Assault Weapon:
Any weapon that can be used in an assault, including water balloons and cartoons
fashioned by Charlie
Hebdo and Bob Englehart.
Board of Education:
When he was a reporter (see below)
in California, Ambrose Bierce discovered that a man running for election to the
Board of Education had been accused of consorting with a prostitute. Bierce
urged his election, arguing it would lead him to reform since, “No respectable
harlot who cares for her reputation would continue her acquaintance with a man
who had been elected to the Board of Education.”
State Budget: A
work in progress designed to leave everyone but politicians and political
hangers-on poorer, less self-reliant and more dependent upon budget-makers.
Capital Punishment:
Mint Julep time awaiting Godot, who never arrives.
Controversial: An
adjective that precedes the name of that politician whose funeral you’d most
like to attend.
Difficult choice:
An inducement to raise taxes.
Embattled: See “Controversial” above.
Independent
Politician: A politician who depends only upon his political instinct,
usually wrong, his always noxious Interest
Group (see below) and the considered opinion of his third wife and her
lawyer.
Interest Group: A
gang of pirates attempting to capture the USS Liberty on the high seas, plunder
its cargo and fly the Jolly Roger from its main mast.
Legislative consensus:
The last refuge of scoundrels.
Lockbox: An
unsafe safe, ostensibly used to preserve tax money for special purposes, that
can be opened with a bent hairpin.
Moving forward:
The antonym of “moving backward.” In a topsy-turvy world like ours, any step
backwards is regarded by forward-thinking people as progress.
Newspaper Paywall:
See “Lockbox” above.
Omnibus Bill: A
casket of marauding skeletons crowded into an end of session bill that could
not have passed scrutiny during the legislative year -- i.e. Mike Lawlor’s Get-Out-Of-Jail-Early
Bill, the Orwellian name of which is “Risk Reduction Earned Credit Program.”
Pragmatist: See
Robert Bolt’s play “A Man For All Seasons,” Thomas More On Cromwell: “What, Cromwell?
Pooh, he's a pragmatist -- and that's the only resemblance he has to the Devil,
son Roper; a pragmatist, the merest plumber.”
Progressive: A
person who believes it is never
possible to run out of other people’s money.
Race-monger: Al
Sharpton, for example.
Religion: There
are two variants: organized and disorganized. Most political writers subscribe avidly
to the disorganized sect.
Reporter: See
Alexander Pope:
Am I proud?
Yes, why
should I not be?
When even
men who do not fear God
Fear me.
Safety net: A fiction designed to convince the credulous
that sieves hold water.
Tragedy: Any
event involving the deaths of more than three people, however avoidable,
murderous and non-tragic.
TV New Anchor: A
lightheaded news reader parading as a reporter (See “Reporter” above).
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