrace". Touchy feely - perfect imagery for leftists who need to "feel good" at all times, in spite of any laws.
"immigration reform" means "immigration relief". relief from all these unnecessary problems that are a complete and debilitating drain on what was once a functioning society.
!Jeb! will next speak Ebonics to demonstrate his heartfelt bona fides to black voters.
In 1999, Columba Bush, the famously private wife of then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was detained and fined by federal customs officials for misrepresenting the amount of clothing and jewelry she had bought while on a solo five-day shopping spree in Paris.
The incident left the Florida first lady deeply mortified and her husband politically chagrined. Jeb Bush said the first lady had misled customs officials because she did not want him to know that she had spent about $19,000 on the trip.
....
Apparently Columba likes to "shop 'til you drop" -
The ordeal did not stop her from spending freely, however. Less than a year later, she took out a loan to buy $42,311.70 worth of jewelry on a single day, according to records filed with the state of Florida by Mayors Jewelers.
That purchase was part of a pattern by Columba Bush of borrowing to buy tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry at a time from the South Florida store over a 14-year period. Documentation available online, which does not include the details of two transactions made less than six weeks apart in 1995, shows that she spent a total of more than $90,000 at the store.
....
This sounds like the mirror image of Lucille Ball - Desi Arnaz. ¡Ay-yi-yi-yi!Replies: @advancedatheist
Women in many traditional societies try to accumulate tangible assets for their financial protection, for example women in India who have the means to do so. If Columba has loaded up on gold and precious stones with Jeb’s money as a kind of F.U. Fund, she thinks a lot like America’s preppers who likewise stash away gold and silver coins in case of financial collapse.
At this time in 2007 McCain was floundering in the polls. But the MSM resurrected his campaign around December just in time for the primaries of 2008. And McCain as well all know won the GOP nomination. At which point the MSM turned on him and the fix was in.
The MSM in effect got to pick the GOP’s candidate. They knew McCain was not all that popular with the base given his role in the failed amnesties. So they knew if he won the nomination, the GOP base would not be electrified. Getting McCain the nomination was akin to voter suppression.
Maybe the same thing is happening now. The dems and the MSM, one and the same, see Jeb as a soft target. They know the GOP base will not get fired up over Jeb especially since he comes across as more pro-Mexican every time he opens his mouth. Maybe this is the start of the MSM coming to Jeb’s defense to make sure he gets the nomination.
I’d imagine not many iStevers would vote for Jeb even if it meant Hillary winning. I imagine a not too insignificant number of right-leaning folks would do the same, thus ensuring Jeb’s defeat. The GOP candidate can’t afford to lose white voters. But enough will stay home if Jeb is the nominee, thus ensuring a dem victory.
I hope the GOP base doesn’t let the MSM pick their nominee again.
It’s harder to meme against Vitality, because the singular form isn’t as catchy as Vibrant is.
They’re reacting.
Well, listening to a radio program, assertions/associations were made of Trump being the Fuhrer, his “bouncer” being a Brown Shirt, and that anyone who supports him is well, yeah, a Nazi (Nazis still sell, told y’all!)…I knew it wouldn’t take long!
I wish I had set up a bet for that – I kinda’ wanna buy a dress for an event but, because:tuition…I should not spend money frivolously on a new dress…did I tell you it is sooo perfect for me?
I dated a Slovenian woman for a while. She spoke Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, and English fluently (though not without accent and occasional lapses in grammar), and was conversant in German, Italian, and Serbian. And she was not especially well educated — she had but a Humanities degree from a local university.
How easy is it to learn a foreign language? Columbia has been married to Jeb Bush for 40 years?
I once had a “French” teacher (who was a gringo by the way) who said she was living in France with her parents and wanted to attend a French high school … or whatever they call it. The requirement: speak French. They compromised; they gave her 90-days to learn passable French. She immersed herself and, along with the commitment, learned passable French in 90-days.
We have close friends who are from Mexico and have lived in this country for eight years. The husband speaks perfect English. He learned English while attending an American high school. His wife barely speaks English. She immerses herself in the Hispanic-American community and, when she watches TV, she watches Hispanic channels.
Our favorite waitress at a local restaurant immigrated from Cambodia with her family four years ago. They didn’t speak a word of English. The family is committed to the American dream, with the two sisters often working twelve hours a day as wait staff in restaurants. She speaks almost perfect English (she drops the articles, which is characteristic of Oriental speakers of English). She also speaks passable Spanish, which she learned working in the kitchens of “fast food” restaurants.
It seems that learning English (or any foreign language) is, foremost of all, a function of a desire to learn it and a commitment to expose yourself to the language.
Hah! Hispanodrama…like Homer with the decaying hoagie…’how could I stay mad at you?!’.
I have seen the video posted on an earlier Steve Sailer blog of Melania speaking in English pushing a line of jewelry, as I recall. I was impressed with her fluency, and I assumed that she knew English before coming to the States. Apart from being very attractive, she seems to be quite intelligent. I have no doubt that she will make a fine first lady if Trump is elected. I am pretty sure that Donald and Melania speak English at home. BTW, if Trump is elected, it will be only the second time in U.S. history that a first lady was not born in the U.S. (John Quincy Adams was the first and, thus far, only President to have a foreign born wife, but she was the daughter of an American merchant, thus a U.S. citizen at birth, if I recall correctly.)
Trump should set up a ringer to ask him this question during a press conference. There's a lot of potential material to mine there without ever saying a single word about Yeb!
Our new national anthem …… hope y’all like it, because you’ll be hearing it every day for the rest of your life.
I believe that the original script had Clinton graciously losing to Bush. That would allow them to portray the hispanic vote as relevant, and derail any attempted nationalist revolt by either base for a while longer.
White French and English speaking Canadians have had their fair share of disagreements though. A unified language doesn’t escape the race problem with immigrants, but it makes society better than the post-curse Babel we live in now.
