Since spring is the time for renewal and new beginnings, the occasion is ripe for the annual list of words and phrases that I just can't stand hearing anymore. And I stand behind that statement 110%.
Any such list would be derelict without including the annoying phrase of the year: "Alternative facts." Popularized by the vapid Kellyanne Conway, the term can easily be translated as "bullshit."
So. When asked a question, it seems everyone from pundits to pandits begins their answer with the word "so," as in: " Explain why are you in jail?" "So, I was running naked through Wal-Mart and got tackled by a security guard." This should only be acceptable at the beginning of a joke, i.e. "So, this giraffe walks into a bar and says, 'The highballs are on me.'"
There's no there there. Nothing to see here folks. Just keep moving.
Air quotes. If I see one more goober claw the sky with two fingers on each hand, there's a chance that I may get violent. Or at least violently sick. Please use your words instead, like "so-called" president, or the "alleged" Attorney General.
Nothing Burger. I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. No beef, no bun, no condiments, no garnishment.
No prob./No worries. This is a phrase popularized by restaurant wait-staff when you ask for something like unsweetened tea. It shouldn't be a problem if it's their job.
Breaking News. The original sin of all local newscasts. Now, everything is "Breaking News," even if its already broken. A wreck on the interstate is not really "breaking news," unless it was an oil tanker and the highway's on fire.
And while we're at it, a "Severe thunderstorm watch" is no reason to preempt Jeopardy!
6:AM in the morning. An agonizing redundancy. Everyone knows A.M. means morning. Use one or the other or risk using needless words with ample abundance.
No-Brainer. This one's really a no-brainer. Use "foregone conclusion" instead. It makes you sound smarter.
Cray. I get it. I just wish my wife would stop using this expression in reference to me.
Alt-Right. Let's just call them what they are: Nazis.
America First. Speaking of Nazis, this expression was popularized during WWII and became the name of the national, anti-Semitic, isolationist organization whose purpose was to appease Hitler. Dog whistles or ignorance?
Game Changer. To have one's course altered, as in: That bout with syphilis was a real game-changer for Al Capone.
Non-usage of the consonant "T." When did this catch on? Examples: "No you di'nt Bill Clin'on," or, "I have something impor'nt to tell you." Used by all races and levels of education, this trend is irrita'ng for errbody.
Baby Bump. Such an unbelievable trivialization of the term "preggers."
Make America Great Again. Ronald Reagan used this slogan in the eighties and it still makes me gag. Let's go ahead and include, Bigly, "Many people say," the Liberal Media, "This I can tell you," Classy, and Radical Islamic Terrorism.
The Mother of All...and Blank "Gate." We just dropped the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan to retaliate for the Mother of All Wars in Iraq. At home, Chris Christie gave us "Bridgegate," and we're about to enter a phase called "Kremlin-gate." We're not even going to mention "Pee-gate."
Drop. As in; Beyonce's new single will drop this week. Now, even Rachel Maddow is saying, "New legislation drops tomorrow." And while we're at it, let's include the Mic Drop. Obama out.
Walk It Back and Misspoke. These terms will become increasingly commonplace during the tenure of Press Secretary Sean Spicer. They are Washington colloquialisms for "lying."
LOL. Enough already. Stop laughing at your own jokes.
And finally: Bill O'Reilly. So long sucker.
Now, let's take this thing to the next level.
