The Ubiquitous Grammar Cop

A broken arm is not a worthy price to pay for a stainless steel stock pot on sale for $10.

When I read about American International Group CEO Edward Liddy's testimony before the House Finance committee earlier this week, I noticed something that got my hamster wheel turning (it was not the notion that Ed Liddy and G. Gordon Liddy are brothers or kindred spirits). Ed Liddy has been CEO of AIG for only six months. Prior to that, he headed Allstate. I am not sure where he worked prior to that or how long he as CEO of Allstate; I would guess that he did not work there very long if he was a CEO. It seems that CEOs have become a band of high-priced journeymen (or day-laborers if you prefer) moving in random patterns across the corporate landscape. For example, Bob Nardelli went from General Electric to Home Depot to Chrysler in the span of six years (he collected well over $200 million in severance from Home Depot because he did not raise the stock value of Home Depot during his tenure). Apparently, CEO tenure is something that has dwindled over time, especially in the last d...

On the 12 March 2009 edition of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow spoke at length about the recently late James G. Cummings . He died in December 2008 at the hands of his wife who, according to witnesses, suffered through years of physical and mental abuse from her now dead husband. What I found most striking about Rachel Maddow's story was not the "Burning Bed" vengeance of Mrs. Cummings but what authorities found in their home after she killed her husband: materials and ingredients for a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb is similar to a conventional explosive device except it is laced with an amount of radioactive material (depleted uranium for example) so when it detonates, the radioactive material disperses over a small yet particular area, rendering it unsafe. It does not produce the mushroom cloud since the radioactive material itself does not explode. Dirty bombs, in certain circles, causes an understandable amount of concern. Many of these people are worried ...

Since it's time to spring forward, I remember reading (and hearing on National Public Radio ) two years ago how the new schedule for Daylight Savings Time actually isn't about saving energy but more about sales. Specifically, since the new schedule means we "spring forward" on the second Sunday in March and "fall back" on the first Sunday in November, is it just to give trick-or-treaters an extra hour of daylight on Halloween? That certainly would not hurt candy sales at all.

I wonder if the reason why we, the only industrialized nation in the world without universal, single-payer health care, don't have it because we have a heterogeneous population. Are some people actually afraid that a brown person gets a prescription to clear up a sinus infection or abscessed tooth?

Do the opponents of socialism understand at one time Republicans embraced socialist programs and projects? Today's GOP could take a leaf from Eisenhower's book.

Once upon a time in America's not too distant past, there used to be a regional flavor to the towns and cities that varied depending on where you traveled. While each town and city may look the same from afar, on closer inspection, they varied. Each town had its own series of banks, drug stores, restaurants, grocery stores, and so forth, most of them independently owned and operated. Because commerce existed in this way you could be reasonably certain that something you purchased in Columbia, South Carolina for example was something you possibly could not buy in Detroit, Michigan or in Denver, Colorado. This does not apply to all things of course. For example, anyone in the United States in 1978 could walk into their local grocery and purchase a bag of Doritos. They could stop in their local drug store and pick up a bottle of Pepto-Bismol to soothe an upset stomach (after eating an entire bag of recently purchased Doritos). They could go into their local record store and buy the n...