Mitt Romney speaks fluent french

????? wrote:

The larger point I was trying to make is that Bush was elected in large part because he came across as someone who is a good man and an honest man, whereas Kerry came across as more of a politician, maybe a little sleazier. The actual issues unfortunately take a back seat most of the time because most Americans fail to fully educate themselves on where everyone stands. As stupid as it sounds, "likeability" is a hugely important factor in presidential elections. Foreign affiars knowledge is less important. That's my take at least.

I believe that one day, through the lens of history, George W Bush will be viewed as one of the worst presidents in the history of the US, but the above is a pretty good assessment of how he got elected. It's unfortunate, but probably true, that presidential elections aren't substantially different than the "popularity contest" politics of middle school class officers. It astounds me that Mitt Romney, whose most significant accomplishment as a governor was health care, must distance himself from what he's done in that realm because that's popular with the other party, but not his primary election base. Instead, we're wrapped up in debates as to whether he's Christian enough or freaking speaks French.

Keep Drinking wrote:

Wiretapping has been upheld by the federal courts. It's prevented numerous terrorist hits on this country and Americans around the world. It's not domestic eavesdropping on everyone's conversation like your liberal news keeps telling you it is.

As for "declaring war," I'll be more than happy to, once again, post all the comments by your Democrats, including Bill, Hilary, Kerry, Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd and many, many others, who said emphatically that we MUST get rid of Saddaam and go in to Iraq. But, I won't let the facts get in the way of your bias.

Keep drinking the Kool Aid.

Maybe a few thousand lives every year is the price we have to pay for the freedom of the Constitution being upheld. We certainly don't seem to mind people dying from smoking, drunk driving, companies polluting rivers, etc.

Living in the Past wrote:

Don't you know that studying a foreign language is a sign of weakness? Let the foreigners learn English and learn to show appreciation for all that the United States has done for them over the years. I mean, damn it. We rebuilt Europe and Japan. We give billions in foreign aid to third world countries. We set a moral example for the rest of the world. Is it too much to ask that they learn English and adopt our institutions and way of life? After all, it's in their best interests to get with the global economy, which includes learning English.

This is precisely what is corrupting the English language. Forcing these nonwhite, non-European, non-Anglophone people to speak English does not change their genes or their thought patterns...all they do is learn, by rote, an expanded form of Basic English, and end up with a hideous pidgin--sufficient for crude commercial transactions, perhaps, but incapable of framing any abstract thought, or understanding subtleties of idiom, not to mention appreciating and augmenting our cultural patrimony.

No no no. Better to be like the Norwegians and the Dutch--learn other people's languages, and keep our own pure.

LEH wrote:

Better to be like the Norwegians and the Dutch--learn other people's languages, and keep our own pure.

Not a bad idea, although we would have a long way to go to match the Norwegians and the Dutch, most of whom speak English better than the average American.

The dude Mitt is a frigging mythologists who defers judgement to his church. The dude Mitt is against human rights for women, and wants the church to decide which medical procedures the Federales should fund. Romney is not American. The dude is a friggin mythologist. Plus that he's a chickenhawk, who push's war, yet never bothered to serve in the U.S. Army.

Romney's five sons, all of military age, have not served either. Some patriot he. But he is more than willing to send your sons off to war.

I minored in French in college. The female to male ratio in those classes is 10 to 1. And half of those guys were gay. For straight guys like me, it was a great situation. I got so much action and many girls were 10s. It also seems like a lot of girl runners I've met have studied French in France. You're missing out guys.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were francophiles and we'd probably be better off if more presidents studied Enlightenment works. Who cares if somebody has a French name. Brett Favre has a French name, so by your reasoning I guess he's gay. Tom DeLay was gay too.

I bet a lot of you French bashers have French origins and are ignorant about it because you don't know the language or you've lost your roots and don't know your genealogy. Perhaps we should start bashing Giuliani and greasy Italians?

Your understanding of wiretapping and Iraq is rather simplistic, if not downright wrong. Let's see some sources to back up the claim that wiretapping (and you mean warrantless wiretapping, right?) has prevented numerous attacks. You could do a little reading here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversyAnd your could read Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, to discover just how badly the administration bungled the Iraqi invasion, in some cases on purpose.But why should I bother? Anything that runs contrary to your belief system is Kool Aid perpetrated by the liberal media.

Keep Drinking wrote:

Wiretapping has been upheld by the federal courts. It's prevented numerous terrorist hits on this country and Americans around the world. It's not domestic eavesdropping on everyone's conversation like your liberal news keeps telling you it is.

As for "declaring war," I'll be more than happy to, once again, post all the comments by your Democrats, including Bill, Hilary, Kerry, Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd and many, many others, who said emphatically that we MUST get rid of Saddaam and go in to Iraq. But, I won't let the facts get in the way of your bias.

Keep drinking the Kool Aid.

So Mitt speaks Frog, so what? Makes him qualified to be prime minister of Canada but we already have a fascist in that job already.