Now that the farce called Trumpcare has imploded into finger pointing and recriminations, you can bet the insurance companies, aided by the GOP congress, will do everything in their power to assure the final destruction of Obamacare. Since the healthcare industry is in turmoil, may I ask a basic question? What in God's name is the insurance business doing in the heart of healthcare in the first place? Why should anyone profit from the misery of others? I roughly understand the basics of life insurance. People come together as a group and pay continual premiums into a general account. Miss a payment and they keep your money. Just ask me. Everybody's premiums are invested, making the insurance companies grandly prosperous so they can afford to pay death benefits to the beneficiaries of the dearly departed who had the courtesy to die within the allotted time frame. In other words, you're making a bet on when you'll buy the farm. The insurers even have mortality tables that provide odds on your death, sort of like a human expiration date. Should you win your bet, your family gets paid, only you're dead. If you live past the twenty or thirty years usually proscribed in an insurance contract, you lose and get squat. And they keep your money- all of it. The whole thing is purposely vague so that you need to hire an agent, or one will surely find you. The same principles apply to other insurance instruments, like car, home, travel, or personal accident. The difference is that not everyone will be involved in a car wreck, or have their travelers' checks stolen, or their house burn down, but sooner or later, everybody is going to get sick.
The purpose of Obamacare was to spread the risks of healthcare costs among a large group of people, in order to pay the extortion rates of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. For instance, a bottle of Excedrin at Walgreen's costs six dollars, but in the hospital, it's six bucks a tablet. It's all a scam assembled by the institutions that stand to reap the profits from the treatment of the sick and elderly. That's why Obama asked for the mandate, so that younger people who tend to be healthier join the pool of the insured. Just as everyone is required to buy auto insurance, even if you never use it, everyone's purchase of health insurance would pay the costs of colossal, backbreaking hospital bills and prescription medications.The plan faltered because young people weren't interested in another monthly note and the bill had Barack Obama's name on it. Still, twenty million people were able to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act, even if they didn't know it was Obamacare by another name. The mistake was allowing the insurance companies to remain in place to continue fleecing the populism, but that would require a public option, and you know how those free marketeers love their capitalism. It's well known that the United States is the only country in the civilized world that doesn't offer health care to its citizens as a right and not a privilege. A study by the Commonwealth Fund of the healthcare systems in eleven developed countries found America dead last, despite being the world's most expensive.
By contrast, just across the river from Detroit is the nation of Canada- less than half a mile away, but light years away in the care of its citizens. Healthcare in Canada works like Medicare for everyone, advocated by Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign. All medical expenses are free except dental and prescription drugs. The government keeps drugs cheap by negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies on a federal level. Bringing that model to this country would bring peace of mind to patients, free doctors from endless paperwork, and since the profit motive would be removed, there would be no need for fraud or superfluous hospital tests to run up Medicare bills that benefit someone's bottom line. Of course, that would require that hospitals be funded by the public as part of the national budget. Now that the Jolly Orange Giant has turned his back on the healthcare issue, he has focused his gaze on tax cuts for the wealthy. So there will be no universal healthcare during Trump's tenure- how ever long that may be.
The reactionary Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare over sixty times. They had seven years to come up with a replacement, and they couldn't do it. Speaker Paul Ryan's hastily constructed America Health Care Act couldn't pass muster with the GOP Freedom Caucus, the act formerly known as the Tea Party. Although health insurance lobbyists helped shape the bill that slashed funding for Medicaid so the poor would suffer first, it still wasn't cruel enough for the hard-right zealots. Last minute revisions intended to throw raw meat to the jackals included turning the funding of Medicare over to the states, giving "health care tax credits" to the elderly, the immediate repeal of Obama's taxes on the rich, and the instituting of a test for all "able-bodied adults" to pass a work requirement before being enrolled in Medicaid. Herr Trump blamed the Democrats for not voting to destroy President Obama's signature achievement. Trumpcare went up in flames because of the activism of millions of people who opposed it and transformed town hall meetings into episodes of the Oprah Winfrey show. As it turns out, the public seems to like their Obamacare, which was formulated by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in the early nineties and enacted into law by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land and a bruising defeat for the "Art of the Spiel." Donald Trump rose to prominence by appearing in a reality TV show called "The Apprentice." He should return to a career in reality television, only this time, Trump could be the host of "The Biggest Loser."