I got to know a nice young Mexican born woman (through my store) who was completely fluent in English. But she was from Tijuana, so I’m guessing she was raised with English all around her. Moreover, she was almost conspicuous in her willingness to completely and totally assimilate to American society. Didn’t hang around other Mexicans, but mostly white (and maybe upscale) Americans. Very ambitious, hardworking…got a graduate degree and went to a Protestant church.
I admit that I have empathy for folks like this – those who might, amid all of this immigration controversy, get unfairly grouped in with the mass of people who are low cost labor for landscapers and contractors. I assume she was a legal immigrant, but I don’t know. I’ve met very few other Hispanic immigrants with an attitude like hers. Many nice folks, maybe, and hardworking, but none who worked so hard to assimilate. Just doesn’t happen too often.
The rule seems typified by a group of Guatemalans that also used to patronize my business in the 1990’s. They worked in a packing house and were here, I presume, illegally. I was surprised to find out that, even though they had lived in the US for 12 years, they could barely squeak out a word of broken English. And they had little kids – born in the US and, therefore, citizens – who could speak no English at all. Folks like that are far more common, in my experience. Policy and perception should be based on the rule, not the exception.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4544171/columba-bushs-broken-english-speechReplies: @TWS, @Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY), @iSteveFan, @Currahee
Actually, this recitation of the speech from a script was better than I was expecting. She was heavily accented, but fluent, i.e., speaking without hesitation or faltering. Where she could most improve her English pronunciation is to practice pronouncing the short “i” (“ih”, not “ee”), and start-of-word consonant clusters (“smoking”, not “esmoking”; this insertion of an “e-” for ease of pronunciation is something you hear in the speech of Iranians too).
Shouldn’t Jeb be running for the Dem nomination?
The MSM in effect got to pick the GOP's candidate. They knew McCain was not all that popular with the base given his role in the failed amnesties. So they knew if he won the nomination, the GOP base would not be electrified. Getting McCain the nomination was akin to voter suppression.
Maybe the same thing is happening now. The dems and the MSM, one and the same, see Jeb as a soft target. They know the GOP base will not get fired up over Jeb especially since he comes across as more pro-Mexican every time he opens his mouth. Maybe this is the start of the MSM coming to Jeb's defense to make sure he gets the nomination.
I'd imagine not many iStevers would vote for Jeb even if it meant Hillary winning. I imagine a not too insignificant number of right-leaning folks would do the same, thus ensuring Jeb's defeat. The GOP candidate can't afford to lose white voters. But enough will stay home if Jeb is the nominee, thus ensuring a dem victory.
I hope the GOP base doesn't let the MSM pick their nominee again.Replies: @Harry Baldwin
This is pretty obvious. The left, which of course includes the MSM, would be happy to have Jeb as the Republican candidate. In the event he were to defeat Hillary, what difference would it make? They’re so close on the issues they could run on the same ticket.
You’re being quite hard on her. I know very smart people who’ve been here a long time. They can communicate in English and understand it when spoken. However, they would dread having to speak on television because their grammar isn’t that good.
I’m guessing Columba speaks English well enough to get by in her daily life and understand what’s going on around her. However, if subjected to scrutiny, she’d make a lot of grammatical mistakes and that would be embarrassing.
In reality, that’s probably the best you can expect from someone who came here as an adult, unless you’re as smart and studious as Henry Kissinger.
No, this is a perfectly legit question, even if Jeb wasn't trying to justify importing millions of mestizos. As First Lady, she'd be expected to be able to converse with and represent English speaking America.
It's certainly a softer question than Hugh Hewitt trying to trip up Trump with Qods/Kurds.
I married a beautiful woman from Europe, but I developed no allegiance whatsoever to her country or to her particular people.
On the contrary, my wife is an extremely patriotic American Citizen. I like to tell people she is "one-hundred-and-TEN percent American," because she is an example of the best kind of immigrant to this country: She is more American than I am.
She loves to see our flag everywhere. She often cries a little bit when she hears the Star Spangled Banner. (I've seen the tears well up in her eyes.) She took classes in American history in college. She understands and cherishes what our country is about, and the role it played in securing her liberty. She gets it.
She speaks and writes English at the graduate school level. (She likes to jokingly ask why something isn't presented in her native language whenever she encounters Spanish translations on signs, government forms -- and telephone recordings, "Para Espanol, marque de dos.")
I've learned a few phrases in her native language, which I don't have to use at all.
She earned a graduate degree in a STEM field at a prestigious American university. (She had already earned one at her own nation's top institution.) She kicks ass and contributes immensely to this, her beloved country.
Compared to my wife, Columba Bush is an idiot -- and so is Jeb!
By the way, my wife enthusiastically supports Donald Trump for president.
Yes, she agrees that Trump is a character, not perfect by any means. She chose him for the same reasons I did -- his clear positions on immigration and foreign trade -- the two things that together are destroying the United States from both directions.
She also appreciates the fact that Trump is not politically correct. She sees PC as a sad weakness in current America and Western Europe. She and her family were too busy surviving under a leftist dictatorship to develop this particular leftist weakness.
My wife and I fly in the face of the MSM's condescending claim that Trump supporters are the usual gang of Joe Six-Packs or whatever. We respect Joe Six-Pack and the American Middle Class. They are the core of America that must be preserved and protected. They are the ones being destroyed by lopsided foreign trade with cheap labor countries and by insane importation of cheap labor at home.
We consider ourselves proudly American middle class. We believe this encompasses the vast majority of our people of all educational and income levels. We know where we came from. We hold no pretenses of being anything else, no matter how much we achieve.
