Vero Possumus

Check out Barack Obama's new campaign logo, which is very familiar.  I think I've seen it somewhere before... 

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama sat down in Chicago Friday morning to discuss the economy with visiting Democratic governors, but all eyes were on the Illinois senator’s podium bearing, what might be described as, a quasi-presidential seal – a new Obama campaign logo.

[...]

...just above the eagle, in Latin, are the words – “vero possumus” – which translates to “yes we can,” the oft-heard chant at Obama rallies.

How do you say "No we can't" in Latin?  As in "No we can't" come up with an original idea for our logo.

***Update 6-24***

Obama new logo goes under the bus.

Comments

[Dave]

No we can't? Non possumus. That was easy.

[Julie]

Thanks. But shouldn't there be an apostrophe in there somewhere? :)

[Dave]

Well, there were things like that but then people in the Renaissance ruined it with their ad fontes (to the source!) cry that turned Latin from a living breathing language (with lots of stuff equivalent to the English apostrophe) into an archaic language useless for modern life, which led to it dying when people couldn't 'properly' use it anymore. Even though the Latin they were using was perfectly proper, just lacking in supposed purity. From Wikipedia:

"The humanists also sought to purge written Latin of medieval developments in its orthography. They insisted, for example, that ae be written out in full wherever it occurred in classical Latin; medieval scribes often wrote e instead of ae. They were much more zealous than medieval Latin writers that t and c be distinguished; because the effects of palatalization made them homophones, medieval scribes often wrote, for example, eciam for etiam. Their reforms even affected handwriting; Humanists usually wrote Latin in a script derived from Carolingian minuscule, the ultimate ancestor of most contemporary lower-case typefaces, avoiding the black-letter scripts used in the Middle Ages. Erasmus even proposed that the then-traditional pronunciations of Latin be abolished in favour of his reconstructed version of classical Latin pronunciation.

The humanist plan to remake Latin was largely successful, at least in education. Schools now taught the humanistic spellings, and encouraged the study of the texts selected by the humanists, to the large exclusion of later Latin literature. On the other hand, while humanist Latin was an elegant literary language, it became much harder to write books about law, medicine, science or contemporary politics in Latin while observing all of the Humanists' norms about vocabulary purging and classical usage. Because humanist Latin lacked precise vocabulary to deal with modern issues, their reforms accelerated the process of turning Latin from a workday language to an object of antiquarian study."

[Michael]

How fitting that the motto is in a dead language that isn't spoken. Sort of reminds me of all the other things about him that we can't speak about without being called racist.

You Don't Say -or- Ode to him

Do not say anything about...
His ears
His name and what his name sounds like
His income
His mother
His father
His grandmother
His wife
His kids
His race
His color
His lack of color
His age
His schooling
His preacher
His religion
What he heard
What he didn't hear
Why he was there
What he agrees with
What he disagrees with
His friends who are racistist
His friends who are biggots
His friends who are mobsters
His friends who are bombers
His friends who are terrorist
His supporters
His contributors
His experience
His intentions
His voting record
What he said then
What he says now
His desire to negotiate with anti-american terrorist
His desire to negotiate with anti-american dictators
His views on appeasement
His political views
His religious views
His flag pin
His past
His present
His future
Him... unless it's good
Not being able to say anything about all of the above

Do not question...
His motivations
His inspirations
His asperations
His intentions
His thoughts
His views
His experience
His feelings
His beliefs
His past
His integrity
His patriotism
His authority
His ability
His readiness
His appearence
His agenda
Him... unless it is good.

In other words... just shut up and vote for him without question. If you don't your a racist.

[NUFFsEnuff - People's Republic of Ann Arbor, MI, USA]

Michael,
Mmmmmm - That's good!

Don't forget - you cannot comment on his "schemes" either! (I couldn't believe it when he used the word "Schemes" in his biography to describe what most people would have described as their "goals".)