Maybe the time has come for Jews to start arming themselves. The beast has been unleashed and I don't think Jared Kushner is going to save us. The alarming spike in anti-Semitic incidents has been tracked by several organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a list of incidents drawn from media reports and submissions to the SPLC web page. In the seventy days following the election, 1,064 hate crimes, including acts of vandalism, assault, intimidation, and harassment, were committed. Forty-two percent included direct references to the election, the president or his policies. Swastikas have appeared in public places and private homes. A wave of bomb threats at Jewish centers caused the evacuation of Jewish Community Centers for the fourth time in five weeks. Fifty-four JCCs in twenty-seven states have received bomb threats, eleven in one day. The Anti-Defamation League Headquarters was targeted and the New York City Police Department reported that hate crimes against Jews have doubled in 2017. If you believe it can't happen here, that's what they said in Germany in 1933. So before the pogroms begin, it's best that the haters know we're armed and there ain't gon' be no Inquisition 'round here anytime soon.
The most egregious demonstration of hate occurred at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in suburban St.Louis, where over two hundred headstones were toppled and hundreds of graves vandalized. Almost immediately, scores of volunteers showed up to repair the damage, including a group of Muslims from a nearby mosque which raised over twenty thousand dollars for the cemetery's reconstruction. Soon to be President Pence made an unannounced visit to help the effort and make a speech that said there is no room for antisemitism in a Trump administration. But where was the "so-called" president? After receiving criticism for failing to address the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment, Trump was pressed on the issue while on "60 Minutes." When asked how he might confront the problem, this goon, this slob, looked into the camera and commanded, "Stop it!" Trump then claimed, "I am the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life." Isn't that a double negative? He could say he was the most pro-Semitic person ever. That would embody everyone from Moses, to Muhammad, to Jesus, and that should pretty much cover it. After all, some of Trump's best in-laws are Jewish. I don't believe Trump is an anti-Semite, but he sure is surrounded by them. It's ironic how much the evangelicals love Israel. It's just the Jews they don't like.
When acting President Steve Bannon was chairman of Breitbart.com, he declared the site to be a "platform for the alt-right." The term "alt-right" is a smokescreen description obscuring white nationalism, Islamophobia, racism and antisemitism. Senator Al Franken recently attacked Trump's Senior Adviser by quoting headlines from Breitbart.com when Bannon was at the helm. A sampling includes: "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?" "Gabby Giffords: The gun control movement's human shield," and "Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew." Bannon told the gleeful crowd at CPAC, the annual gathering of obstructionists, that his objective is the "deconstruction of the administrative state," whatever the hell that means. President Bannon said the cabinet officials who hate what their agencies do were "selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction." A conservative legal source claimed the plan was "to eliminate the vast administrative apparatus that does so much to dictate the way we live." In simple terms, they're trying to trash the New Deal and LBJ's "Great Society," and return power to the very same people who wrecked the economy and left hapless citizens destitute.
Just days ago, it was reported that more than five hundred headstones were overturned or vandalized in a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia. That takes some dedication. Within three hours, a contingency of Muslims arrived to help repair the damage. Maybe Trump is bringing us together- only in solidarity against hatred and evil. Imagine how you would feel if it was your family whose final resting places were desecrated. My mother is from St. Louis. My father went to Washington University. Those are my relatives buried in that Jewish cemetery. A list was posted of the names of families interred there. My great grandparents were among those listed. Thanks to social media, I was able to contact cousins who assured me that the graves of our family were untouched. I guess after the first two hundred headstones, the vandals got tired. My relief is cold comfort to those affected by the shock wave that convulsed the St. Louis Jewish community. In this toxic atmosphere, armed guards should be required at every Jewish center that's accessible to the public. To paraphrase Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, when the world's Jewry cries "Never Again," its not just a slogan, its a promise.
