Phrase of the Day: “Rolling Stone”

Google is a great gift to etymologists;  but it has limits.

Rather earlier today, I posted a prose-poem, which had occurred to me as I moaned abed, in a druggy-draggy pre-caffeinated state, and gave it the title (which remained in memory, from years of doing business in Europe) “Wakey-Wakey!”  Or as my nice wife would put it, “Good morning, Mr Merry-Sunshine!”

I wasn’t sure how to spell it, and thus googled -- only to find that there is some sort of band of that name, which clogs up all the search responses.

So I re-searched: 

    “wakey-wakey” British  -band

and got what was needed.   Only,  to enter that searchstring, you’d have to already know that the idiom was British.

[Post-note]  Since writing that, I have learned that some Americans  also grew up with the phrase -- it seems to be a regionalism, I had never heard it in this country -- under the charming form

        Wakey-wakey / Eggs and bac-ee!

Likewise, if you wanted to know where the phrase “rolling stone” came from, you would have to battle thousands or maybe millions of top-responses  concerning the famous British band.

Now, this is one I just happen to know, from before Mick Jagger was ever born.

There is an old English proverb,

            A rolling stone  gathers no moss.

The band presumably took it from that.  -- But there is more to the story.

For -- What does the proverb mean?

If you ask anyone under thirty, you will get a blank stare:  They’ve never heard the thing.

If you ask someone under seventy (like Mick), you will likely get an interpretation  according to which being a “rolling stone” is a good thing -- a free spirit, as opposed to the hidebound “mossbacks” (although that last word is likewise unknown to most folks under ninety).   And this interpretation, surely, was the reason that Jagger et cie. so named themselves.

But there is an alternate interpretation -- the original, I believe -- according to which being a “rolling stone” is a bad thing.   This goes back to the days of English country gentlemen.  If you tend to your estate, you may become someone of note; but if you gad about, you will “gather no moss” -- neither wealth, nor reputation.

Anyhow:  The only reason I mention this, is by way of praise of the early Bob Dylan, who, before he became impossibly hip, really did know quite a bit about tradition.  And it still shows in his (middle-period) smash-hit “Like a Rolling Stone”.  Here, that status is nowise romanticised, as in the Jagger-et-al. interpretation, but harks back to your great-great-grandfathers:

            No direction-  home…..

            A complete un-known….

            Like a rolling stone …

Bless you, Bob.

FLASH: Romney camp solves the problem of entitlements (re-post)

[Don't bother to read this; it is being re-posted purely to defeat the Web-bots that have been spamming the original URL, which is now being deleted.
Actually, why not turn this thing (by now decidedly OBE) into an anthology of ads ...]

[Originally posted during the Presidential campaign, but now moot, as The Mittford  disperses into the winds, like a stale fart ...]

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

Amid the predictable liberal snarking and sniveling against candidate Mitt “Willard ‘Millard’” Romney’s eloquent (if perhaps not elegant) remarks  trashing the lowlifes who live high on the hog on Social Security or private pensions without paying Federal income tax, one central fact was lost:  the financier and buccanneer who hosted His Mittship at that Boca Raton (literally “Rat’s-Mouth”) mansion for that somewhat ill-starred event, Mr. Marc J. Leder, has personally come up with a surprisingly elegant solution to all those pesky grabby gramps & grannies who want to live large on the pensions they unaccountably feel Entitled to.  Let the New York Times tell it:

The Post’s tycoon, and the party’s host, was a financier named Marc J. Leder, and those weekend revels last July had the East End of Long Island buzzing. Like many deal makers, though, Mr. Leder, 50, is virtually unknown outside financial circles. But from his headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., he presides over a multibillion-dollar private empire. He is a practitioner of a Wall Street art that helped define an age of hyperwealth, and which has now been dragged into the white-hot spotlight of presidential politics: private equity.

