Detroit school board chief Otis Mathis admits to a “grammar problem.” When some of his emails (consisting of 3rd-grade level grammar) got out in the public, the local media nicely jumped on it. From Laura Berman’s column:

He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence. Here’s a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

It turns out he couldn’t even pass an English proficiency exam required to graduate from college. Here’s another one of his emails:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?

He graduated from a Detroit high school with “a 1.8 grade-point average but was previously reported as a .98 average.” He used to be a substitute teacher. He calls himself a role model. But, in his defense …..

Dare I defend him, but anyone who works in a large corporate environment such as I do sees emails far worse than those above on a daily/hourly basis. Horrifying, incomprehensible emails all day long – even from managers, senior directors, and the like. For years this has baffled me. And before that I tutored college students (most of them from grad programs) in Business Communications. That was a major eye opener for me. For example, I was tutoring senior managers from Chrysler, GM, Ford, etc. who were in business school to get their grad degrees (mostly MBAs) for job advancement.

So the only difference is that Mr. Mathis actually leads those who teach at the lowest performing public schools in the nation.

In Oregon, a disgruntled government employee who was placed on leave was arrested for legally buying guns. He was taken into custody by a team of SWAT soldiers wearing the standard military garb, and he was sent in for a mental health evaluation. The arrest was justified by “concern” on the part of the Oregon police state. In fact, they were “extremely concerned” the man might retaliate against his government employers. Again, the “concern ” was reason enough for arrest and a mental evaluation.

Are those halogen headlights on his ballistic shield? Indeed.

Here’s an interesting post on food subsidies from 2007.

When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.

Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.

Farm and food subsidies are becoming one of the most single important ways in which government can control the populace and feed its own growth and power. If you can keep people sick, fat, needy, hooked on pharmaceuticals, and desiring government programs to solve their problems brought on by government policy, the vicious circle will feed off of itself and grow the powers of the state to “solve” one massive “health crisis” after another.

Congressional friends of corporate interests have one foot in the subsidy trough, propping up their constituency that consists of agriculture and powerful (processed) food interests, and on the other hand they purport to want to save you through their nationalized health care, “war” on obesity, and jihad against any alternative forms of health solutions and maintenance. Government is in the business of making special interests wealthy, and in the process, it knowingly creates problems that can feed its own growth so it has the manpower to “resolve” the problems. Many years and many $$$$$ later, the problems are far more widespread and catastrophic. Yet every dupe in the media and medical establishment acts as if they have no idea how Americans came to be saddled with this exploding epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

From the archives:

I am going to be interviewed by John Loeffler tomorrow evening for his Steel-on-Steel radio show, an established weekly news and interview program airing in the U.S. and Canada on the IRN, USA. and Family Radio Networks, which deals with cutting edge stuff, including political and religious topics. I’ll be talking about the potential for 401k confiscation on the part of the U.S. government. I think it will air on Saturday, March 6th, and I’ll update that if I hear anything further. I get so many of these radio interview requests, however, I cannot do most of them due to time constraints. Unfortunately, most of them look for daytime interviews, which have become very difficult for me to do.

Of course that’s not true, but why is this issue barely making the news wires?

The automaker said the vehicles are still safe to drive and never lose their steering, but it may be harder to steer them when traveling under 15 mph.

The recall affects 2005 to 2010 Chevrolet Cobalts, 2007 to 2010 Pontiac G5s, 2005 and 2006 Pontiac Pursuits sold in Canada and 2005 and 2006 Pontiac G4s sold in Mexico.

General Motors Co. said Monday it will recall 1.3 million Chevrolet and Pontiac compact cars sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to fix power steering motors that can fail.

Where’s the congressional interrogation of GM, and when is Ed Whitacre going to apologize for manufacturing unsafe vehicles?

She’s using a Macbook and a teleprompter, and it doesn’t help her act. I hope Apple doesn’t lose sales because of the Macbook prop. The millionaire Liar can’t pull off this prepared propaganda bit because it’s just not possible for middle-class Americans to like her or believe a word she says. Money can’t buy you love, Nancy. The best thing about this whole health care bungle is the failure of the Dems to sell their snake oil to regular Joes, in spite of their constant push to bewitch the masses.

Has anyone ever told her that her plastic surgeon pulls her face too tight?

Those amazingly simpleminded saps are jumping all over Starbucks with their childish campaign, “espresso shots, not gunshots.” Whereas many large chain stores are commencing gun bans in their places of business, Starbucks has not jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the fools.

But Starbucks, the largest chain targeted, has refused to take the bait, saying in a statement this month that it follows state and local laws and has its own safety measures in its stores.

Hooray for Starbucks! They know who and what is good for business, and it surely isn’t the small bands of crybaby protesters who occasionally gather at a Starbucks to discuss the glories of wealth redistribution and the greatness of government. Then there’s this loon:

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington Ceasefire, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun violence, said allowing guns in coffeehouses robs residents of “societal sanctuaries.”

“People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace,” Fascitelli said. “But people walk in with open-carry guns and it destroys the tranquility.”

Societal sanctuaries? Tranquility? And a sidearm on some peaceful person’s hip destroys his day, his world?

The ATF seized a shipment of 30 Airsoft BB guns headed for a retail business because ….

Special Agent Kelvin Crenshaw said the toys can be easily retro-fitted into dangerous weapons.

“With minimal work it could be converted to a machine gun,” Crenshaw said.

And then there was the orange tip “problem.”

ATF said it also seized the toys because they are missing the blaze orange tips required on all imported toy guns.

The Martins said they’ve received shipments before from Taiwan that were missing the orange tips and were simply asked by customs agents to drive up to Tacoma and paint the tips orange themselves. They are wondering why it is an issue now.

Thanks to Charles Everett for the link.

I can’t imagine the poise it took for this child to get on stage in front of all those people and perform with Hank Williams, Jr.

Here’s another version.