Did Perry paint that on the rock or did somebody else do it??
Let's get real here... If he didn't do it then why are we talking about it?

This is not objectionable when viewed from the standpoint that we negotiated with the Soviets for decades over issues big and small. As distasteful it is, nothing is lost by talking. We have to leave Afghanistan sometime, and these people will be there long after that. If we can buy time and reduce casualties I say talk their ears off... We won't win a military decision there anyway so we might as well see if we can win some sort of humanitarian one. We may leave the country with something resembling a functional government but I doubt it will last....

What is truly frightening is that this guy is probably the smartest guy in the room where he works.....
The Constitution was fully ratified over 220 years ago and the fact that it is beyond his kin to understand it shows me the caliber of individual that is employed at the Washington Post... How sad....

This is why I have so little respect for academics that live in ivy covered halls.... The Oxford dons obviously don't get out much these days if this is the work product we are getting from them.

This fellow, Nicholas Ostler, seems to have little real world understanding of just how pervasive the English language really is. English was the last great language of Empire just as was Latin was 2000 years ago and Greek 1000 years before that. Where English differs from it predecessors is that English has passed beyond the "language of Empire" stage into the language of science, engineering, commerce, politics and international popular culture. It has the added advantage of a world wide communications network in which it can be used by an ever-increasing pool of users. Some languages may attain regional dominance, but English has universal appeal because unlike most other languages, English is scalable, flexible and accessible in ways other languages are not. Go almost anywhere in the world, someone speaks English in some form or another. Look at mass communication in the world today, be it radio, television, the cinema or the internet and you will find English as either a primary language or as a tertiary language. What makes English truly magnificent is the fact that it is so very adaptable to local and global conditions in ways that can't be duplicated by any other tongue. Any speaker of English anywhere in the world can make himself understood readily to any other English speaker with relative ease regardless of nationality. A person from America touring India would have little problem conversing with a taxi driver who spoke English. Local idiom aside, the basics of English are easily understood by most speakers with little real difficulty and even some customized idiomatic differences have become universal after being spread by mass media. English easily accepts local idiom and makes it part and parcel to the language as a whole. Through contextual understanding, words previously unknown or only lately understood can enter the language and remain integral to it in short order. What was once seen as strange becomes familiar to speaker and listener in a frighteningly short period of time.

Wherever America's armies and navies have been, English was left behind as an enduring legacy which has stood the test of time and utility to those who still speak it and teach it in those many far off lands. Go to places like Vietnam, a former French colony, and you will find as many English speakers as you would find French speakers if not more. Go to any country in Western Europe and English will more than likely be the dominant lingua franca. America can arguably make the case that it has continued in modern times what its mother country; Great Britain began 400 years ago when it spread the English language in its quest for Empire.

The Oxford linguist Nicholas Ostler may be a learned man, but I believe his conclusions simply don't wash. He makes gross assumptions all based on his "Three R's" principle. Even though there are rising economic powers like Russia, China and Brazil and the nations of the Mideast coming to positions of regional dominance and perhaps world dominance in many areas, none of these rising powers have languages (or corresponding cultures) that are as flexible, scalable nor do they have the willingness to adapt to the ever changing world as the English language or its corresponding cultures do. This is not to suggest any superiority per se, but simply acknowledges that English and the nations that have spread it and who use it as a primary language are culturally more flexible and less protectionist in the interest of cultural purity or preservation than the others. I also don't see Languages like Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian or Arabic eclipsing it due to their complexities in grammar, written text forms, or in lack of flexibility to scientific or specialized idiom. English, simply put, is the language of the infinite.

What do you expect in a country that has adopted a socialist economic model and that has a majority of it's children born out of wedlock....

Sweden has clearly abandoned every reasonable social and national construct that ensures cultural and national survival in favor of the insane notion of multiculturalism.... The Balkanization of Europe by islamic and other 3rd world peoples will destroy them ultimately... It happened to Rome, it will happen to them.

When we had strong Presidents like Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder and the Junior, we got events like the Olympics (4 of them) and the women's World Cup (once...).... Since the Obama regime came to power, he (and the U.S.) have been shafted twice by the international community for major athletic events like the Olympics and now the World Cup... Beginning to see a pattern? Once again, the world gives America the finger and all Obama does id whine... What a putz!!

Perhaps it is time for the U.S. and S. Korea to flex a few muscles of our own....

A low risk maneuver for us would be a naval blockade of N. Korea, efectively cutting off from the rest of the world..

During the height of WW2, August of 1942 to be exact, Winston Churchill wanted to meet his field commanders in N. Africa and with Stalin in Moscow, so he traveled to the Cairo an eventually on to Moscow on a single B-24 Liberator bomber called "Commando". The matte black painted aircraft had a American and Canadian crew interestingly enough (not a British crew). They flew from Britain in the middle of the night, in the middle of a German bombing raid, flying around the Iberian Peninsula and landed in Gibraltar, refueling, then flew on over darkest Africa into Cairo. He then flew on to Moscow and got within less than an hour's flying time from the fighting in Russia where he met with Stalin. When I think about the dangers and about how things were done then and all the ridiculous nonsense that we do today to "secure" our President when he travels in peacetime, I can't help but reflect that the leaders we had two generations ago were made of sterner stuff. The leader of the British Empire in the middle of the greatest war in the history of the world, flying in or near an active war zone in a single unarmed aircraft, flown by a foreign crew from England, through Africa and the Mideast and on to Russia and back again... This clown Obama needs an entire Naval fleet, a cast of thousands to set up the logistics, and billions of dollars just to go to India for a few days to see The Festival of Lights and do a bit of business... It shows just how absurd things have gotten in the world we live in.

Oh, great!! Just what we need: A new draft......
We are nearly bankrupt and this is the plan they have???
We have an "unorganized militia" that can do many things if asked, but that would be too constitutional for the
blow-hards in Washington to stomach. They need a creature that they can control and one that is beholden to them...

Obamao isn't "playing" into any one's hands....
He is PURPOSELY TRYING to tank the economy and PURPOSELY TRYING to force America to accept being something less than it was in the past in the name of universal egalitarianism and "anti-imperialism"....

He spent most of his formative years outside America and/or in the care of people who despised the nation and it's political, economic, and social constructs. This has shaped his way of thinking and thus his policies and practices. He and his cabal are committed to the Cloward-Piven Strategy and want to collapse the social welfare system in order to force America and her people to accept government controls and mandates over them as there will be no choices left... The Chinese have only to "call the note" on our debt and refuse to buy any more T-Bills and/or the other major economic players in the world have only to refuse to accept dollars any longer as payment for goods and services and we are through. This could very well happen if Obamao and the Congress continue spending money they don't have and create the money they need by simply printing and inflating more money. A Wiemar-like scenario is just around the corner for us if the government doesn't adopt extreme measures to cut spending and cut taxes.