It was through private equity that one Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, amassed his wealth — and, it turns out, it was through private equity that Mr. Romney first met Mr. Leder. A couple of months after the blowout in Bridgehampton, Mr. Leder was host for a fund-raiser at his Boca Raton home for Mr. Romney’s campaign. But the connection goes back even further. Years ago, a visit to Mr. Romney’s investment firm inspired Mr. Leder to get into private equity in the first place. Mr. Romney was an early investor in some of the deals done by Mr. Leder’s investment company, Sun Capital, which today oversees about $8 billion in equity.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzOXzZWUik

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

To his critics, he represents everything that’s wrong with this setup. In recent years, a large number of the companies that Sun Capital has acquired have run into serious trouble, eliminated jobs or both. Since 2008, some 25 of its companies — roughly one of every five it owns — have filed for bankruptcy.

Among the losers was Friendly’s, the restaurant chain known for its Jim Dandy sundaes and Fribble shakes. (Sun Capital was accused by a federal agency of pushing Friendly’s into bankruptcy last year to avoid paying pensions to the chain’s employees; Sun disputes that contention.) Another company that sank into bankruptcy was Real Mex, owner of the Chevy’s restaurant chain. In that case, Mr. Leder lost money for his investors not once, but twice. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/in-a-romney-believer-private-equitys-risks-and-rewards.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

-->

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Nook lovers are book lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

For the private sector -- problem solved!  Simply declare bankruptcy, and tell the working-stiffs to go take a long walk off a short pier.(Step 1.)

But what about those greedy retirees who, in addition to their personal pension (if any), think they have some kind of entitled “right” to fill their money-bins with dollars gushing from Social Security?  This brings us to Step 2, an old Republican favorite:

~ Privatize Social Security ~

And then?  See Step 1.

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

Meanwhile, the candidate himself  shows us how it's done.   He has accepted office as Prime Minister of free and independent people's popular Azawad -- where there are no taxes, and no entitlements.
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/romney-retraction.html

*

Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,

in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,

und christlich gesinnt,

klicken Sie bitte hier:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

*

Travaillant au noir,

le détective  se trouve aux prises

avec le Saint-Esprit

C’est quoi, le péché irrémissible ???

*

 For further wisdom from the good Doctor, click here:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

The Origins of Football

-->

[From the archives of the Museum of Modern American Culture.]

The time:  The 1890s.  The place:  Oklahoma City.

Some urchins on the wrong side of the trolley-tracks  were too poor to afford a nice round and proper ball -- but they managed to salvage a discarded and half-deflated one from a trashcan out back of the whorehouse that doubled as an abortion clinic.   Scraping off certain fluids  scarcely to be identified, they beheld their prize:  in shape, something between a limp blimp and a sat-on hoagie.  They attempted to hurl the thing through the air, but that proved impossible;  so they kicked it, savagely, along the gutters.  Thus was “FOOTBALL” born.

Later, a team of Mafia engineers perfected the shape, arriving at the familiar “pinched ends” under the influence of the well-known passages in Ecclesiastesicus (“Yea, why is the rat’s turd  tapered at both ends?” -- “Verily, so that his ass-hole doth not snap shut.”)

For obvious reasons, this pastime soon died out, and is all but unknown in our day.

Wakey-Wakey

… that pre-caffeinated state

in which bulgy grey blocs

of what ought to be thoughts

refuse,  rubbery,  to budge …

Syntactic Funfact of the Day: the Scope of Quantifiers

In modern grammar, a quantifier is a word like most, many, only;  and its scope in the sentence  consists of the words (or, rather, the concepts behind them) to which it applies.

Thus, in

            (1)  Most men and women like penguins.

the word most would, on the normal reading of the sentence, apply to men and women, and the sentence means that a majority of adults like penguins.  Whereas in

            (2)  Most men and quite a few women like hamsters.

most applies to men only.

The scholastics and their inheritors delighted in the syntax and semantics of such constructions.  A parade-example is

            (3)  Only Satan pities himself.

which is ambiguous, meaning either

            (3i)  The only individual who pities Satan is Satan himself.

or

            (3ii) Only Satan is given to self-pity.

