Fluency In Another Language Is Now Bad Politics in America!

ORLANDO, Fla. — Newt Gingrich, parlez-vous français?
In a sign that the spat between Mr. Gingrich and Mitt Romney is definitely on the low road, the Gingrich campaign posted a Web ad on Thursday mocking Mr. Romney for, among other deviations from conservative orthodoxy, speaking French.

The minute-long ad, “The French Connection,’’ includes a cheesy bistro accordion tune and juxtaposes Mr. Romney welcoming the world to the Salt Lake City Olympics in French – “Je m’appelle Mitt Romney’’ – with a clip of the French-speaking John Kerry, whose knowledge of the tongue of Molière was used to stamp him as elitist during his failed bid for the presidency in 2004.

“Just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too,’’ the ad says of Mr. Romney, who spent 30 months in France as a young Mormon missionary.

Now comes intriguing circumstantial evidence that Mr. Gingrich, too, may have better than a tourist’s knowledge of French.  He often tells campaign crowds of living in France as a teenager, when his Army father, Robert Gingrich, was stationed near Orléans. A visit to the World War I battlefield of Verdun awakened him to the seriousness of world events and made him aspire to public office, he says.
Mr. Gingrich attended an American school. But an article by Agence France-Presse quoted a biographer, Mel Steely, as saying that the teenage Newton “had enough French to survive.’’

Mr. Gingrich went on to earn a Ph.D. in history from Tulane, writing his dissertation titled “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”  Belgium, of course, is a French-speaking country, as were its African colonies. Many of the sources Mr. Gingrich cited in the thesis were in French. He either read the language well at the time or paid someone a small fortune to translate them.

A spokesman for Mr. Gingrich did not immediately respond to a request for edification.  But as Mr. Romney might put it, touché.

The Decline of the American Empire

Below is an interesting take on the decline of America from Al Jazeera English.  It is about 47 minutes long, and its worth viewing.

The decline of the American empire - Empire - Al Jazeera English

An American Celebrates Life....In Romania

I was born in Los Angeles and lived the typical southern California suburban life of isolation. Being a child from divorced parents, I learned early on what America meant. Something always bothered me about the society in which I lived and where as when I was younger I couldn't quite define it, as I grew older it became more and more clear that modern American Society had an overlaying artificialness to it. I got the impression that I was living in some kind of experiment and that everything was temporary in nature and not intended to be lasting like the civilizations of the past.

I remember how I loved to watch Little House on the Prairie and feeling such an attraction to that family. I wondered why it was so different from what were claimed to be families all around me. Almost all kids at school came from divorced families and many were also victims of abuse. It seemed that most women with which I came into contact with growing up in America were hostile and belligerent and Southern California was probably the capital of alternative lifestyles and divorce and the traditional family life was viewed as the enemy. My only contact with traditional family values as a child growing up in America was again, Little House on the Prairie.

Observing these traits in society, I naturally began to associate America with them. America to me meant, divorce, abuse, fighting, neglect and above all, isolation. In fact, as I got older, I came to notice that the situation was more like a lack of society rather than a bad society. What do I mean? Well, first of all, there was no contact between people. There was no walking in the streets and no open markets and stores. People simply entered their cars from the garage attached to their house, opened the garage door and drove to the store or work and never came into contact with another human being. Where was society? What is the definition of society? I detected something very wrong with America and the endless uniformity and dullness of Southern Californian suburbs seemed to be the chief example of this fact. No matter how many times we visited the same grocery store, the employees there never would recognize us. Years would go by without a single word being exchange with a neighbor. My female teachers hated my mother. Even my cub scout troop was dissolved because one of the mothers sued after a fall in the snow on our first field trip. Every little girl who lived on my street was sexually abused and their stories horrified me. Between experiencing these things I also got to enjoy the constant fighting between my parents over child support checks and who's turn it was keep me on the week end. O how I longed for Little House on the Prairie where everybody worked together, went to church together and helped and supported each other through hardships, harvests and barn raising. This was the America I thought must have been just an invented myth.

Due to my mother's line of work, I was exposed to many emigrants from a wide variety of places such as Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Argentina, Vietnam and India. There was something special about these people and I noticed it even as a child. What was it about them that attracted me? Why did they seem to be so content and hardworking? They seemed to benefit from a force or energy that I could see was totally lacking in the society in which I lived. What was it? The answer was FAMILY in the traditional sense. Though they were living in America like me, they had transferred their sense of family and society from their country and were still enjoying the benefits while being surrounded by the social misery. Somehow they lived unscathed in pockets of healthy family lives they themselves emitted. For me, happiness was being around these people and I would enjoy pretending that I was a part of their family as well. I would learn everything I could about their countries, cultures and foods and they would be so pleased to see my interest. The highlight of my childhood was when my mother would be invited to one of their homes for one of their holidays and I'd get to bask in the light of family life such as being seated at the dinner table together and listening to people actually talking to each other relating stories and experiences of the old country. I could see that the hardships and poverty they went through actually strengthened them and was the source of their great work ethic and family values.

