Good morning, Romania!

Yesterday, I saw I'd been linked by a blog called Gradinariu. The subject was Barack Obama and my assessment of his Marxist interpretation of small-town Pennsylvania culture, but it was written in a language I didn't recognize.

It was a Latin-derived language, that much was clear, but it was neither French nor Spanish nor Italian. I guessed it must be Romanian -- Romania being one of the easternmost redoubts of Latin-influenced language.

My guess was right, it turns out. The blogger left a comment today saying that in Romania, they pay their taxes on Christmas Eve. A legacy of Ceausescu, I suspect.

Well, then .... Greetings, my Romanian friends!

I apologize to Romanian readers for any translation difficulties caused by my colloquial English. For example, I sometimes get bored with politics and click over to WeSmirch, pick up some trashy tabloid thing about a Hollywood celebrity and blog about that. But I'm not sure that "trashy tabloid" translates easily into Romanian.

What does translate? Kim Kardashian.
Talk about the universal language, huh? You may or may not understand American politics, but I know you guys in Bucharest are looking at Kim right now and saying, "Yeah, baby." (Or whatever the equivalent of "yeah, baby" is in Romanian.) So by posting this, I'm engaged in something I call "babe-blogging," which I will define thus:

Babe-blogging -- The practice whereby a political blogger seeks to attract more readers by gratuitously posting photos of attractive women. (See also: "traffic bait")

Some political bloggers refuse to engage in this practice, and look askance at those who do. But my traffic's down today, it's been a while since I've got a link from Ace of Spades, and I figured, what the heck, why not give it a try?