           

Contrast

            (4)  Satan pities only himself.

which is unambiguous, and means “Satan pities himself and no-one else”  -- as opposed to “Satan pities himself and no-one else does”, which is another way of saying (3i).  This behavior is typical:  as a rule of thumb, a quantifier farther out to the syntactic edge will tend to admit readings of either broad or narrow scope, whereas a quantifier nestling well-embedded is more likely to be narrow.

Careful attention to where you place your quantifiers, and to the possible uncertainties  of interpretation with which you might be burdening the reader in case of scope-ambiguity, are sound linguistic hygiene.

(Note:  During the heyday of "Generative Semantics", to which your reporter was exposed at a tender age,  the term "Satan" in such sentences  was generally replaced by "Nixon" or "LBJ".  A distinction without a difference.)

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~

I was reminded of those old chestnuts earlier today, when reading a bit about Africa, currently so prominently in the news.    The following sentence appears in the article Mauritania, in the Third Edition of the Concise Columbia Encylopedia:

            (5)  Slavery was only officially abolished in 1980.

Encyclopedia articles tend to receive more careful copy-editing than do the daily newspapers;  nonetheless, a crucial ambiguity has here escaped the grammarian’s pen.  (5) can mean either

            (5i) Slavery was officially abolished only in 1980 (and not before)

-- that is, where only modifies in 1980;  or

            (5ii) Slavery was “abolished” in 1980 -- but only officially, not de facto.

That makes quite a big difference, especially for the existent or non-existent slaves!

I suspect that what the writer intended was (5i), but that the actual truth is (5ii).  Indeed, it is even possible that subconscious awareness of the real as opposed to the official state of affairs  led the writer to a sort of quantificational Freudian slip, where the meaning (5ii) peeps through below the surface.

By now curious as to the real-word state of events, I checked Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mauritania

which reports that, although officially abolished in 1981 (sic), the practice lives on -- nay, continues to enjoy a rude good health, with up to one fifth of the population being slaves.

(Only Satan is especially pleased at this.)

Word (and walk) of the Day: "Constitutional"

[Note:  The only reason I'm reposting this is so as to depost it from its original URL, where it has become the landing-site of hordes of basement-dwelling richly-pimpled incessantly-onanating spammers (this means U, Acne-Boy).  But while we're at it, let us note that today's title-word is in fact a noun, widely familiar in Grandfather's day, though little-known now (in this healthclub treadmill age), denoting a stroll taken for one's health.
The essay below was originally posted on 30 October 2011.]

~

A bright and cloudless day, following yesterday’s freak pre-Hallowe’en snowstorm.  As on most Sundays, I walked the couple of miles to the library, to pick up any goodies they might be holding for me, and to return books I’m done with, even if they’re not yet due.  It’s that early Jesuit training in deontological librarianism.

The trek takes me down to the lake, around it, past a bower, and then to the playing-fields, which stretch for quite a ways beneath the brow of the library mesa.  A bit behind the interfaith center, there’s an obscure short-cut through a little isthmus of the woods, which I’d never seen anybody use, and cuts about a quarter mile off the journey.  You wouldn’t even see it unless you were about three feet away from it, and where it’s situated, you’d have no reason to suspect that there was anything worth looking at  and so you would never find yourself within that radius of three feet.  The only reason I found it myself is that I’m always nosing about looking for alternate pathways to vary my routes.  Not opsec, really;  just for variety.  Anyhow I was quite pleased to have found this secret passageway, and announced conspiratorially to my wife, before revealing to her this new route, that it was a secret known only to myself and one old elf.  It’s the sort of narrow gap a hobbit might pass through.

About a month or so, though, as I was heading that way, I saw a bevy of squad-cars, two in the road and a couple right up on the lawn.  What -- was this a crime-scene? had a body been discovered in the little strip of woods, pierced by a dagger of rare Oriental design?  But they we just doing casual cop things -- donuts, mostly -- and I never did find out what happened there, since cops don’t like it when you ask them what they’re about.

