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So would I, but I'm not holding my breath. Most people couldn't care less. Or, as many say, they "could care less" -- illogically implying a certain quantifiable, greater-than-zero amount of caring, when what they mean to say is that they don't care at all, i.e., that it would be impossible for them to scrape up even the merest smidgeon of care.

And now, in what Dr. Hannibal Lecter would undoubtedly describe as a ham-handed segue, I need to go scrape up the foot and a half of Global Warming that appeared mysteriously overnight in the driveway. À bientôt, all.

When a news story announces "Australia prime minister arrives" or the greengrocer advertises "Belgium endive" or the menu offers "France fries," patting the miscreant on the head and cooing "what adorable linguistic evolution" isn't the first response that comes to mind.

Standards went out the window when lexicographers -- good little post-Gramscian egalitarians that they were -- decreed that dictionaries should no longer be prescriptive (i.e., mandating the usages that should be observed) but descriptive (i.e., documenting, and thereby legitimizing, the ever-expanding bog of common mistakes). The rot spread even to the venerable University of Chicago Manual of Style, which in its 14th edition sanctified the singular "their" ("everyone should consult their favorite authority").

Linguistic evolution is one thing; the enshrinement of illiteracy is quite another.

"Contact your nearest veterans hospital and inquire about you and your children paying some visits and volunteering to help wounded vets." -- Sounds good to me.

It is good, till you get to the next sentence: "It may be a sobering experience, but it should open their eyes in no time flat." Given that the kids are enthusiastic about enlisting, that phrase "open their eyes" leaves no question about where Hag Van Buren is coming from. Still, as other posters have suggested, we can hope the kids will learn things at the hospital that they doubtless never did at home, and that their desire to serve their country will be fulfilled -- especially if they can talk to the vets alone, without Cleveland Mom at their elbow.

If last week's antics are any indication, we may see a Democrat split, setting gotta-corral-the-moderates Hillary against the farthest-left faction of her party, which would be a tremendous gift for conservatives (note I don't say "Republicans").

Strunk and White rule, now and forever! -- Except in the fourth edition, which came out in hardcover in 1999. This abomination, which introduced PC notions and an appalling slew of typos, should be burned at the stake, and the original 1964 MacMillan paperback should be reprinted ver-effing-batim and airdropped into every high-school classroom and MSM newsroom in the country.

The next stake over should be reserved for something called Adios, Strunk and White: A Handbook for the New Academic Essay by Hoffman and Hoffman. It was already in its third edition in 2003, with rave reviews at Amazon.com from various Professors of English -- which may help explain why, as one English friend commented recently, America appears to be a nation of people who don't know what to do with an apostrophe.

How about "The fact that I'm blonde doesn't mean I'm stupid"?

It takes a little planning, but (in this case at least) it improves the chances of the statement's being true.

"...two separate leggings with a codpiece, or merkin, where the modern zipper is..."

The well-dressed 16th-century English gentleman sometimes wore both: the codpiece, which was the externally visible textile item, over the merkin, which was the (shall we say) wig that restored a somewhat normal appearance to an area that had been shaved as an anti-lice measure.

Good one, Chef.
Rolled those right past everyone...!

Nooo.... I think she's the new president-elect of Harvard.

Bush. thanks a lot for throwing the Republican majority away

There. Fixed it.

Bush can carry the big stick, but he can't speak softly.

Wouldn't matter -- or be so tooth-grindingly frustrating -- if he'd just use the damned thing once in a while.

I'm with you on this one. Snowhill, schmohill -- what's the harm?
But gilded putti in a converted New England carriage house... Yikes!

We still do. Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, near the air base at Ramstein, is a world-class trauma facility and our biggest military hospital outside CONUS. The wounded come in via Critical Care Air Transport (CCAT) -- a sort of mobile ICU -- from Iraq and the other MidEast garden spots, and so far the Germans and Austrians and Bulgarians haven't given us any static about those flights. They'd better not start.

Scusatemi, Rodolfo. The worst thing is being the country that a sizable portion of "everybody" wants to come to and destroy -- and doing sweet F.A. about it. (And yes, that includes your position on the Second Amendment.)

You almost had me leaning your way, but now -- as they say in some parts of your constituency -- Va fa'nculo.

Footnote: Burdick's book (written with Bill Lederer) came out in 1958, but didn't draw general attention until after we got involved in a land war in Asia.

And... I'm probably p*ssing against the wind here, but I have to point out that the character in the book who was actually known as the "ugly American" was the lone good guy: a tall, gangly, red-haired fellow -- think Lyle Lovett -- working barehanded with the 'yard villagers up in the hills. The real uglies, of course, were in Saigon: the Foggy Bottom types and, later, the presstitutes filing their stories from the bar at the Hotel Continental.

When a Tidal Wave wipes out a nation, I don't hear "the World" shouting for Iran, or the UN to help them...

Some of the shouters shout because they know we'll always come through -- with hundreds of tons of food, medicine, and clean water for Banda Aceh, for instance, courtesy of the U.S. Navy, while the U.N. parasites were busy arranging five-star dinners at four-star hotels to sustain themselves during their exhausting "fact-finding" forays and back-breaking "planning sessions."

Other shouters demand we do the heavy lifting because, y'know, a successful, powerful, wealthy country like ours just has an obligation to the rest of the planet, and they won't be happy till the weight of meeting that obligation kicks a helluva hole in our GDP and our standard of living.

What frosts their little socialist socks is that we can, and do, pour hundreds of millions into not only ad-hoc disaster relief but also everyday foreign "aid" -- and we're still nowhere near becoming as miserable as they are. Not just yet.

Before you emigrate, consider that Australia -- stand-up country though it is on the main issue of our time -- bars immigrants who don't have two years' worth of liquid assets in hand, beforehand. Add the firearms situation, the cost of living (comparable to Alaska's, given that nearly all of life's amenities except for mutton ((if you consider that an amenity)) have to be imported), the possibility that Mr. Howard won't be PM forever, and the fact that incoming pets have to undergo a 6-month quarantine, and the idea loses some of its luster.

On the other hand, they do speak English, after a fashion, and the sailing is terrific.

You broke the code, chief.
Can't keep her on, because he'd lose his "moderate" constituents.
Can't fire her, because he'd lose the moonbat support.
Can't fire her and then openly rehire her, because of the flipflop factor.

The "voluntary" golden parachute is the only way to go... through three or four layers of institutional cut-outs, natch.

A couple of decades ago, when the San Francisco Bay Area was still a place where civilized people could live, it took surprisingly long for the First United Church of Kensington to amend its name to the First United Church of North Berkeley.