The President is mentally ill. No, seriously. Pundits and mental health professionals are throwing around the words "malignant narcissist" lately, and although our giant, man/baby Chief Executive fits that category like one of his baggy suits, there's another term that may be more apt in describing the president's bizarre behavior: psychopathy. According to the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (created by Professor of Psychology, Dr. Robert Hare) is a diagnostic tool used by professionals to measure "psychopathic or antisocial tendencies." There are twenty items on the list, each of which is scored zero to two, depending on how well it applies to the subject. A prototypical psychopath scores a forty, although a thirty score or above qualifies for the diagnosis. I'll just give you a sampling here, and since Donald Trump has proclaimed that "bullet points" are his preferred way of receiving information, that's how we'll do it.
- Glib and superficial charm
- Grandiose estimation of self
- Pathological lying
- Cunning and manipulativeness
- Parasitic lifestyle
- Poor behavioral controls
- Sexual promiscuity
- Impulsivity
- Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
- Many short-term marital relationships
- Lack of conscience or sense of guilt
Hell, I count thirty points right there. Tea-Party conservative Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the scourge of the Benghazi committee, was so disturbed he has suggested that all presidential candidates undergo a thorough mental exam in the future. For the rest of us, the future is now.
With the possible exceptions of Attila the Hun or Napoleon, I can't recall a single historical figure who has done more damage in one week than President Trump. Millions of people are marching in the streets worldwide, there's chaos and confusion in international airports, innocent people have been detained, our allies are nervous, North Korea is preparing to launch an ICBM capable of reaching California, and Germany has replaced the United States as the world's moral authority. Trump's nocturnal tweets are causing nightmares for his staff and his obsession with crowd size and the popular vote is Nixonian in its paranoia. Other presidents have used their first days in office to lay out a plan of accomplishment. Trump's first week was all nullification. We've just said goodbye to our first black President and now, welcome to the Bronze Age.
Thrashing about like a harpooned giant squid, Trump stood in front of a memorial wall at the CIA and bragged about how many times he's been on the cover of Time Magazine. He sent his stammering spokesman, the hapless Sean Spicer, out to scold the press on their inauguration coverage, then criticized his suit. He approved construction of the XL Keystone Pipeline, despite owning shares in the company that oversees the project. He signed a directive to build a taxpayer funded wall on the southern border, The Great Wall Of Trump, while stripping funding for cities that shield undocumented immigrants. He launched a major investigation into voter fraud, even though he won, claiming three million illegal votes were cast, all for Hillary Clinton. He threatened to send federal troops into Chicago and fired the head of the agency which serves as landlord for Trump's new hotel. He stunned the National Security Council by giving a seat to his chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, the white nationalist and former head of the alt-right Breitbart News, while demoting the Director of National Intelligence and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will now be informed on a "need to know" basis. And a new phrase has been added to the lexicon; "alternative facts." If these are signs of an administration that doesn't know what they're doing, just imagine the potential damage they can do when they figure it out.
I'm fortunate Trump wasn't president in 1900 when my grandfather immigrated from Russia or you wouldn't be reading this. The Muslim ban, whatever they care to call it, is blatantly unconstitutional, but that's beside the point. It's also cruel and heartless and preys on the helpless. The quarantined seven middle eastern nations are, co-incidentally, all places where Trump has no business interests. Because his own staff wasn't even notified, airports from Dallas to Seattle were caught unawares and in-flight passengers were unlawfully detained and threatened with deportation. In return, Iran banned all visitors from the U.S. just as the hard work undertaken by the Obama administration was beginning to thaw relations frozen for decades. Trump's translators were quick to note that the ban is temporary- not for Syrian refugees however. They are barred indefinitely. Trump likes to watch TV. Maybe someone should show him footage of the wretched people, mostly women and children, who are merely trying to escape from what Trump casually calls "carnage." In Trump's America, that poem by Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty about "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," should be replaced by a big sign that says, "You're Not Wanted." Or better still, now that Rex Tillerson has been approved as Secretary of State, the sign should read, "Welcome to the United States, brought to you by Exxon/Mobil."