~

There’s always something interesting to see, whenever you walk out, unencumbered, into God’s green earth.  Today there was a middle-aged couple on a lakeside bench, sprawled together in a dramatic pose, and a young photographer with professional equipment  was snapping shot after shot.  The couple were notably homely -- no celebrities with paparazzi in tow -- and seemed to love each other.  Maybe hired someone to help them with a scrapbook of their marriage.  Well why not.

I sometimes tip my hat to strangers, but of course many people don’t meet your eyes.  Today a couple of people I didn’t know -- a little boy and perhaps his mother -- gave me an unusually prompt and almost effusive greeting.  I Hi’d back, but as I walked on, wondered:  Did they figure I was open and approachable because of my funny hat ??  (Rather sensitive about this, as you may know by now.)  And then reflected, Those things probably do correlate.

Disappointingly, there turned out to be nothing for me at the desk.  The computer had said the item had shipped a day or two before, but they don’t do transfers on weekends, I learned.  So I browsed the shelves a bit and plucked off a big fat Steven Pinker, which you’ll probably be hearing about in these pages before long.  That’s what blogs are for.

~

On the way back, curiosity got the better of me, and I went out of my way to walk up to the shadowed northern entrance to the now-forbidden crossthrough.  The path was blocked by, not one, not two, but three new signs, including one that claimed the area was under continuous closed-circuit surveillance.   To further defend against the anticipated hordes of alpenstock-wielding Alpine-hatted hikers, a metal gate had been drawn across the path, and -- not making this up, folks, go and see for yourselves -- had piled a heap of branches behind it, as though anticipating a siege.   I considered simply walking around it, but quailed at the image of me standing there, with my funny hat and Steven Pinker book, while a SWAT team leaps out from the bushes screaming FREEZE !!!

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

A legal footnote, though.  One of the menacing signs specified that the area was a no-go zone because it is PRIVATE PROPERTY (a.k.a., in Proudhon’s formulation, theft).  Only… On this side are the playing-fields, and yonder the interfaith center, both owned by the township: the very township to which we all pay taxes.  So how does this little isthmus become private?  Has Donald Trump taken to buying up tiny speculative properties in obscure strips of random woods?  Where are our rights as a free proud people, the sons and daughters of pilgrims and pioneers?  I ought to write the township about it.  As usual, I won’t.

[For more from this pen:  ]

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

.

Further Advances in Marmotology

[In celebration of this joyous festival, Groundhog Day, we repost this, from 2010:]

[In accord with the sudden frenzy of interest in humble woodchucks on the World Wide Web -- the epicenter of which, oddly, would appear to be located in the southern Ukraine -- we are posting this urgent bulletin.  Please tweet this to everyone you've ever met, or might meet someday in the future, or in the after-life.]

Top-flight scientists making highly precise measurements have found an answer to the age-old question.   And the answer is:

If (counterfactual assumption) a woodchuck could chuck wood, then (apodosis) it would chuck:  a peck.

(NSF grant #Ops2B-911-6600.)

[ Update:  For more, like, really smart science-y stuff, check this out.]

[ For a swell sonnet about the Humble Woodchuck, click here. ]

And if (for some unfathomable reason) you personally don't actually like woodchucks, 
the following video is guaranteed  Woodchuck-Free:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TWpcZGE_q4

.

Which Paragraph D’ya Read?

In the heyday of the end-of-column filler, The New Yorker  used to have a great little featurette, titled “Which Newspaper D’ya Read?”  It would feature, side by side, headlines from two different newspapers, putting opposite spins on the exact same events.  (Things like, “General Widget’s sales soar 15%” and “General Widget once again fails to meet Wall Street expectations”.)

A more delicate dance is to spin things one way, then another, in the exact same day’s edition of a single newspaper, sometimes within the very same article.  Examples below, simply from the first two newspapers I looked at this morning, and both of them considered journalistic paragons.  The first is on the subject of combat roles for women (in French, poetically, "Les femmes au feu"); the second, on France's sudden intervention in Azawad.

