Barack Obama: Se Habla Espanol?

Sorry about no symbol over the "n" to represent the "y" sound (es-pan-yol).

 

President Bush speaks Spanish (to some degree) . Does Barack Obama speak Spanish?  I darn sure hope he does, after virtually calling yesterday for every child in this country to be required to learn SPANISH.

 

No.  Barack Obama did not quite go that far, but close.  He was talking about the movement to have the English Language as the official language in this country, and to exempt a REQUIREMENT that employees speak English from the anti-discrimination laws (the EEOC certainly DOES consider it discrimination, unless English is NECESSARY to the job--one of those nebulous things beloved of leftists who don't live in the real world).

 

Obama, of course, was enganged in DECEIT--typical of the pro-illegal immigration people, and the people opposing any recognition of English as the language of this country.  What he was trying to do was suggest that proponents of English were opposed to people learning to, or knowing how to, speak English--a LIE (generally).  That is apples and oranges.  The fact that it is an ASSET and a SKILL to be bilingual has nothing to do with the question of whether everyone should know English who lives in this country, and whether we should make it clear that English is the language of the country (which is NOT any disparagement of the merits of being bilingual). 

 

Obama went so far as to say that the "problem" in this country is NOT that people do not know English, but that we all don't know Spanish as well as English.  What can you say about someone who says something like that, other than you better hope he does not become President?  Obama went on to state a flat LIE, which alone should disqualify him from even being in the Senate.  He stated that there was no need to worry about Spanish speakers speaking English, because they KNOW that they have to learn English to succeed in this country. They WANT to learn English (in the surreal world view of Obama and the left).

 

I live in El Paso.  I have described in this blog how I bought a new water heater two years or so ago.  Home Depot (through a contractor) sent TWO plumbers out to my house to install the water heater.  NEITHER spoke a single word of English, and their supervisor on the phone barely spoke English. 

 

I took Spanish in high school.  I have lived around Spanish speaking people all of my life.  My wife was (in the sense we are diviorced--she still is but no longer my wife) Mexican-American, and speaks Spanish (although she learned as an ADULT to speak fluently).  I have never been able to speak or understand Spanish on any kind of a conversational level.  I admit that is somewhat of a failure on my part.  Still, how many people in the U.S. should be expected to talk to PULUMBERS in Spanish?

 

That is my problem here.  I long resisted the idea of English as the official language, because of some unreasonable things that were publicity in El Paso back in the 20th Century (circa 1970-1980).  Some large businesses here, like a bank, were criticized for having an "English only" policy.  This is the DECEPTION/change of subject that Obama was attempting.  That meant that employees were not ALLOWED to speak Spanish, even privately to other employees.  There IS a REASON for that policy.  You can argue that it creates employee unrest for some employees to think other employees are deliberately excluding them from knowing what is being said (not to mention supervisors).  Employees might get the idea that Spanish speaking employees are talking about THEM.  Even aside from that angle, the "exclusion" argument is real.  Some employees and supervisors might reasonably believe that they are being EXCULED from conversations in a language they don't understand.  Nevertheless, I think a general policy like that was oversensitive, and over the top.  If employees made a habit of blatantly shutting out other employees and supervisors, you could address that.  But a policy of "no Spanish" never seemed rational to me.

 

I still believe that, but I have come around to believe that we DO need to "protect" English as the laguage of this country.  For Obama to say that Spanish speaking people in El Paso all WANT to speak English merely means that either Barack Obama is a sociopathic liar or is unfamiliar with Spanish speaking areas like El Paso (maybe both). 

 

Should you HAVE to speak Spanish to live in El Paso.  I assure you that we are heading in that direction, although we are not yet there (despite my plumber experience).  Sure, it has always been an advantage to speak Spanish in El Paso.  We ARE, after all, on the Mexican border  But there is something wrong if places like El Paso turn into almost Mexican enclaves in the United Sates. 

 

Barack Obama was also playing on the "Ugly American" angle--that Americans go to other countries and expect them to speak English.  Doesn't fly.  That is the POINT, isn't it.  I used to go to Juarez, Mexico on a regular basis (not any more, because Mexico is really a much worse place than it once was--at least along the border).   They may have people to accommodate you there, as a tourist (to make money, just as it makes sense to have people able to talk to Mexicans in stores here to make money).  However, I can assure you that they EXPECT people who live and work there to SPEAK SPANISH.  There is none of this guff about sending out English speaking plumbers to a Mexican household in Juarez.

 

Nope.  Obama has AGAIN shown that he is bound to the Far Left on illegal immigration, and issues involved with that issue.  DECEIT is the game, and Obama's speech yesterday suggested that either he has no clue as to the real issues involved here or he is ALL about DECEIT.  Again, both things may be true.

 

I do wish someone would ASK Obama whether HE speaks Spanish.  If you are going to lecture everybody about learning to speak Spanish, maybe you should.  Okay, I know that maybe Obama speaks some other language (probably an effete European language, like French). I would still think he should be asked whether he speaks SPANISH.  No, I don't know whether McCain does either.  the problem with McCain is that he will NOT make a point of the whole illegal immigration/English question because he is only slightly better than Obama on the whole thing.