" Press One for English "

[Don]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJfS1v-fU0

[427 S/O]

Bartender!, bring me another beer and turn up that jute box...

[767Jockey]

Priceless. I for one REFUSE to press one for English. If I hear that I hang up and send my business elsewhere. The worst had to be last year when I went to vote, and there were Spanish signs in the voting hall. Let me think this through - In order to vote, you have to be a citizen of the United States, correct? In order to be a citizen, you have to prove your ability to read, speak and understand the English language, correct? So WHO do we have these signs up for, and WHY? What a mess - I welcome immigration, all I ask is three simple things:

1- Come to this country legally. Don't break our laws the instant you set foot on our land. That's disrespectful to us, and tells me that you really don't want nor do you deserve to be here.

2- Become a productive member of our society. That means vote, pay your taxes, and perhaps most important of all, reinvest your money in OUR community. If you earn money and spend it in the local market, dry cleaner, repair shop, etc..., that's how our community grows and thrives. If you send all your money out of our country back to your OLD country, you're now a leech, and we neither need nor want you. If your money needs to go "home", you should go with it, as soon as possible.

3- Please make every attempt to assimilate to us, and don't ask us to assimilate to you. If I want to learn to speak Spanish or some other language, I'll take a class. Also, I don't want to hear you talk about "Your Country" unless you're talking about the USA. If you refer to another country as "Your Country" you should carry a passport for that country and go home when your short, legal visit is over. Thanks for stopping by "My Country".

I guess the above makes me a "hater", as tossing that name around is much easier these day than fixing the problem. My Grandparents (all 4 of them) came to this country in the early 20th century from Italy. They refused to allow my parents to speak Italian in the home, as they were smart enough to understand that in order to succeed in their new country they would all need to speak English. They all carried a deep love of America in their hearts, and fought for our country in wars to defend their new adopted homeland. My Grandparents all learned to speak English, three of them flawlessly, one with fluency but an accented delivery. All their children became successful in life, and their Grandchildren even more so. By "accommodating" our new neighbors by allowing them to continue along with signs, newspapers and TV channels in their native tongue, and teaching them in our schools in their native tongue, we are condemning them to a life of isolation from the majority of their neighbors, and most likely denying them the success that my family and so many millions of similar families have enjoyed. My non educated Immigrant Grandparents understood this clearly. Why can't our college educated politicians see it?

[Rick Parker]

Well said Jock..........

[Don]

Web Site for the creators of the video:

http://www.rivolirevue.com/index.html

[stengun]

Howdy,

Too funny. It's true and sad.

I hate it when a go to the ATM, Wal-mart, etc and the thing ask for you to press for English. Screw them!!

Paul

[imagine2frolic]

I have gotten into the habit of asking for someone who speaks English lately. In my business I get a lot of calls trying to sell me something. A lot of them are from India, and the first thing I say is... "I can't understand you! Give me someone who speaks English". When they repeat themselves I just repeat myself. Then I say to them..."If you can't give me someone who speaks English I refuse to talk to you", and hang up.

My wish is that little by little we can chip away at this insanity. At this rate there will be no jobs in America. If we have no jobs how will we purchase the items made overseas? Let alone what little is made here! Corporate greed is sucking our Nation dry.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the American blood is simmering. The next step is boiling, and when the pot is boiling over. It is not a good thing! YES, I am tired of being asked to press #1 for English!

[Wayne Maybury]

I had no idea how bad this lack of English was in the US until I got personally involved. In early March I was in Florida for a conference and I had to fill up the rental car before returning it to National at the Miami Airport. I stopped in a gas station to fill up a few miles from the airport and it had those stupid pumps that want your zip code after you insert your credit card. Since I have a Canadian card, I can't put in a valid zip code so I went inside to give them my credit card and ask them to turn on the pump for me. Guess what, two ladies working there, neither of them could speak English. I was just about to leave and go to another gas station when one of them managed to understand that I wanted gas and she turned on the pump for me. I guess that the official language of southern Florida is now Spanish.

Wayne

[BMK]

It's amazing just how many different languages on our Government buildings. Instruction on how to get to reception, security etc etc.

[trularin]

Are you saying Australia is as bad as the US?

[Maxdax]

Could'nt agree more Jock,absolutely bang on.If only more people over here in England thought this way instead of lying down and taking all the crap that this government,do-gooders,political correct types ,anti racial idiots throw at us, this country perhaps would'nt be in the state it now sees itself.If people don't like the way we do things and have done things in the past then I suggest they take a one way ticket out of here.
Don't know whether you guys have seen whats happened here over the weekend but the people(if you can call them that)responsible will no doubt be claiming compensation for their burns and other injuries.
The authorities are way too soft,as soon as someone mentions the racist or civil liberties words they just back down,it really p****s me off.
Lets hope Gordon Brown makes some changes quickly.