(1) Gender-norming

(For our earlier essay on this topic, click here: )

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/word-of-day-gender-norming.html

One of the things I hate about the hypocrisy associated with Political Correctness (or with any other  empirically shaky but vigorously inburrowing ideology) is that it leads to such lousy journalism, an attempt to assimilate which may damage your synaptic connections.

Here is some happytalk from the opening paragraph of a featured article in this morning’s New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/us/politics/first-pull-ups-then-combat-marines-say.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

How many pull-ups does it take to make a female Marine?

The answer, starting next January: a minimum of three, the same number required of male Marines.

If anyone thought the military’s decision to allow women into combat units would lead to exceptions for women when it came to fitness and physical strength, this is one service’s “gender neutral” answer.

The smug and smarmy tone  is typical of the genre;  and yet this paragraph does apparently contain an actual numerical hard fact, one which brought me up short.  So:  Instead of expanding gender-norming, the services -- beginning with the Marines, no less -- will actually be rolling it back?!   This is indeed big news.

Only … if you read on past the gurgling prose, you come eventually to this, several column-inches later:

But even for the pull-ups, the Marines are still making some exceptions. To get a perfect grade, women will have to do only 8, compared with the 20 required for men.

Huh?

In other words, the New York Times is throwing fairy-dust in our faces --  Who knows how this all will eventually play out.

(2)  O Azawad, our Azawad

We earlier scoffed at some happytalk from a well-bearded academic, concerning the rainbow paradise that was growing up in MNLA-controlled  -- no wait, MNLA cum Ansar Din-controlled -- no wait, AQIM-controlled, with a roiling sprinkling of other groups -- northern Mali:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/update-to-azawad.html

Then, when it became obvious to all what a mess things were up there, the talk was all of a heroic multi-national African army striding in and setting things right.   Preparations are under way … real soon now … any time now …  Finally the French had to go in alone and do the job themselves, with what one journalist called the “shambolic” Malian army trailing in the rear, to perform looting duties and ethnic cleansing.

And now, during a (purely temporary, I assure you) pause in the fighting (which mostly actually didn’t happen;  the jihadis prudently withdrew, to fight another day), Francois Hollande is having his own “Mission Accomplished” moment, jetting in to Bamako along with three of his mistresses (er, ministers) for a photo op.

In my inbox this morning were the following three headlines from Le Figaro.   Each one read separately, could cause the head to nod.  Read together, they cause cognitive dissonance (don’t worry, there’s a pill for that):

François Hollande va prêcher la concorde à Bamako

Après trois semaines d'une guerre éclair, l'avenir du Mali dépend du dialogue entre Noirs et Touaregs. Le chef de l'État français est arrivé sur place

François Hollande est désormais «l'ami intime du Mali»

Les habitants de Bamako sont enthousiastes à l'idée d'accueillir celui qu'ils appellent leur « libérateur ».

Paris s'inquiète des exactions maliennes

If you are looking forward to the kumbaya fruits of that “dialogue”, or are puzzled by the reference of that word “exactions” (note:  It’s an etymologico-semantic “faux ami”; the meaning is much harsher in French than in English), check this out, again from this morning’s news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/world/africa/timbuktu-endured-terror-under-harsh-shariah-law.html?ref=global-home

Even here, the headline-writer is busy spinning, to deflect attention from the real story.   Yes, things really sucked up north in Gao, Kidal, and Timbuctu, under the rule of the takfiri carpetbaggers, an episode that was abundantly covered in the press, over many months, as the world waxed indignant over the destruction of clay tombs.   But the new story will find the press rather more light-shy at the lack of clear delineation between good guys and bad guys:  the looting and killings on the horizon (as yet no bigger than a man’s mailed fist), that the article squeamishly alludes to, are not those of al-Qaeda and friends, who are mostly off somewhere in the cave-pocked Ifoghas mountains  northwest of Kidal,  licking their wounds and regrouping, but are conducted by southern, black Malians, targeting the light-skinned:

Zahby Ould Ibrahim’s general store was looted to the studs this week. The horde that descended upon it took not just the shop’s stock of pots, pans and bedding but the electric sockets, the light bulbs and the doorframe, too.

