Archive for the 'economy spin' Category

Taking the Class Out of Class Warfare with Class-Warfarespeak

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011


No longer.



Here is a class-warfarespeak sampler:






Redistributing Middle Class “Billionaires”

Monday, September 26th, 2011

A handy voter’s guide to current economic spinspeak:

everyone not on food stamps.




underlying social contract = elitist academic Trojanhorse-talk  for  the

Bump in the Road: Spinspeak Makes Another Classic Cliché Bite the Dust

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

Clichés by definition  are tired and old. Clichés lack imagination and wit. Clichés remind one of  stale vaudeville jokes.

But clichés have their uses.  No dictionary or interpreter is needed.  Your meaning is clear even to room temperature IQ audiences.  Clichés  can even be employed artfully to enrich satire.

However, when used repeatedly as obvious spinspeak, a cliché wilts and dies.

A prime example is the  talking point  “bump in the road”  overexposed by the Obama Administration and its fellow travelers to downplay a seemingly endless 9.1 percent unemployment level.

The noun “bump” is a very old  and rather nice word dating back to the l6th Century. It means protuberance, a lump  or swelling such as bump on a log or bump on the head.  Obviously such a bump is a small matter that can be overcome with an ice pack or easily driven around or over; a brief obstacle soon chuckled about over a beer.

That’s what the proclaimers of bump in the road  want you to think when you keep facing  9.1 percent continuing unemployment: It’s a temporary minor concern.  But there are  millions of  unemployed blocked by this “bump.”   That’s why “bump in the road” is doomed as a cliché and is being  relegated to the spinspeak garbage pail of economic humbug.

Spinning the National Credit Card

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

As the fight over raising  the national debt ceiling and saving the U.S. economy boils and bubbles,  political spinmeisters are working assiduously to keep you befuddled. 

Be wary of the following noxious soporifics and alarms:

shared sacrifice = gooeytalk for economic philosophy that  the famed  comic strip poet Little Noodnick once defined as “You got nuttin,  we got lots, we gonna share in equal pots.”

investment = fogword for endless spending on dubious projects, particularly spending of money  borrowed daily.

give a little more = faux signal for crippling or confiscatory taxation under the tattered banner “soak the rich” who will soon be everyone.

stimulus money = fantasyspeak for billions of dollars  borrowed by the federal government and distributed to maintain bloated government payrolls  and finance non-existent public works. The phrase  is now  generally  discredited and replaced by “investment” (see above).

saved jobs = suckertalk for political featherbedding maintained with  “stimulus money.”

extreme, extremist = diabolictalk for any common sense  proposal to cut spending significantly with the silly idea of really  reducing the national debt. 

balanced approach = cozytalk for favoring higher taxes for “the rich,” more hidden and indirect taxes for the middle class, and a few token cuts mostly in defense.

cat food = diabolictalk  for the alleged menu  that all senior citizens will be eating if  federal spending is cut by “extremists” (see above).

meat axe = cry-wolf talk for the alleged instrument of choice that “extremists” want to use on mounting  federal spending as opposed to a “balanced approach” (see above).  

 millionaires and billionaires = classwarfaretalk for what used to be called “the rich” until it became increasingly clear to anyone with an above room temperature IQ  (ARTIQ)  that “the rich” really includes one way or another everyone not on food stamps.

Don’t Spin, Just Obfuscate

Friday, June 30th, 2006

All dedicated spinmeisters must pause from their labors and stand in awe of the following quote:


This profundity has been attributed to Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a true Master of Fog. But that is fallacious. He apparently never said it.

Although he might have. And some insist they heard him say it. But even if they did, it certainly was not what he meant.