I remember one girl from Romania who worked with my mother. She had swam across the Danube to escape from communism and tyranny and somehow made it to America. She came with just the shirt on her back and immediately started working with house cleaning and taking night classes in English. Her strong faith in God and her exceptional morals and ethics allowed her to flourish and reap the benefit of the opportunities in America. The same opportunities that Americans seemed to be unable to benefit from. Could a lack of traditional family values and morals be a factor? Why was it that emigrants always seemed to find success while native born Americans drowned in debt and misery?

She worked hard and worked her way up to becoming a manager. Eventually she got a degree and opened her own business. Only after years of work and after the fall of communism did she go back to Romania and get married to a Romanian man then returned.

Seeing her wonderful value as a beautiful, feminine and traditional women, I fell in love with Romania and wanted to get to know as much as possible about this country. Something about modern American women repulsed me and I absolutely refused to have a girlfriend or anything to do with them while in high school. Based on my experience as child growing up in America, I could not separate divorce with the American women. The two things seemed to go hand in hand. I remember making the concrete decision as a teenager that I would never marry a girl from a divorced family and that I had to marry a foreign girl no matter what. I started corresponding with girls as pen pals from Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Russia. There were no proms, dances or parties for me. I was attracted to everything that was traditional, religious and moral. Though it was sometimes lonely, I knew I was holding out for something of value and meaning. One girl in Romania particularly caught my attention by her femininity, shyness and goodness and we wrote to each other for two years. After two years of junior college, I decided to go to Romania to meet her in person and she was everything I imagined. We were married after spending six months as a guest of her family. I was 20 and she was 18 and we were both virgins. Sixteen years later, we're still married and have a beautiful family.

We did eventually come back to America where she, independently of my own opinion, noticed the same flaws in American society as I. She didn't like it and couldn't quite adjust to it. Living several years in California refusing to go into debt and fall into the "American Trap", we lived very simply but never flourished. As I grew in knowledge and understanding, I could see the writing on the wall that the American system was not sustainable. I could see that economic collapse was inevitable and soon all the debt, credit cards, stock market casinos, leases, and housing speculation would all come crashing down. The wars pretty much sealed the fate of America and I knew that we could not continue to be a part of it and incur the consequences of a system we never supported. I did not want my children growing up in such a system nor did I want them to reap what American foreign policy would shortly bring to the homeland. I could just sense that something dark was coming and on August 11, 2001 we moved to Romania.

We bought a beautiful apartment in downtown Bucharest for $19,000, bought a used car for $300 and a fertile piece of land with a peasant house fifty kilometers outside of Bucharest for $15,000 and now live completely debt free. How many Americans live debt free? The taxes on our house is about $30!! In the city we live in a normal urban setting where there is contact with other people in the streets, the markets and the people in stores know us personally and greet us. We're on friendly terms with our neighbors and visit each other. We have very efficient public transportation in the form of subways, trams and buses. We have our children's school right next door and have one of the biggest public parks and youth centers within walking distance. The Christian religion is taught in the public schools and our children are taken to church for communion. A priest comes to teach them about morals and ethics. There is even a civics class where the children learn the value of honesty, altruism, helping the needy, forgiveness and overall good social ethics. I can detect no dark or perverse agendas being forced on our children and being an American, I logically would be a good judge of this.

On the land we have in the country; together with my wife's family, we grow all our own food. We have fruit trees, grape vines and a yearly garden that provides all the family's needs through the winter. Making preserves in jars basically makes us independent. Having chickens provides us with a steady supply of natural eggs as well. The country house has its own deep well and so its independent of municipal water and the heating is wood burning. It's a great satisfaction for a product of an American suburb like myself to have gone back to a natural lifestyle with an intimate relationship with nature and the traditional way of life. Most of the villagers still go around with horse drawn wagons so in a way, I did eventually find my very own "Little House in the Prairie".

In closing, I'd like to encourage any Americans who are not satisfied with the society they live in to take the necessary courage and try moving to a place where they can find a simpler, more natural way of living, free of debt and free from the consequences of a diabolical foreign policy and a collapsing economy. It doesn't cost as much as you might think and it all starts with a dream. Hold your ideal in your mind at all times and eventually you will manifest this ideal in your own life. Never accept anything that does not reflect your ideal and it will never touch you. There is no utopia and every place has its own unique problems but never underestimate the power of your own ideas and dreams. The Kingdom is within you and you can live it in the place of your choosing. Spiritually speaking, we're all citizens of that Kingdom and we're all linked together in this shared principle of family, morals, Love, Truth and goodness. Simplicity is the key and the simpler you live your life, the more you will enjoy it. If you don't fear evil, you render it powerless against you and it disappears as darkness disappears when you turn on the light switch. Cultivate your spirituality and your ideal and you will find your very own promised land; your very own "Little House on the Prairie" no matter what you've been through. Now go find it!!

This piece is from the website SaveTheMales.ca

Chicago Received No Votes From the Olympic Committee!

I'm not sure what the White House was thinking when they thought Chicago had a chance to land the next summer games. Rio got the nod and good on them. That is a world class city just brimming with appeal.