A few shops away, Mahamane Dguitteye’s grocery store, its shelves lined with packets of spaghetti, bottles of olive oil and bars of soap, was completely untouched.

The main difference between the men? Mr. Ibrahim is an Arab. Mr. Dguitteye is a black African of the Songhai ethnic group.

[Update 13 March 2013]  Les exactions de l'armee malienne  continuent:
http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/03/12/des-soldats-maliens-a-nouveau-accuses-d-exactions_1846584_3212.html
Ethnic cleansing in the north, directed against Tuaregs, Moors, and Fulani (peuls), courtesy of the blacks from Bamako.  (And these, mind you, are supposedly the good guys.  -- You really need a scorecard to keep track...)

~

Footnote -- Department of Vox Populi.

Whenever I am depressed at journalistic standards (and we’re talking about the best here, not freaking Fox News), it is reassuring to go over the Readers Comments, and see that they have not been fooled.    The New York Times, cravenly, often does not permit commentary, but Le Figaro always does.   Here are some samples:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/02/01/01003-20130201ARTFIG00609-francois-hollande-va-precher-la-concorde-a-bamako.php?m_i=UhTUmd41VEEJVkpcZQv4yZK8nd15d5wVDSoHIDL_1mjqHvKUo

Quelle mascarade!!!! pendant la guerre contre Kahdafi n'oublions pas que les maliens nous huaient, mais aujoud'hui "grâce à l'armée malienne" on nou cesse de nous le repéter le Mali est libre!!! on attend de voir la suite!!!

---

Hollande qui va se glorifier au mali en nous faisant croire que cette guerre est presque terminé , c est pitoyable ! Hollande fait feu de tout bois , pour remonter dans les sondages! Si on a un peu de jugeote , on sait parfaitement que les terroristes ne lâcheront rien , contrairement à ce que dit hollande cette guerre est loin d être terminer!

--

Le Club Med en goguette... Hollande ne représente que lui-même...

---

Moi président est allée chercher de la popularité au Mali. Il ferait mieux de chasser les islamistes de France. Le Mali est majoritairement musulman. Que font les autres pays musulmans pour leur venir en aide ?

---

Il prêche la concorde à Bamako et sème la discorde en France! triste sire que ce président d'une partie des français.

--

Le Nord Mali sera-t'il le prochain Fort Saganne pour François II le Normal ...?

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

[Update, afternoon]  Good Lord, it gets worse.  Glurge alert!  The French President  goes groveling  before the fratricidal chaos of Africa.   If he needs a good whipping, why can't he go get it at Madame Sévère’s Bondage Basement, instead of dragging all France into his fantasies?

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2013/02/02/97001-20130202FILWWW00478-hollande-aux-maliens-nous-payons-notre-dette-a-votre-egard.php?m_i=8v%2B8E4MerewtaEBC7xWj2F0p1O3QJ1upnhVrns9ldwQXzEICl#!

François Hollande a déclaré aujourd'hui à Bamako que l'intervention de la France au Mali représentait une dette à payer. "Nous payons aujourd'hui notre dette à votre égard", a-t-il lancé place de l'Indépendance. "Je n'oublie pas que lorsque la France a été attaquée, lorsqu'elle cherchait des soutiens, qui est venu, c’est l’Afrique, c'est le Mali, merci le Mali", a expliqué le président de la République.

Puis, il a ajouté : "La France est avec vous, la France est fière de vous, et moi je veux vous dire que je viens de vivre la journée la plus importante de ma vie politique."

Once again, the readers are less than impressed:

Il ne représente q'un français sur trois au grand maximum...!
Alors avant de raconter des salades, il devrait demander d'abord l'avis des deux autres.

--

On croit rêver en lisant cet article....Le jour le plus important pour le Président de la République Française !!!!!