We are enjoying a lot of good laughs and serious conversations during this early election season -- thanks to Donald Trump and the Several Dwarves.Replies: @Lagertha, @Bill
Yuck.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4544171/columba-bushs-broken-english-speechReplies: @TWS, @Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY), @iSteveFan, @Currahee
That’s not too bad for Jose who has been here for 14 months and is really trying to get his green card. But for someone who married an American, and had lived in America for 29 years prior to that speech, it wasn’t that good. One wonders how well she would have done without the script. I took high school German and could read some passages aloud, but would not be able to repeat it without a script.
One wonders how much she has progressed in 12 years. Remember she had been married to Jeb for 29 years at that time. If she hadn’t lost that heavy accept by then, I doubt she has lost it now. I also wonder if she has slacked off on the English since Jeb is no longer in office. Clearly the only reason she was invited to give that speech was because she was the First Lady of Florida. It’s been eight years since she has occupied that office. What has she done? Has she tried to acclimate more, or has she withdrawn into the Latin sub-culture? Since Jeb says Spanish is the official language of their home, I am betting on the latter.
¡Jeb! is determined to put immigrants first.
Keeping English as our dominant language, and the language of politics and law, that’s an uplifting and hopeful message for Americans. The vast majority of us didn’t have to come here, because we were born here. We want to pursue our dreams, too, like, say, keeping our country and culture. And pretty much all of us started by speaking English. We are the vitality of this country.
We didn’t say you can only speak English, and it is kind of ridiculous to suggest we did, if you think about it. We should celebrate our country’s heritage and her language. ¡Jeb! doesn’t believe in this country. He wants to tear it down and build Mexico Norte. He doesn’t believe in America. He doesn’t believe in the people or the culture that has made this country great.
¡Si Se Puede! Should be ¡Jebs! motto. Show’s his sympathies and his intentions right from the get go.
It’s funny, because the designated buffoon in the race, Trump, is committing to specific policy and talking about issues, kicking ass and naming names, like him or not, and his opponents are vague or absent on policy and seizing on Trump’s endless throw-away insults to obsess on peripheral issues that distract from policy: “Did Trump insult Mexicans?” “Just what is wrong with Spanish, anyway?” “Did you hear what he said about Megan Kelly?” “Is ‘Anchor Babies’ racist?”
At first, Trump seemed like the Clintons pulling Perot, part deux. Has he slipped the leash, or are things all going to plan?
middle east is most diverse place on earth! its working out well !
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4544171/columba-bushs-broken-english-speechReplies: @TWS, @Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY), @iSteveFan, @Currahee
OMG, the nerve of the Bush clowns to try to pass this off.
Are the Bushes that stupid or that arrogant?
It is just plain outrageous and insulting that these people are considered viable.
Transgender Mexican can't be deported after DUI felony because he will "face torture" in Mexico for being trans, based on his own testimony of being assaulted by police.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-court-transgender-illegal-immigrant-cannot-deported-mexico-234359720.htmlReplies: @Jefferson
“OT kind of
Transgender Mexican can’t be deported after DUI felony because he will “face torture” in Mexico for being trans, based on his own testimony of being assaulted by police.”
So Mexicans are so Homophobic that they violently torture World War Ts for simply being World War Ts? So why do SJW SWPL types want to continue letting these anti-Gay bigots come into the U.S by the masses?
Why don’t they want more socially liberal Scandinavians for example to immigrate into the U.S instead of Mexicans? After all Scandinavians are SJW SWPL on steroids. They love World War Ts, Cisgender Gays, mom & pop art house theaters, the environment, coffee shops, gender neutral toys for children, recycling, vegan dishes, etc.
I'm guessing Columba speaks English well enough to get by in her daily life and understand what's going on around her. However, if subjected to scrutiny, she'd make a lot of grammatical mistakes and that would be embarrassing.
In reality, that's probably the best you can expect from someone who came here as an adult, unless you're as smart and studious as Henry Kissinger.Replies: @Lugash, @antipater_1
You’re being quite hard on her.
No, this is a perfectly legit question, even if Jeb wasn’t trying to justify importing millions of mestizos. As First Lady, she’d be expected to be able to converse with and represent English speaking America.
It’s certainly a softer question than Hugh Hewitt trying to trip up Trump with Qods/Kurds.
The inverted exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence is grammatical Spanish and perhaps ¡Jeb! thought he was being cute. Well that was a little too cute. Every time I see it I am reminded that he aspires to be El Presidente and not The President. I have no doubt that he sees Trump as uncouth, in the same way that many upper crust in-bred inherited wealth Latins see everyone US as uncouth. ¡Jeb! needs to go ¡hell! or to ¡Mexico!, either which way does not matter to me.
Steve, you *must* post an FAQ.Replies: @cwhatfuture
As and aside. Hidden in the latest New Yorker, a few more digs at Trump on
an article about Atlantic City.
I expect to hit the fan in the next day or two. Especially this one. “Back of the bus with Donald and Ivanka”
Now he was looking for work as a livery driver. Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” he said. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-death-and-life-of-atlantic-city
As an aside. Hidden in the latest New Yorker, a few more digs at Trump in
an article about Atlantic City.
I expect to hit the fan in the next day or two. Especially this one. “Back of the bus with Donald and Ivana”
Now he was looking for work as a livery driver. Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” he said. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-death-and-life-of-atlantic-city
- People come to this country to pursue their dreams.
- they add vitality to our country
- This is a diverse country.
- celebrate that diversity
- embrace a set of shared valuesOf Trump, Bush says, he:- wants to tear us down
- doesn’t believe in tolerance
- doesn’t believe in the things that have created the greatness of this countryReplies: @Marat
Oh, the Word Pollution!! Please Stop the Elevator Music and Change the CD!
The very word “tolerance” implies that something might be intolerable.
The word “hate” has undergone severe meaning inflation recently. “disinterest in” or “distaste for” are phrases that were formerly more accurate as substitutions. Only very, very occasionally was the the word “hate” even applicable.
“celebrate”. Please, keep the damn noise down!
“embrace”. Touchy feely – perfect imagery for leftists who need to “feel good” at all times, in spite of any laws.
