11 September 2009

Vocabulary In the News : 10 September 2009 – Detroit Free Press

NOTE! I apologize, link to image and PDF became inactive over time.

For a more readable version of this front page, you can save a pdf format of it by going HERE! To visit this newspaper’s homepage, go to: http://www.freep.com/

- As everybody knows, President Obama, speaking to a joint session of Congress on the 9th , addressed health care reform. The President said that the time for bickering is over. Bickering is a noun to describe arguing that has no significance and is unimportant. The noun is derived from the verb, to bicker which means to argue over things that are unimportant. In other words, Obama believes that the arguments against his health care plan have no merit and the debate should stop. http://www.freep.com/article/20090910/NEWS15/909100384/1318/

- The state of Michigan is confronting a problem in their judicial system. Petty spats are clogging up the courts! Petty refers to something that is unimportant and insignificant. A spat is an brief and usually unimportant argument. If two lovers are having an silly fight, we might call that a lovers’ spat. As you know, Americans are quite litigious and the problem in Michigan is that a lot of these petty spats are clogging up the courts. In other words, these cases are blocking and slowing down the system. The term is used often to describe pipes, tubes and waterways when they are blocked. http://www.freep.com/article/20090910/NEWS05/909100395/1322/PPO-requests--petty-spats-clog-up-courts (if you read the article, you’ll need to know what a PPO is : https://www.msu.edu/~safe/facts/ppo.htm)

- If you have a major success, you score big! The Ford Motor Company has been struggling to get the same publicity for its new electric car as General Motors has been been getting. Ford Motors scored big when they announced that they got a gig on the Jay Leno Show! A gig is an idiomatic expression for a public performance. In this case, the car will be featured in a segment of the show where celebrities are going to race it. Most of the time, a gig is used by singers and comedians. http://www.freep.com/article/20090910/BUSINESS06/909100338/1322/Ford-scores-big-Leno-gig

The front page of the Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) was taken from http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

For more about the health care debate in the US, here is a video from Newsy. The video is from just before the President addressed Congress.

To watch the video on the Newsy website and to read the transcript, go to: http://www.newsy.com/videos/a_speech_to_cure_u_s_health_care_reform

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