---

La dette de la France vis à vis du Mali? il est vraiment prêt à raconter n'importe quoi. A quand les demandes d'indemnisation?

--

La repentance, il n'y a que ça de vrai pour un socialiste, Honni soit qui Mali pense.

---

Ben alors,si à présent on se met à payer les dettes ,les américains risquent de nous envoyer la facture.Quant aux pauvres africains,personne ne leur avait demandé de venir se battre pour la France, ils ont été enrôlés de force.

And actually, for the matter of that, it is not so much the payment of a ‘debt’ that Malians are demanding, but … ransom:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-special-thanksgiving-in-mali.html

Note:  The Republican knuckleheads who have been accusing President Obama of “apologizing for America”   should check out the action in France  to see what serial apologizing really looks like.   More here:

http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/hollande-nous-payons-notre-dette-au-mali-02-02-2013-1623156_24.php#liste_commentaires

They may have to read it in French, though;  so far as I can tell, this latest shameful episode in P.C. self-abasement  has not been reported in any English-language source.

An account of the visit, complete with Hollande's speech, may be heard here:
http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5406733
For the connoisseur, one of Hollande's rhetorical flourishes was oddly reminiscent of Qaddafi's much-mocked speech, when his situation was hopeless, but he vowed to fight "hamlet by hamelt, lane by lane".  Hollande's version:  "ville par ville, village par village".

[Update, evening]  I was curious to see how this story would be handled in Le Monde, which is generally more squeamish about reporting embarrassing facts than is Le Figaro.    No word was breathed of Hollande’s abjectly truckling “debt-repayment” rhetoric, but they did touch upon the question of who has been doing the actual fighting.   This is of relevance, not so much for a matter of fairness (it is sometimes politic to give the credit to those who earned it not:  cf.  Argo), as because the world has been repeatedly told, over the past several months, that the African cavalry would be dashing in any hour now  to save the day.   And once again, there is a “Which paragraph do you read?” aspect to the reportage.

The article leads with a nod to the French and Malian forces -- or rather, Franco-Malian, presented as a unity, and sharing equally in the glory:

Les grandes villes du nord situées dans la bouche du Niger sont tombées aux mains des forces franco-maliennes.

http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/02/02/francois-hollande-heros-de-tombouctou-liberee_1826392_3212.html

Later, addressing the French troops who have just risked their lives for the sake of some Africans, President Hollande slips up, and nearly gives them credit; but quickly (politically-) corrects himself:

Le président évoque l'entrée dans la ville : "Vous (les Français) êtes entrés, ou plus exactement les Maliens sont entrés, dans la ville de Tombouctou.”

(Whew!  That was a close one.)

But if you read on, you eventually come to the following tidbit:

La prise de Kidal s'est faite par opération aéroportée et sans soldat malien.

…. Oh.

Never mind.

[Update 18 March 2013]  Although the Malian army has been worse than useless, the Chadians have truly stepped up to the plate:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/03/17/01003-20130317ARTFIG00122-l-appui-crucial-des-tchadiens-au-nord-du-mali.php?m_i=aPdaIuacU0VoiEfOnDOV2mGdsWviqRhrt5EIxcrP4pqnvNNG0

Mabruk, messieurs ! 

Une colonne des FATIM (Forces Armées Tchadienne en Intervention au Mali

[Update 10 April 2013] Toleja so:
 

Mali : les troupes de la Cédéao « totalement incapables », juge le Pentagone

Un haut responsable du Pentagone estime que les troupes engagées au Mali par les Etats africains ne sont pas « à la hauteur ». Et salue en revanche l'intervention française.

http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-politique/monde/actu/0202694143614-mali-les-troupes-de-la-cedeao-totalement-incapables-juge-le-pentagone-556594.php?xtor=EPR-1500-[nl_8h]-20130410-[s=461370_n=2_c=204_]-1664277[_SDV]@1

[Update 10 Dec 2013]  )* sigh *(   And yet again:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-little-bit-of-spin-makes-sugar-pill.html