“immigration reform” means “immigration relief”. relief from all these unnecessary problems that are a complete and debilitating drain on what was once a functioning society.
!Jeb! will next speak Ebonics to demonstrate his heartfelt bona fides to black voters.
Well, Columbia couldn’t give us a White House tour ala Jackie Kennedy. Funny thing, Jackie could speak Spanish better than Columbia can English.
Or in her case, marital collapse…
That whirring sound you hear is Sam Houston spinning in his grave.
Keeping English as our dominant language, and the language of politics and law, that's an uplifting and hopeful message for Americans. The vast majority of us didn't have to come here, because we were born here. We want to pursue our dreams, too, like, say, keeping our country and culture. And pretty much all of us started by speaking English. We are the vitality of this country.
We didn't say you can only speak English, and it is kind of ridiculous to suggest we did, if you think about it. We should celebrate our country's heritage and her language. ¡Jeb! doesn't believe in this country. He wants to tear it down and build Mexico Norte. He doesn't believe in America. He doesn't believe in the people or the culture that has made this country great.Replies: @Anonymous
To me, the vitality of the country is best embodied by those who came here before there was any sort of safety net – those who knew they would have to raise themselves up by their bootstraps if they were to survive. I’m know those days were extremely difficult and I’m thankful we have a safety net now, but I think as a country we perhaps don’t expect enough of our people.
Does anyone know when the idea of “raising yourself up by your bootstraps” became some sort of evil, unacceptable concept?
Certainly she wouldn’t want to be unable to see Fast & Furious?
The more diversity, the smaller that “set of shared values”, unfortunately.
Just thought I’d point that out as long as we were discussing set theory.
If America is ready to elect Trump, sadly enough it is probably also ready for a former model with extant underwear poses as first lady.
Am I the only one who was left underwhelmed by the way Trump rolled over for the GOP yesterday? Where was Trump the master negotiator? Couldn’t he have at least extracted an explicit commitment that they’d nominate him if he won a plurality of votes in the primaries?
Still, you can be sure Trump has a strategy. Anyone know the details of the agreement (or the terms for breaking it!)?
That initial ¡ was Steve’s contribution.
Steve, you *must* post an FAQ.
Steve, you *must* post an FAQ.Replies: @cwhatfuture
¡ Ay Caramba! I assumed it was his logo. Ha – my bad. But Jeb! can still go to Mexico or to Hell – either way.
I'm guessing Columba speaks English well enough to get by in her daily life and understand what's going on around her. However, if subjected to scrutiny, she'd make a lot of grammatical mistakes and that would be embarrassing.
In reality, that's probably the best you can expect from someone who came here as an adult, unless you're as smart and studious as Henry Kissinger.Replies: @Lugash, @antipater_1
And even Henry K spoke English with a strong ponderous accent.
Would have preferred Trump to put this off a few months and keep Pant suit lady party in turmoil. As of yesterday, Biden now knows he will be the annointed one and he’ll begin soliciting the big bucks. I would rather have that happen later than sooner. Why give them any lead time?
Still, you can be sure Trump has a strategy. Anyone know the details of the agreement (or the terms for breaking it!)?
Henry Kissinger’s two-year younger brother Walter Kissinger, a business tycoon, has barely a trace of a German accent left. He says this is because I am the Kissinger who listens.
I have no idea.
But my observation in Asia is that an eager foreign husband will sometimes adopt his wife’s language and she may then fail to become fluent in English.
The husband sometimes hints that he is clever or unusual in immersing himself in the new culture, although the underlying desire often appears to be make fresh start, to shrug off an old unsatisfactory persona.
(I have seen this mostly with slightly more accessible languages like Indonesian and Thai..)
Where can I find them? You didn’t post a link. I would much rather see pictures of Melania in underwear than Hillary at any age. I believe Bill Clinton would agree with me.
Careful, the site seems to be a malware place. So, not only poses in underwear, but also some naked. Of course, who knows who Trump may be married to come next inauguration day? As bad as Jeb Bush would be for America, Trump would be worse for many of the same reasons plus many, many more. Let's not lose sight of that.dcgazette.com/first-lady-melania-trump-3-puts-michelle-obama-to-shame/Replies: @tbraton
I suppose if you were racist the success of the Kissinger Brothers would be a good argument for Jewish Supremacy. They came here in the 1930s without much money and with a foreign accent and before you know it one is the most powerful Secretary of State ever and the other is a business tycoon.
As for Bush III, I’m not surprised he’s not doing well in the polls. What’s the reason for his candidacy, other than personal ambition and the desires of the Billionaire Donor class ?
He’s not charismatic or a good public speaker, he’s not run for office for 8 years, he’s never held Federal office, no one thinks he’s brilliant, and his political beliefs are unremarkable – just your standard Establishment Country Club Republican.
And what precisely does he disagree with Hillary on? What is his vision for America? He doesn’t have one outside of us becoming Mexico Notre.
No one wonder Trump is mopping the floor with him.
I think he now believes, with some justification, that he has a very good shot at being the Republican nominee and the next elected President. So why wouldn’t he want to take that disruptive issue completely off the table? I think Mr. Priences has been put on notice and has the good sense not to seriously treat Trump unfairly because of the downside risk to what should be a Republican victory in 2016. You could tell that Trump didn’t take his “pledge” seriously when he mockingly said in a sing-song voice “I pledge allegiance to the Republican Party and the conservative principles for which it stands. . . .” The pledge is not legally binding, and, if in the off chance, Jeb!!! should wind up as the nominee, I believe Trump may seriously consider a third-party run. Otherwise not, in the light of the track record of unsuccessful third party campaigns. Despite the several bankruptcies, he is too good a businessman to waste money like that. Jeb!!! is different, imo, since Trump clearly holds the Bushes in utter contempt. He may think he would be doing the country a favor by torpedoing a Jeb!!! candidacy.