Anyway thats made me feel better,rant over.
Cheers Maxdax

[strictlypersonl]

Colin McEnroe - The Hartford Courant

We've been having quite a debate about immigration lately. I was chatting with some guys right after a Wampanoag medicine circle last week, and I was surprised at how many people favor immediate deportation of everybody who has come here without proper authorization from our government - which is pretty much everybody who has come here.

"How are we going to do that?" I asked a guy named Tinsin. "We don't ever know how many of them there are. They're impossible to keep track of. How are we going to round them all up and send them back to England or Holland or wherever?"

"They're easy to find," a guy named Masshantamaine chimed in. "They smell bad. And they never do anything or go anywhere. They're very lazy. And they drink that alcohol stuff all the time."

"And they bring diseases," said Tinsin. "They're dirty and sneaky. And they refuse to learn the language."

They had a point. I'm pretty liberal on the immigration question, but I do think they should learn the language. Half the time they're babbling away in English, like we're supposed to understand them. We've set up Wampanoag as a Second Language evening classes down at the community wetu, but hardly any of them show up.

So I say to the pale immigrants, "How do you think you are going to make it here in this country, in this Shining Land of the First Light, if you don't speak the language?"

I learned enough English to say this to them, but that only encourages them. They want us - just for example - to do our signs in Wampanoag and

English. How practical is that?

I feel sorry for them. They're obviously scared. They have this crazy religion that scares them instead of making them brave. Their religion tells them they are evil and broken and nothing can save them except their One God's son, whom they killed by mistake quite a few years ago, so he's in no mood to save them. So they spend a lot of time on their knees whimpering about how horrible this world is and worrying that they're going somewhere even worse after they die. Great religion, huh? Sometimes, I say to them,"Toughen up! Everything is a God. The bear is a God. And the moose is a God. So is the wind and the fire. The river is a God. And the trout. And it's all good. It will make you brave to know these Gods, so you can get revenge against your enemies and 1 ive a great life and die a good death."

And they just start waving bunches of papers around and whimpering some more about what John Calvin said at the Synod of Dort or something.

So no wonder everybody says they're drain on our economy.

"Look," I said the other day. "They come from these really crappy countries where they are apparently right at the bottom of the river bed. They are not even allowed to practice their miserable religion of Oops, We Killed God's Son and Now He Hates Us."

"I thought God hated them because they ate something off one of his trees," said Hoken.

"That's ridiculous. A tree is a God," said Masshantamaine. "These people are morons. Make them go home."

"I'm concerned that this has become a racial thing," I said. "Would we be talking this way if they were not pale? If they were like us?"

"This has nothing to do with skin color. It has to do with following the rules," said Tetannett. "Did they petition the council of chiefs? Did they bring us five deer? I am totally about process — not skin color— and these people do not go through the process. They show up on their boats and immediately they want us to bring them squash and corn and turkey, because they lack the basic tools to fend for themselves, so they're starving and cold and sick. We have people who are here legally who do not get free corn and squash and turkey."

"Still, if we work with them, maybe they can become productive members of the Shining Land of the First Light," I said.

Boy, you would have thought I was the lead act at Clever Fox Comedy lief Jam Powwow Night, the way they laughed at that one.

So anyway, we've been trying to come up with some kind of plan that balances everybody's interests. For example, some of the people in the beaver skin field really like these immigrants, because they're just a tremendous market for beaver skins. They're always cold.

We're kicking around some kind of point system. They'd get a point, for example, if they had fishing skills or knew our language. They'd have to go back across the ocean and apply for a Special Otter

Permit, then they could come back and work under the otter program for eight seasons, accumulating more points. Then they would be hawks.

Eventually, after 40 seasons, if they didn't break any of our laws or excessively get on our nerves, we would make them human beings.

That's the framework, so to speak, but people keep trying to make changes. There's a surprisingly large contingent that wants to add a "They Have to Not Smell So Bad" rule. I admit, the pale ones smell really bad, but you get used to it.

A lot of people just want to work on tightening our borders, and there's a big project down by the beach to cut down frees and float them out in the water and tie them together so the boats can't get through.

"It's not going to work. People will just get through, because it's so great here, so they'll find a way. They just want what we have," I told a bunch of them.

"Yes," they said, "but we were here first."

What I'm proposing is amnesty for the ones who are already here, but they have to carry a piece of bark explaining who they are. We'll tell them they need it to get a canoe license.

"There's no such thing as a canoe license," Tetannett objected.

"They don't know that," I answered.

Part of the compromise is that the bark things will carry the message, "Hello. I smell bad and am probably carrying some kind of pestilence. I am also too stupid and lazy to learn the language this is written in."

Because, after all, what's the point of having immigrants if you can't pick on them?

[Don]

From the Web site:

http://www.americanwarrior.us/


"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

[trularin]

Is this bascially for english speaking countries?

[Don]

I received an automated phone message from UPS regarding a package pick-up notification.

The UPS message began with " Press One for English "

[Sizzler]

In Chicago and the surrounding area, the electric utility is Comm Ed.

If you call their 800 number you get:

"Press 2 for English" ... after something like press numero uno for espaniel

800-203-0684