Chicago makes me yawn. The fact that President Obama, Oprah, and the PR team that bungled the presentation felt that Chicago is even in the same class as Rio, Tokyo, and and Madrid is a testament that the decline of America is lost in many American minds.

Congratulations Rio.

Travel Abroad Advice for Aspiring Expats

Anthony Bourdain, for all of his sarcasm, is a guy whose travel mode resembles my own. For all you guys who wish to spend a lot of time overseas exploring all that is not available in the USA, I hope this can prompt you into planning your first trip. Below is my travel advice that I posted on another forum recently. I hope you find it helpful:

Financial Considerations
Yes, your trip will cost some money so you should begin budgeting for travel, lodging, food, and entertainment. For you young men, you should save your money for a once a year or once every 2 years trip to a different country than you have been to before. Don't buy that new laptop, iPhone, or Blackberry. Safe the money for your exploratory trips!

For unmarried middle aged men, it is far easier for you to travel 4 times a year when you are single with no kids. Your savings and salaries are generally higher at that point in life.

Where Should You Travel
You should travel to the poorest countries that have the women you find most attractive. Even if your visit to that country ends up that you do not like that country, odds are a neighboring country to that one might suit you far better. For example, I thought I would like Bulgaria, but a visit there proved to be lackluster for me. I then took the 30 minute flight to neighboring Romania and had an absolute blast of a time!

If you stay in the capital cities first, you will find many people who speak English very well. Many of the smaller towns have English speakers in this age of the internet and cable TV programming from the US.

Strike up conversations with some hotel clerks, bartenders, waitresses, or others. Most people are very open to interacting with Americans since they likely never met one in person. These people can be valuable resources as to where to eat, stay, hang-out, and where to avoid.

Countries And Travel Plans To Avoid
My man from singleabroad.com summed it up when he wrote that you should avoid......

Pretty much all Western Europe, particularly London, Paris, Amsterdam, and other large cities.

Places that are heavily promoted in the West as vacation spots: Negril, Jamaica, Cancun, Cabo, Mexico, etc. At these places you are mostly going to meet American and European tourists and local prostitutes.

Avoid "resorts" and "cruises" ("expensive, rip off centers of cheesy boredom" is a good description I heard). "Singles cruises" and "singles trips" are the worst; you'll be spending time with spoiled aging American women looking for a quick lay or a "provider".

How You Should Dress
When traveling abroad, you should not even bring sneakers unless you like to jog regularly. Bring nice looking walking shoes that can go well with shorts in the day time, and with jeans and a blazer at night. Think Clarks or Rockport type shoes. Shoes bring the air of sophistication and women respond well to that. A cheap blazer with a t-shirt and jeans make you a possible rich man in the eyes of all the ladies. Save the oversized hip hop gear for back home or your little brother.

Don't wear rings and watches in the street at night. I do wear them but I put them on in the restroom after I arrive at clubs and bars, them remove them and place them in the blazer pockets when I leave. This deters crime and makes you less of a target for jealous local men.

Emergency Considerations
Leave most of your cash, most of your credit cards, and your passport in the hotel locked in a safe or in your luggage. If you are robbed, you don't want to be left without options for money. Only walk around with a copy of your passport on your person.

If you are sick, in trouble or you lose a passport, each US Embassy has an American Citizen Services section that will help you out with loans, temporary passport documents, or hospital/jail visits if it comes to that. Always have their number handy and register online with the State Department so they can assist you in a disaster by knowing you are in country: https://travelregistration.state.gov/ibrs/ui/

Your Most Likely Enemies Abroad
Be pleasant, but trust no one, especially men, in another country. Everyone will be curious, but curious about how to dupe you. Don't get into cars with new "friends," don't flash money around, and don't ever trust a cab driver. Always insist on the fare before the cab ride or they will pump up the price without a meter. Cab drivers are the WORST.

Women who are too friendly are likely prostitutes or opportunists. Never listen to their sob stories and loan them money. Most women who are interested in you from poor countries will offer to pay for some or all of drinks, dinner, et cetera. Don't be a dupe.

When The Travel Bug Bites
After a 1 to 3 trips to different regions, you will be a pro and you will crave the time when your next trip begins. When you get a taste of being treated as an equal human being, as attractive human being from pretty women, and as the man that you are, you will have been bitten by the bug!

If You Happen To Meet The Lady Of Your Dreams
You will likely meet women you would have never dreamed of in short measure. Don't lose your head. Try to meet a plan B, a plan C, et cetera. Don't propose and don't start planning to bring her to America. Make it clear from the start that you would rather settle down there and start a family with her. Whatever you do, do not marry! It is better to shack up with a lady, have kids and live happily ever after. Marriage impedes your ability to just cut and run if you ever need to do so.

The Goal
Initially you will simply be enjoying your adventure and new life experience. But your goal should be to find the place or places that you want to retire or live in (unmarried) with your young woman and any kids you might have with her. I know several men living with their women abroad who plan to do so till the very end. It's a great idea and one that I will embark upon at age 50 as soon as the pension kicks in!

Get planning and get going. There is more advice on the happierabroad.com forum from people like Winston Wu and Ladislav who legendary expat experts.

This Is Why I Cannot Relate To American Women