Nonetheless, if he'd extracted from Preibus a public statement that there'd be no monkey business (keeping Trump off primary ballots, backroom deals at the convention, etc) that would have taken all the wind (that's still left) out of Jeb's sails.
Think about it: Jeb's polling single digits, yet the odds makers still think he's more likely to be the nominee than Trump is. What that tells me is that all that's keeping Jeb's campaign alive is the expectation that there *will* be monkey business. Take that off the table, and Jeb is history.
Frankly, no. But I don't think I'm going to have to do more than try to imagine it. I mean, seriously, is there anyone, anyone at all, who thinks Jeb could win a two-way race against Joe Biden? Biden is something of a comical figure, but he'd beat the pants off Columba's husband. In a race against Jeb, Jim Webb might actually manage to carry every state but Utah , which presumably Romney could still deliver to the GOP.Replies: @alcogito
I have no idea why Jim Webb is running as a Democrat. He seems to actually like America.
“Could you ever imagine a country teaching one language, and only one, to its immigrants?”
You obviously agree with Eleanor Cliff on last week’s McLaughlin Group that “having 200 languages in our schools is a good thing.” I guess you and Ms. Cliff never heard of the Tower of Babel.
BTW I remember a conversation I had about 10+ years ago with a Serbian woman who worked for my Italian-American barber (the same one who informed me that it was not just Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII but also a smaller number of Italian-Americans and German-Americans, who get none of the publicity Japanese-Americans get) . She spoke a fluent English, her native tongue (Serbian I am guessing) and probably one or two other languages. She had several multi-lingual children, but she admitted to me that she thought knowing several languages was an impediment to mastering your native language, which was English in the case of her children at the time. Since I am basically mono-lingual in English with a good reading knowledge of French (from high school and college) and a reading and partial speaking knowledge of another language, I really have no independent opinion on that issue. It probably varies from individual to individual. Knowing foreign languages certainly did not impair the English language skills of Thomas Jefferson or John Quincy Adams.
P.S. I was being sarcastic in said comment.
I’ve said it since the get go, Jeb is not going to be the nominee. Republican voters–as opposed to the beltway hacks and fellow travellers–is far more republican (small “r”) than a bunch of folks seem to think. No desire for another Bush period. And his revealed contempt for Americans–which he doesn’t even seem to be stepping away from–just seals the deal.
As such, ¡Jeb! is not Trump’s problem … he’s a gift. He’s the perfect disgusting cuckservative to defeat when it gets down to it in the end. (He’s a known quantity too–he’s not going to “grow” on people.)
It’s actually the *other* Republicans who need to get rid of ¡Jeb! so they can rake in the corporate money and the neocon endorsements and propaganda for going 1-on-1 with Trump.
The longer ¡Jeb! is out there, the better as far as i’m concerned. No one in the world i’d rather vote against than this pathetic pile of crap … with Hillary a close 2nd. So voting against one in the primary, one in the general sounds peachy to me.
They couldn't be bothered to check the policy positions of the candidates before voting. All they knew about McCain was "he was a war hero."
This is what Jeb! and the donors are counting on. An enormous TV ad blitz and name recognition.
A stroke of genius for Trump would be to pick Webb as his VP. And run as the Party of America vs. the Trans-National Freak Show.
In Miami, world capital for hot Latinas, in society circles chock full of pretty Columbianas and comely Cubanas, where homely girls put cosmetic surgery on daddy’s credit card, a squat dumpy Mexican woman stands out like a wart-infested thumb. Add to this the fact that Mexicans and Cubans are like oil and water. My guess is that Columba Bush has a *massive* inferiority complex going on and her jewelry binges are an attempt to validate herself. Your theory probably has some merit, but defensively as she also sees a lot of used up looking women traded in for much younger models (literally, models).
Maybe so, but never underestimate the sheer stupidity of Republican primary voters. In 2008, people who voted for McCain in the primaries would tell the exit polls they didn’t know McCain was for amnesty.
They couldn’t be bothered to check the policy positions of the candidates before voting. All they knew about McCain was “he was a war hero.”
This is what Jeb! and the donors are counting on. An enormous TV ad blitz and name recognition.
Lul, what? Being a potential high-ranking public figure and potentially not being able to communicate with the vast body of people’s who share a common language is racial. Right. No, sorry, that’s a deficit, not a racial bias. It’s not “cuckservative”, it’s not racist, it’s not even about immigrants. It’s about a deficit., or more bluntly, laziness.
More like ten years ago.
I once had a "French" teacher (who was a gringo by the way) who said she was living in France with her parents and wanted to attend a French high school ... or whatever they call it. The requirement: speak French. They compromised; they gave her 90-days to learn passable French. She immersed herself and, along with the commitment, learned passable French in 90-days.
We have close friends who are from Mexico and have lived in this country for eight years. The husband speaks perfect English. He learned English while attending an American high school. His wife barely speaks English. She immerses herself in the Hispanic-American community and, when she watches TV, she watches Hispanic channels.
Our favorite waitress at a local restaurant immigrated from Cambodia with her family four years ago. They didn't speak a word of English. The family is committed to the American dream, with the two sisters often working twelve hours a day as wait staff in restaurants. She speaks almost perfect English (she drops the articles, which is characteristic of Oriental speakers of English). She also speaks passable Spanish, which she learned working in the kitchens of "fast food" restaurants.
It seems that learning English (or any foreign language) is, foremost of all, a function of a desire to learn it and a commitment to expose yourself to the language.Replies: @TWS
The Foreign Legion Teaches ‘passable French’ in a few weeks. Not sure if you want to use their motivational techniques though.
If you have a good command of Latin, moreover, all the Romance languages fall into line pretty well except to an extent French, which is artificially difficult in some ways.
I wouldn’t be astonished to learn that Jackie could speak better Spanish than Columba.