Big difference there, idiot. I may have no respect whatsoever for Christians, but I am not trying to deprive them of their right to be Christian or do Christian things. Last I checked nobody has proposed a "Defense of Intellect Act" but talk about a "lifestyle being forced on America".

So why don't you take your little rant and stick it where only Ted Haggart would find it?

LEH wrote:

No no no. Better to be like the Norwegians and the Dutch--learn other people's languages, and keep our own pure.

Pure? Are you serious? Have you ever heard about the Norman Conquest? English is a dirty whore of a language. This statement is another glaring example of how ignorant many Americans are. First, English has a very large percentage (30%-40%) of words that have French origins. Examples: competition, art, table, publicity, police, role, routine, machine, force. If you want something more "pure" try to read material from Middle English and Anglo-Saxon and see if you can understand that.

Second, it doesn't help that American English is spelled differently than British English. If you want to take a step toward purifying English, then we should use British English spelling. Doesn't it make more sense that we should spell our words the same way that people living in the birthplace of English currently spell them? The concept of a pure language is ridiculous.

Bush was handed the election in 2000 by a limp d*ck Gore who didn't have the political balls to challenge the courts or make the courts search further. You can blame Jeb Bush if you want...I blame Gore for losing an election he really won.

In '04 the Dems were caught with their pants down letting Kerry in. How in the hell is an east coast democrat going to win a national election? He's not and Edwards didn't carry enough southern clout to fill a bathtub. Bush also had the war going for him. Citizens simply don't want change during a time of war...at least early on. Now, when a war is proved pointless and misguided (Vietnam, this current debacle) that is when people get pissed.

Alan

Norwegian is a lousy example of "purity". They've got two official languages. One is basically a dialect of Danish, and the other is an artificial concoction of various tribal languages. Dutch isn't much better.

A better example of a pure language is probably Icelandic, but that's due to the fact that it's so geographically isolated. Icelandic is the closest current thing to Old Norse, which is the common ancestor of the Scandinavian languages and has had substantial influence on English and German.

At the end of the day, a "pure" language should not be a goal. Languages don't spontaneously mutate, they change for a reason, to adapt to cultural and technological changes. Language is an incredibly interesting topic. If you never try to learn (and master) a foreign language you're depriving yourself of a very rewarding intellectual challenge.

hypnotoad wrote:

At the end of the day, a "pure" language should not be a goal. Languages don't spontaneously mutate, they change for a reason, to adapt to cultural and technological changes. Language is an incredibly interesting topic. If you never try to learn (and master) a foreign language you're depriving yourself of a very rewarding intellectual challenge.

I think you meant to reply to the other guy LEH. Good points. It could be that in a thousand years most people won't understand what we're saying and writing now. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing.

Believe it or not Kerry had a slightly worse GPA than Busch at YALE.. They were both C students... What a crap choice we had 4 years go !

C Student wrote:

What a crap choice we had 4 years go !

You're right. Kerry is a windbag who speaks only in polysyllabic words; Bush is a bully who cannot pronounce any polysyllabic words.

Calling Anthony Burgess...

You are making a plausible point, but it is superficial and reductionist, not to mention undergraduate. Okay, the centuries following the Norman Conquest created a new language, a creole Middle English, full of French and Latin words on an Anglo-Saxon base. Nobody is proposing we go back to Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer. The Venerable Bede is as unreadable to the modern Anglophone as the Elder Edda. So much for that.

You know perfectly well what English is. English as we know it is the language of Chaucer (sort of), Shakespeare, Pope, Fielding, Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot, John Updike and Ian McEwen. That is the British-American English I am discussing.

Yes, English is full of word-borrowings and is not a "pure" language in that sense. But no language is. French is not Latin, and is not Frankish either.

To your other point. There are no major differences between Standard Received British and standard American (let alone standard Australian, etc.). A few spelling differences, and miniscule things like "diapers" vs. "nappies". A Geordie and a Mainer and a Sydneysider can all converse with minimal hesitation (though film subtitles might sometimes be useful!). That by itself is remarkable. These are not different languages, they don't even qualify as distinctly different dialects.

What an utterly moronic argument. Lots of private organizations receive government aid and do great work. For instance, the majority of my contributions go to Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross. I also give to various cancer and AIDS research organizations. What Bush wants to do is give some of their money to charities who explicitly or implicitly expect religious observance in return for their services.

Yes, I agree 100% that we should abandon legal sanction of marriage. But since that's not realistic, shutting a sexual minority out of basic rights that others can take for granted is unreasonable and undignified. Is it about acceptance? To an extent, yes, and why shouldn't it be? Are you arguing that we should not "accept" gay people?

Thank you. With comments like this you save me the trouble of calling you an idiot.

hypnotoad wrote:

Give us some examples of decisions which Bush has made based on Christian values.

Removing contraception from all foreign aid programs. He did this the FIRST day of his presidency.