People who publish blogs shouldn't throw around bad grammar.

One good thing about writing your own blog is that you get to "address" your pet peeves.  One of mine is bad grammar.  I find it nothing short of disgusting that so many people in the paid media don't know how to write a grammatically correct sentence.  Of course, those people ought to be fired by their employers.  Those who write their own blogs without compensation should merely be ashamed of themselves, I guess.  So, one of the things I'm going to do on this site from time to time is to point out those gaffes, naming the "writers" to whom they are at attributed.  Here's the first one.


This is a post on a site called "Busting Brackets" that is dated April 19, 2011 and was written by a guy named Blake Lovell. The post is about basketball at the University of Kentucky and is entitled Doron Lamb Coming Back to Kentucky For Another Season.  Here's the link:

http://bustingbrackets.com/2011/04/19/doron-lamb-coming-back-to-kentucky-for-another-season/

Lovell writes:  "I don’t necessarily think Lamb’s decision to come back with [sic] change the minds of Knight or Jones, as both of those guys are projected to go much higher in the draft than Lamb probably would have went."  Screech that chalk on that blackboard ! ! !  Of course, correctly written the sentence would have read, ". . . much higher in the draft than Lamb probably would have gone."  I repeat:  Screech that chalk on that blackboard ! ! !

I don't know much about websites, but the "Busting Brackets" website has advertising on it.  I guess that may mean that Lovell gets paid to abuse the English language like that.  Whether or not, this -- like the presidency of George W. Bush, the re-election of a Republican majority in the U. S. House of Representatives in 2010, and passage of the idiotic and unconstitutional immigration billed in Arizona refered to as "S.B. 1070" -- is just another illustration of the dumbing down of America.  Alas.

Lucien

President Obama's charitable contributions

Well ... I just read the first thing that I've read in a long time that made me glad that I voted for President Obama.  Here's the link.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obamas-income-17m-tax-bill-453770/1

It talks about the Obamas' personal income tax returns for 2011.  They had adjusted gross income of $1,728,096.  They paid $453,770 (a little over 26%) in total federal taxes.  But here's what I was pleased about:  They made charitable contributions of $245,075 -- about 14% of their adjusted gross income.  If all of the rich people in the country made charitable contributions at that level, all of the fine folks who help the less fortunate would have a whole lot more to work with, and ... IMHO ... our country would be a whole lot better place.

Just MHO, of course.

Lucien