Seriously, although I took a couple of years of high school Spanish and got B grades, I cannot converse in Spanish except to utter a few memorized phrases (En los Estatos Unidos, ingles solamente por favor) being my favorite, of course), but people I work with who have lived in South Americc and Spain routinely comment that the Mexicans we encounter all the time speak Spanish very badly and with an unpleasant accent. Over and above a general “Mexican” accent heard on Mexican TV news broadcasts, etc.
I do remember that when I was taking Spanish, I would listen to shortwave broadcast a lot and that I could at least understand what the words were best from Radio Havana and, oddly, from Spanish language broadcasts of Radio Canada International. I rarely if ever heard Spanish broadcasting from Mexico, but on the “tropical bands” would occasionally hear stations in Central America, and it was just babble to my ear. I actually understood, or thought I understood, more of the Portuguese from Brazil than their Spanish.
The near demise of shortwave broadacsting is a terrible thing, but is another issue entirely. I still have my Hammarlund waiting, though.
Almost any Western language written in the Latin alphabet with somewhat understandable correspondence of pronunciation to the letters (that excludes, for example, Polish, which is all the more devilish for being written in a tweaked version of the Latin alphabet: if it were Cyrillic it would be easier) can be learned to a passable level of conversation in a few weeks of total immersion. Meaning if you want to do anything whatsoever-eat, drink water, go to the toilet you have to ask correctly. Spanish is probably somewhat easier than most, English a little harder.
If you have a good command of Latin, moreover, all the Romance languages fall into line pretty well except to an extent French, which is artificially difficult in some ways.
Mexico is a country that just can’t get any respect from other Latin Americans. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers second-longest serving radio announcer, after Vin Scully (who has been calling Dodger games since 1950) is Jaime Jarrin, who has been broadcasting Dodger games in Spanish since 1959. He is admired for his classy Ecuadorean accent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Jarr%C3%ADn
As might be expected, the Daily Mail and NY Post are on the job, but a web search for “Melania Knauss nude” leads to “13 RED HOT Pics of Our Possible Next First Lady, Melania TRUMP”
Careful, the site seems to be a malware place. So, not only poses in underwear, but also some naked. Of course, who knows who Trump may be married to come next inauguration day? As bad as Jeb Bush would be for America, Trump would be worse for many of the same reasons plus many, many more. Let’s not lose sight of that.
dcgazette.com/first-lady-melania-trump-3-puts-michelle-obama-to-shame/
Thanks for the warning. I am a bit of a neophyte when it comes to computers, so tell me whether I should put on a condom if I choose to view that dangerous website. Will that afford me any protection from an unwanted virus? I am also thinking of following the excellent advice of Hillary Clinton and wiping down my hard drive with a soft cloth. What do you think? Will that afford me any protection? You can't take any unnecessary risks these days.Replies: @International Jew
Your inference about his wife's English-speaking skills makes me wonder: Doesn't Jeb see that there will be a reckoning? Isn't he concerned that such a revelation would expose the fatuousness of his current line about immigrants eventually learning English?
BTW, if Trump makes a statement in the next two weeks questioning Mrs. Bush's English facility, that will be proof positive that he's an iSteve reader.Replies: @Ozymandias
“BTW, if Trump makes a statement in the next two weeks questioning Mrs. Bush’s English facility, that will be proof positive that he’s an iSteve reader.”
And if she then comes out with a prepared statement in decent English, it would be disastrous. Let it come out by itself. Yeb has made her a centerpiece of his campaign; he can’t turn around and hide her now.
“I am pretty sure that Donald and Melania speak English at home.”
Trump should set up a ringer to ask him this question during a press conference. There’s a lot of potential material to mine there without ever saying a single word about Yeb!
Well, Trump started dating Melania in 1998 and married her in 2005. She had their only child the next year. So I think the marriage is likely to last, certainly past inauguration day. As far as Trump being worse for America compared to Bush, that is possible, but, in light of the experience with Jeb!!!’s brother W, I don’t think that is likely. On the other hand,Trump has the potential of being much better than Bush. I don’t see a similar upside for Bush that would offset the risk of electing him President.
They speak French in Port-au-Prince. Nobody mistakes it for Paris. Cuckadoodledoooo!
The speak English in Detroit (sort 0f), how would you like to live in the sort of society and under the sort of government the English speaking people there produce, particularly as a hated minority? Cuckadoodledooo! Being a politician means being a lying whore, there’s no excuse for you to be. Language is soft-balling the real issue.
Must have seen Let's Make Love!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sR8L83Zz6Y
You obviously agree with Eleanor Cliff on last week's McLaughlin Group that "having 200 languages in our schools is a good thing." I guess you and Ms. Cliff never heard of the Tower of Babel.
BTW I remember a conversation I had about 10+ years ago with a Serbian woman who worked for my Italian-American barber (the same one who informed me that it was not just Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII but also a smaller number of Italian-Americans and German-Americans, who get none of the publicity Japanese-Americans get) . She spoke a fluent English, her native tongue (Serbian I am guessing) and probably one or two other languages. She had several multi-lingual children, but she admitted to me that she thought knowing several languages was an impediment to mastering your native language, which was English in the case of her children at the time. Since I am basically mono-lingual in English with a good reading knowledge of French (from high school and college) and a reading and partial speaking knowledge of another language, I really have no independent opinion on that issue. It probably varies from individual to individual. Knowing foreign languages certainly did not impair the English language skills of Thomas Jefferson or John Quincy Adams.Replies: @a reader
Thanks to read my short comment in its entirety, and especially the article I linked to.
P.S. I was being sarcastic in said comment.
And if she then comes out with a prepared statement in decent English, it would be disastrous. Let it come out by itself. Yeb has made her a centerpiece of his campaign; he can't turn around and hide her now.Replies: @Steve Sailer
As I said, a couple of people have now told me they had friends who had social conversations with Columba in English.
