30.11.16 Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was a disaster: she lost her bid to such an unlikely candidate as Trump. Leaving alone her numerous political blunders Hillary Clinton’s linguistic mistakes are surprising and stupendous:

1) Her contrived and condescending Southern drawl and “black accent” when appearing in the South, especially when addressing black audiences, was noticed and not appreciated.

2) Her haughty “basket of deplorables” («жалкие зашоренные людишки») comment was a major misstep.

3) Her comment that she and Bill Clinton “came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt” was outrageous.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/307780-whos-to-blame-for-hillarys-defeat-its-not-russia

27.11.16 "An Indian giver" is "one of the most offensive things" you can call somebody. 

"An Indian gift," Hutchinson wrote 251 years ago, "is a proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected." In John Russell Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, he codified "Indian giver," defining it like this: When an Indian gives anything, he expects to receive an equivalent, or to have his gift returned. The term is applied by children to a child who, after having given away a thing, wishes to have it back again.

The phrase was widely used in newspaper headlines in the early 20th century as shorthand for one party in a divorce case who demands back a gift from the other, NPR's Lakshmi Gandhi noted in 2013, and it is still used today, impolitely, to mean a friend "who is so uncivilized as to ask us to return a gift he has given."

For more stories about cultural and institutional terms look up David Wilton's "Word Myths".

23.11.16 “Post-Truth” is Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year. 

The term comes from an idea that became popular during the 2016 election campaign in the United States. Post-truth, as the website defines it, means to relate to situations where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Oxford Dictionaries officials say they chose post-truth as Word of the Year because of its rising popularity. They said the term’s usage appeared to increase 2,000% in 2016 alone. If you plan to use the word, Oxford Dictionaries defines it as an adjective. An example of it is the expression “post-truth politics.”

A number of other terms were under consideration for Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year. They included “Brexiteer,” which means someone who supported Britain’s decision to exit, or leave, the European Union. Another choice was “alt-right,” which describes a group tied to extreme conservative ideas, and known to reject traditional politics. A third possibility was “adulting,” a noun meaning the action of someone behaving like a responsible adult.

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/post-truth-named-2016-word-of-the-year/3603012.html

21.11.2016 Anyone who is familiar with learning or teaching English knows that there are many intermediate stages between complete inability to express oneself and near-native fluency of expression. At the initial stage of learning it's more than a crime - it's a mistake!!! - to drown the learners in monolingual English language textbooks. This is what can be observed at our secondary schools, but just examine David Crystal's dichotomy of "basic - informal" to understand that the path to success requires numerous stages in which adaptation runs the show. David Crystal, a Professor of world fame, can be reached here:

https://yandex.ua/video/search?text=david%20crystal%20basic%20vs%20informal%20english&path=wizard&parent-reqid=1479716582476965-1174232964645783884211806-sas1-1802&noreask=1

19.11.16 “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" (Oscar Wilde). Go ahead, Mr Kasich, yield to a temptation, and you will eat your impotent metaphor! How many fools have already tried to do it! Here is a wise warning:

Whenever there is a temptation to “punch the Russians in the nose” (as John Kasich put it), we need to consider carefully what we are trying to achieve, what the likely reaction will be, and whether it is really necessary. 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/repairing-the-u-s-russia-relationship/

Как только появляется соблазн «ударить Россию по носу» (как выразился Джон Кейсик (John Kasich), нам следует внимательно разобраться в том, чего мы хотим добиться, какова будет вероятная реакция и также понять, нужно ли это, на самом деле, делать.

The literal translation is euphemistic, of course. What is lurking behind it is far more ominous: to destroy, eliminate, annihilate etc. would be more accurate.

13.11.16 The choice between Trump and Clinton was the choice between the vulgar and the ignorant, on the one hand, and the corrupt and arrogant, on the other. The American people are ready to put up with vulgarity and ignorance, because  corruption and arrogance are unacceptable to them. The Americans (as the Ukrainians!) wonder:

"If they were public servants all their lives, why are they so rich?" -- that question would have been a powerful weapon against them in the young democracies. In Ukraine, where a nationalist, anti-corruption revolution ousted the previous president in 2014, it is being asked right now in the wake of a property declaration campaign that revealed local officials have stashed away hundreds of millions of dollars in cash.

http://112.international/politics/trumps-victory-proves-the-us-is-unexceptional-leonid-bershidsky-10851.html

9.11.16  US election 2016 result: Trump beats Clinton to take White House

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37920175

I am delighted to see Hillary's defeat. Serves her right!

Who propelled Donald Trump to power? At least, in part he was backed up by rural and Rust Belt voters (избирателями из сельской местности и из Промышленного пояса). The voters grew sick of the establishment and wanted change. 

​https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump/2016/11/09/037114be-a530-11e6-8fc0-7be8f848c492_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Gates of history close on Hillary Clinton...

http://www.euronews.com/2016/11/09/gates-of-history-close-on-hillary-clinton

7.11.16 A piece of observation from "Newsweek":

Blesener, however, was disturbed by the Right Sector’s darker side, noticing that some members had swastika tattoos. (The Right Sector did not reply to Newsweek ’s repeated requests for comment.) “It is shocking that a unit can at the same time embody virtues that I respect—such as allowing women to fight on the front line of combat—yet, on the other hand, be known for nationalistic rhetoric, Russophobia and hate speech,” she says. “It's a tragedy to see that nationalism is now on the rise again in a country that suffered so much from it in World War II .”

http://europe.newsweek.com/ukraine-right-sector-female-soldiers-515943

1.11.16 In a week's time we'll learn the name of the next President of the most powerful country in the world. For my part, I am sure it is going to be Hillary Clinton who is an inalienable part of the American establishment, but comes up as the most unsympathetic personality among the "iron ladies". I am afraid, she is unfit for the job because she is so ready to play war games to prove that she's got more balls than any man. I deplore the inevitable, though her Presidency is going to win me a bottle of vodka from my friend V. N. Butov.)))