ARMADILLO, n. A poor man’s pig. Some people angry with Herbert Hoover called the armadillo a Hoover hog during the Great Depression. I mean, the First Great Depression.
FRAGGING, n. The friendliest of all forms of friendly fire.
LIBBY, SCOOTER, n. One of the most honorable men that Dick Cheney has ever known.
MAGELLAN, FERDINAND, n. A pioneer of globalization.
NEW YORK TIMES, THE, n. All the news that it profits to print.
PAZZI FAMILY, THE, n. Bankers in 14th-Century Florence, best known for the Pazzi Conspiracy to assassinate Lorenzo de Medici and Giuliano de Medici, the two leading members of Florence’s dominant banking family. So here we have a bankers’ conspiracy AGAINST other bankers. (Although Giliano de Medici was killed, Lorenzo was not, and the conspiracy failed.)
RAPTURE OF THE DEEP, n. The intoxication experienced by deep-sea divers from breathing compressed air. Not to be confused with Rapture of the Dip, the assumption into Heaven that a premil dip (premillenial dipsensationalist) mistakenly expects to experience any second now.
REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, n. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, something which every government does. No, Redistribution of Wealth was not invented by Barack Obama or FDR or Woodrow Wilson or even Karl Marx. For example, when the state of Georgia held the Gold Lottery of 1832, which awarded to winners 40-acre tracts of land that belonged to the Cherokee, that was Redistribution of Wealth.
STANDING ARMY, n. A menace, according to Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers. I agree, but I will add that, in my opinion, a standing army is not as much of a menace as a marching army.
TIMOROUS, adj. As courageous as the American mass media, as, for example, in their coverage of the US-government-approved Indonesian invasion of East Timor.