“P.S. I was being sarcastic in said comment.”
Thanks for pointing that out to me because I obviously missed the intended sarcasm. I actually went back and reread your original message using your response as a road map, and I still couldn’t find that mother lode (“veta madre” for all you Jeb!!! fans out there, especially those of you with ties to Mexico) of sarcasm. But I am sure the problem is with me. Sorry.
“Thanks to read my short comment in its entirety, ”
Ah, ha. I think I detected the problem. You see I suffer from the severe handicap that English is my native language, which causes me to miss the subtlety of those whose native language happens not to be English.
"Cultural perspectives on sarcasm vary widely with more than a few cultures and linguistic groups finding it offensive to varying degrees. Thomas Carlyle despised it: "Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it".[16] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, recognized in it a cry of pain: Sarcasm, he said, was "usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."[17] RFC 1855, a collection of guidelines for Internet communications, includes a warning to be especially careful with it as it "may not travel well." A professional translator has advised that international business executives "should generally avoid sarcasm in intercultural business conversations and written communications" because of the difficulties in translating sarcasm.[18]"Since I don't like being associated with the "devil" (even though I have doubts whether the gentleman even exists), I try to avoid the use of sarcasm whenever possible. (BTW I think the Thomas Carlyle referred to above is the founder of the Carlyle Group, the Washington, D.C. (ahem) "hedge fund." He was as great a man as Henry Ibm, the founder of IBM.) And, since I regard myself as a "modest and chaste-souled" person, I try to avoid the use of sarcasm lest anyone with a Dostoyevskyian frame of mind erroneously regard it as a "cry of pain" and mistakenly call 911 on my behalf. (Especially these days when your local fire and rescue charges you an exorbitant amount for transporting you to your local hospital, far above what a cab driver would charge for the same short ride.)2. Punctuation should be required. As everybody should be aware by now, sarcasm is often hard to detect. Therefore, anybody who consciously uses sarcasm in writing should be required to highlight such sarcasm with proper punctuation to leave no doubt that sarcasm was intended all along. According to Wikipedia,
"Though in the English language there is no standard accepted method to denote irony or sarcasm in written conversation, several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and frequently attested are the percontation point—furthered by Henry Denham in the 1580s—and the irony mark—furthered by Alcanter de Brahm in the 19th century. Both of these marks were represented visually by a ⸮ backwards question mark (unicode U+2E2E). Each of these punctuation marks are primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood as ironic, but not necessarily designate sarcasm that is not ironic. By contrast, more recent proposals, such as the snark mark, or the use of a following tilde are specifically intended to denote sarcasm rather than irony.[21] A bracketed exclamation point or question mark as well as scare quotes are also sometimes used to express irony or ironic sarcasm.[22]"Maybe when we all switch to Esperanto in a desperatanto attempt to communicate with each other, that would an appropriate time to introduce sarcasm punctuation.3. It appears that Sailer has Ethiopian blood.
"In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaq, a character that looks like an inverted exclamation point ¡.[23] The usage directly parallels John Wilkins' 1668 proposal to use the inverted exclamation point as an irony mark.[24] A proposal by Asteraye Tsigie and Daniel Yacob in 1999 to include the temherte slaq in unicode was unsuccessful.[25]"
I seem to recall that Sailer was a groundbreaker in adding an inverted exclamation point before Jeb!!!'s name. Who would have thought that the straight-shooting Steve Sailer was actually being sarcastic? Who would have guessed that Steve Sailer has Ehtiopian blood coursing through his veins? He is probably descended from a long line of royal Ethiopian golfers.4. Mr. Unz needs to add another analytical tool to unz.com. Since Mr. Unz likes to fiddle with his website and tweak it by adding one improvement after another, he should consider adding a tool which allows you to identify sarcasm which has not been properly labeled with the appropriate punctuation from Ethiopia. I would think a sarcasm meter can be easily added to the line where the "Bold" and "Italics" tools are located.
"A French company has developed an analytics tool that claims to have up to 80% accuracy in identifying sarcastic comments posted online.[26]
in June 2014, the United States Secret Service requested bids for software that would identify sarcasm in tweets."I find the last line revealing about the mindset of Washington insiders, who are constantly dreaming up new schemes to waste your tax money. Who would have thought that sarcasm in tweets actually constituted a threat to national security justifying the need for software to identify it. I haven't sent one tweet in my life and think the whole enterprise is a complete waste of time. I thought that was why Morse Code was invented.
I was actually to going to post a few days ago that we should be hearing from those who have actually conversed with Columba in English and that might resolve the issue. Then a poster yesterday (whose name I can’t recall off hand) posted a message doing exactly that. So, as far as I am concerned, the particular issue is dead, even though, as in the case of Obama and his birth certificate and his academic record, the original problem arose from actions of Jeb!!! and his “shy” bride and they could have taken steps long ago to dispel the alleged problem.
Careful, the site seems to be a malware place. So, not only poses in underwear, but also some naked. Of course, who knows who Trump may be married to come next inauguration day? As bad as Jeb Bush would be for America, Trump would be worse for many of the same reasons plus many, many more. Let's not lose sight of that.dcgazette.com/first-lady-melania-trump-3-puts-michelle-obama-to-shame/Replies: @tbraton
“Careful, the site seems to be a malware place. ”
Thanks for the warning. I am a bit of a neophyte when it comes to computers, so tell me whether I should put on a condom if I choose to view that dangerous website. Will that afford me any protection from an unwanted virus? I am also thinking of following the excellent advice of Hillary Clinton and wiping down my hard drive with a soft cloth. What do you think? Will that afford me any protection? You can’t take any unnecessary risks these days.
Said on GMA,
“…one of them asked me a question in Spanish and I answered it. That’s the reality of America, that’s the goodness of America. That’s the kind of America we want,”
Why, I do declare! !Jeb! is indistinguishable from a SJWimp! He’s a Democrat who will be happy to spend loads of bucks on language programs.
