Terms  |
Definitions |
| Caplan, Bryan |
“Out of the whole list [of best new ideas to come out of academic economics since 1949], there are few plausible cases where mathematics was more than an afterthought. Even there, intuition, not math, probably played the leading role. I invite others to come up with their own ‘best ideas’ list to repeat this casual experiment.” Very well, Dr. Caplan, my “best idea” was Axiomatic Economics. You tell me: Is mathematics an afterthought in my book? See my Open Letter to Bryan Caplan.
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| Cardillo, Peter |
“There’s no question the Fed is walking a tightrope here. They’re in a box.”
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| Carter, Jimmy |
“Hamas was not legitimized by my visit. They were legitimized by the fact that their people voted for them to be the ruling party in their parliament.” (One good thing about Barack Obama is that he does not believe in “punishing” people by refusing to talk to them, as George Bush does. That’s immature.) See Democracy.
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| CATO |
1) A conservative think tank whom I quote in the introduction to my 2004 paper, 2) Engineering shorthand for “CATastrOphic failure.” Specifically, in rocketry, this refers to ships that explode or are blown up because they are out of control. (I wonder if the people at the Cato Institute know that the name that they’ve chosen has this rather negative connotation?)
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| Change We Can Believe In |
Flip-flops that conservatives will accept and liberals will tolerate until Barack Obama
gets elected, at which point he turns back into the socialistic, gun-grabbing, race-baiting Jesse Jackson wannabe that he was before the need to appease whitey came up. See Wright, Jeremiah.
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| Change We Cannot Believe In |
What you get back from a $100 bill at the gas station after filling up your Detroit-made land yacht. (If there is anybody in society who is actually impressed by giant knobby tires and a little step ladder up to the cab, maybe you should try asking them for gas money.)
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| Chatter |
The NSA, being into codes, uses “chatter” as a code word for, “We spent billions of dollars on a ‘super computer’ and were sold a box of old pinball machine parts, so we haven’t got the faintest idea what al Qaeda is plotting. However, we do know that tons of messages have been getting past us lately, so, on the basis of all that ‘chatter,’ we are going to upgrade the terrorist threat level from beige to mauve.” (No doubt, police departments all over America will spring into action, at double overtime wages, by posting guards around whatever their local landmark is – you know how those terrorists are always attacking “symbols of freedom.”) See World Trade Center.
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| China |
1) The location of the only people who will benefit from the Economic Stimulus, if Americans heed George Bush’s advice by running to the malls to spend their tax refund on trinkets, 2) “the company store to which we owe our souls,” according to Bonner and Wiggin.
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| Civil Rights Initiative |
“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.” See Connerly, Ward.
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| Clark, Wesley |
“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” I agree. We’re not hiring McCain to actually do the bombing; we’re hiring him to have the judgement to know when bombing is a good idea. In America we have a tradition of civilians becoming president and of retired generals becoming president. But a retired captain is neither a civilian nor a general.
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| Client #9 |
A new aftershave lotion being promoted by Elliot Spitzer, guaranteed to attract women like flies. A dab of this stuff and $4300 will have them hopping in bed with you in a flash.
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| Clinton, Hillary |
A lot of soldiers and Marines are on their third tour, every day of which was spent doing the “jihad jitterbug” to avoid becoming a sitting target for an Iraqi sniper, but I don’t hear her talking up their sacrifice. Even if her story of running for cover at the Bosnian airport were true, who would care? Perhaps she might have obtained more votes if she’d told us that she responded by sprinting 300 yards through a hail of bullets, pulled a Ka-Bar out from under her skirt and cut the sniper’s throat while he was re-loading his Dragonov. See Lying
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| Clueless George |
See Bush, George.
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| Coalition of the Bribed |
There was an 18-month delay between George Bush making up his mind to invade Iraq and his actually doing so. But, less than 24 hours after Georgia attacked South Ossetia, the Russians had Saakashvili eating his tie . Why Bush’s delay? The time certainly wasn’t spent checking facts. It was because Bush felt compelled to drum up a coalition of the bribed. Why did he need a coalition? Because he has no moral authority of his own. Invading and occupying Iraq was genuinely stupid. But coalition building is also stupid; if you are going to send the Army somewhere, just call up the generals and say “Go!”
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| Connerly, Ward |
"But the paradigm that exists, that women and minorities are targeted for equal opportunity, that very paradigm begins to imperil their progress because they’re marginalized by the perception that they are the product of affirmative action."
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| Conservatives |
What, exactly, are they conserving? Given their Drain America First policy, it can’t be our oil. The dictionary defines the word to mean, “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc.” But if “conditions” refers to being at peace and “institutions” refers to the Bill of Rights, then that can’t be it either. I’m lost. See Liberals.
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| Conspiracy Theory |
Who really rules the world? The Trilateral Commission? The Council on Foreign Relations? The Bilderberg Group? The Illuminati? Nope. Teenage girls. See Trinkets.
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| Constitution |
"Just a damned piece of paper," according to George Bush.
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| Contraction |
When working-class people are buying gold coins to put under their mattresses and the Federal Reserve is lowering interest rates to bail out fat-cat bankers. See Crash.
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| Core Inflation |
The percentage change in the price of trinkets, in contrast to that of necessities such as food and gasoline. See Statistics, Meaningless.
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| Crap, Worthless |
1) Shares of Detroit automakers. See Bankruptcy, 2) The AAA-Rated Securities which now compose most of the Federal Reserve's assets. See Fool's Gold.
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| Crash |
When working-class people are pawning gold coins to feed their families and the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to defend the dollar, even as ruined bankers are jumping out of their office windows for want of the low-interest-rate loans that would have saved them. See Contraction.
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| Credibility |
1) What Milton Friedman lost when he claimed that assumptions don’t matter, 2) What Hillary Clinton lost when she dodged Stephanopoulos’s demand that she name “a credible economist who supports the [gas-tax] suspension.” “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” she said, apparently preferring the counsel of quacks and charlatans. Even the Keynesians, who only just barely qualify as “economists,” have denounced this ridiculous plan – Paul Krugman calls it “pointless and disappointing.” See Free Lunch.
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| Credit Money |
Bills of Debt (IOUs) that circulate as money before being redeemed. Existence alone is not a sufficient condition for credit instruments to be included in the stock of money; there must be an active secondary market for them in the community. See my Simplified Exposition.
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| Creepy |
1) Hillary Clinton’s bug-eyed smile, 2) How one former cultist described sitting in a circle at the Mises Institute and singing songs about Ludwig von Mises. Also note that these were under-aged boys and Jeffrey Tucker was serving them wine. (Hmm….. Does the name “Michael Jackson” ring a bell?)
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| Cryptography |
“Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break.” See The Aguilar Cipher.
Cult: See Mises Institute.
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| Cultural Revolution |
What we’ll get in America if Barack Obama is elected and appoints William Ayers to be Secretary of Education.
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| Culture of Deception |
George Bush’s legacy.
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