If, with all his advisors, the president can’t determine which relative pronoun to use in commenting clauses, or where to place the adverb ‘only’ in a sentence, and hasn’t learned that things differ from other things and not than other things, how can you expect him to get other fine but important details and distinctions right?
President Obama said: “The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates into silly arguments, and big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away.”
That’s almost right; it should be: “The more that elected representatives, appointed commissars, and their media lackeys reduce serious debates into silly arguments, and big issues into sound bites, the more thinking citizens rightly ascertain that they’ve been willfully and mischievously deceived and, accordingly, turn away.”