By and large, I agree with you.
Nonetheless, if he’d extracted from Preibus a public statement that there’d be no monkey business (keeping Trump off primary ballots, backroom deals at the convention, etc) that would have taken all the wind (that’s still left) out of Jeb’s sails.
Think about it: Jeb’s polling single digits, yet the odds makers still think he’s more likely to be the nominee than Trump is. What that tells me is that all that’s keeping Jeb’s campaign alive is the expectation that there *will* be monkey business. Take that off the table, and Jeb is history.
Thanks for the warning. I am a bit of a neophyte when it comes to computers, so tell me whether I should put on a condom if I choose to view that dangerous website. Will that afford me any protection from an unwanted virus? I am also thinking of following the excellent advice of Hillary Clinton and wiping down my hard drive with a soft cloth. What do you think? Will that afford me any protection? You can't take any unnecessary risks these days.Replies: @International Jew
Don’t go to those web sites from any computer you do online banking on.
Thanks for pointing that out to me because I obviously missed the intended sarcasm. I actually went back and reread your original message using your response as a road map, and I still couldn't find that mother lode ("veta madre" for all you Jeb!!! fans out there, especially those of you with ties to Mexico) of sarcasm. But I am sure the problem is with me. Sorry.
"Thanks to read my short comment in its entirety, "
Ah, ha. I think I detected the problem. You see I suffer from the severe handicap that English is my native language, which causes me to miss the subtlety of those whose native language happens not to be English.Replies: @tbraton
The subject of “sarcasm” having been raised in this thread, I thought I would do a little research into the subject, and I hereby present the findings of my extensive research into the subject matter in all seriousness and without one hint of sarcasm:
1. Attitudes toward sarcasm vary from culture to culture. According to Wikipedia,
“Cultural perspectives on sarcasm vary widely with more than a few cultures and linguistic groups finding it offensive to varying degrees. Thomas Carlyle despised it: “Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it”.[16] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, recognized in it a cry of pain: Sarcasm, he said, was “usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”[17] RFC 1855, a collection of guidelines for Internet communications, includes a warning to be especially careful with it as it “may not travel well.” A professional translator has advised that international business executives “should generally avoid sarcasm in intercultural business conversations and written communications” because of the difficulties in translating sarcasm.[18]”
Since I don’t like being associated with the “devil” (even though I have doubts whether the gentleman even exists), I try to avoid the use of sarcasm whenever possible. (BTW I think the Thomas Carlyle referred to above is the founder of the Carlyle Group, the Washington, D.C. (ahem) “hedge fund.” He was as great a man as Henry Ibm, the founder of IBM.) And, since I regard myself as a “modest and chaste-souled” person, I try to avoid the use of sarcasm lest anyone with a Dostoyevskyian frame of mind erroneously regard it as a “cry of pain” and mistakenly call 911 on my behalf. (Especially these days when your local fire and rescue charges you an exorbitant amount for transporting you to your local hospital, far above what a cab driver would charge for the same short ride.)
2. Punctuation should be required. As everybody should be aware by now, sarcasm is often hard to detect. Therefore, anybody who consciously uses sarcasm in writing should be required to highlight such sarcasm with proper punctuation to leave no doubt that sarcasm was intended all along. According to Wikipedia,
“Though in the English language there is no standard accepted method to denote irony or sarcasm in written conversation, several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and frequently attested are the percontation point—furthered by Henry Denham in the 1580s—and the irony mark—furthered by Alcanter de Brahm in the 19th century. Both of these marks were represented visually by a ⸮ backwards question mark (unicode U+2E2E). Each of these punctuation marks are primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood as ironic, but not necessarily designate sarcasm that is not ironic. By contrast, more recent proposals, such as the snark mark, or the use of a following tilde are specifically intended to denote sarcasm rather than irony.[21] A bracketed exclamation point or question mark as well as scare quotes are also sometimes used to express irony or ironic sarcasm.[22]”
Maybe when we all switch to Esperanto in a desperatanto attempt to communicate with each other, that would an appropriate time to introduce sarcasm punctuation.
3. It appears that Sailer has Ethiopian blood.
“In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaq, a character that looks like an inverted exclamation point ¡.[23] The usage directly parallels John Wilkins’ 1668 proposal to use the inverted exclamation point as an irony mark.[24] A proposal by Asteraye Tsigie and Daniel Yacob in 1999 to include the temherte slaq in unicode was unsuccessful.[25]”
I seem to recall that Sailer was a groundbreaker in adding an inverted exclamation point before Jeb!!!’s name. Who would have thought that the straight-shooting Steve Sailer was actually being sarcastic? Who would have guessed that Steve Sailer has Ehtiopian blood coursing through his veins? He is probably descended from a long line of royal Ethiopian golfers.
4. Mr. Unz needs to add another analytical tool to unz.com. Since Mr. Unz likes to fiddle with his website and tweak it by adding one improvement after another, he should consider adding a tool which allows you to identify sarcasm which has not been properly labeled with the appropriate punctuation from Ethiopia. I would think a sarcasm meter can be easily added to the line where the “Bold” and “Italics” tools are located.
“A French company has developed an analytics tool that claims to have up to 80% accuracy in identifying sarcastic comments posted online.[26]
in June 2014, the United States Secret Service requested bids for software that would identify sarcasm in tweets.”
I find the last line revealing about the mindset of Washington insiders, who are constantly dreaming up new schemes to waste your tax money. Who would have thought that sarcasm in tweets actually constituted a threat to national security justifying the need for software to identify it. I haven’t sent one tweet in my life and think the whole enterprise is a complete waste of time. I thought that was why Morse Code was invented.
They speak French in Port-au-Prince. Nobody mistakes it for Paris. Cuckadoodledoooo!
Must have seen Let’s Make Love!