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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Saturday, March 2, 2019

"Democrat" vs "Democratic" plus Five Politicklers



"Democrat" is Not an Adjective, Folks

Let’s get something straight.  I seem to be harping on this point, making it in repeated blog postings, but I get the feeling that many Democrats don’t seem to get it.   Unfortunately, most Republicans do.  I specifically direct this to Democratic politicians who should, but do not, know better.  If you know any, pass this on to them.  Please!  (and read it anyway, even if you're not a Democratic politician.)

The words “Republican” and “Democrat” when specifying an individual are nouns.  Examples:  George is a Republican.  John is a Democrat.  All Republicans in the hall applauded.  All Democrats in the hall applauded.  A member of those parties is a “Republican” or a “Democrat.”  These two words are nouns, a noun being a "person, place or thing," as you were taught in school sometime during the last century.

The word, “Republican,” can also be an adjective ...  which remember is something that modifies or explains a noun. Example: The Republican Party.  But, and this is very important and where it gets tricky, the word “Democrat” is not an adjective and should never be used incorrectly as one.  The correct adjective is “Democratic.”  Example: The Democratic Party.  Using or saying “Democrat Party” is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Reiterating my point, the word “Democrat,” while a noun as explained above, is not, and should never be used as an adjective.  Misusing it in that manner gives it a pejorative tone.  (The closest parallel I can think of is calling a Jewish businessman a “Jew” businessman. Get it?)  Calling the Democratic Party or its candidates, the “Democrat” Party or “Democrat” candidates, is subtly offensive and brings joy to Republicans.  It was started 
during the 1940’s by Minnesota governor Harold Stassen, a perennially unsuccessful Republican Presidential aspirant, and is continued by Republicans today. Listen to Jim Jordan and his ilk.

Sadly, I sometimes hear Democrats using it as well.  When they do, they reinforce Republican usage of the word, giving it undeserved respectability (sort of like the way the President legitimized North Korean murderer Kim Jong Un by meeting with him twice).  

Republicans want to disassociate the praiseworthy non-political connotations of the word “democratic” with the name of the Democratic Party.  Calling it the “Democrat Party” accomplishes that.    And Democrats do not want to do that!  Understand?  Do you?

Jack Lippman



Politicklers 


Gaetz, Jordan and Meadows People who object to the intemperate comments of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz regarding Michael Cohen and consider the Congressman to be an idiot must remember that it took a majority or plurality of idiots in his Congressional District to elect him.  We have people like Gaetz, and the infinitely more dangerous Jim Jordan 
Donations Accepted to Buy Him a Jacket
and Mark Meadows in Congress because they represent the ideas of the people who elected them.  Like it or not, this is America today and that is a bigger problem than Gaetz and company, as individuals, will ever be.  They will come and go but the hate and ignorance which nourishes them will continue.



Louche A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd used a word in her column referring to the President’s supposed extra-marital activities which sent me scurrying to the dictionary (on line, of course) for its meaning.  Later, I asked a few intelligent friends of mine if they were familiar with the word and none were. 
Goldberg
This week, in her Times column, Michelle Goldberg used the same word in writing about the storefront prostitution operation recently exposed in Florida.  I guess Michelle and Maureen share a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus.  Do you know the meaning of the word “louche”?   One of these choices is correct:


  

   a. A sofa or couch in a brothel where sexual activities take place?
                b.    Disreputable or sordid in an appealing way?  
                c.   French expletive used by someone being pinched?
      d. French pornographer beheaded by Revolution in 1788. (Jean-Pierre  Louche)?

(Correct answer at end of this posting)



Michael Cohen's Testimony:
Cohen
The most unusual thing about Michael Cohen’s open testimony before the House Oversight Committee was the failure of the members of its Republican minority to challenge any of the allegations made by Cohen.  They ignored Cohen’s sometimes well-documented charges that the President is a racist, con-man and a cheat and limited their remarks to attacks on Cohen, painting him as someone not to be believed because of his previous lies before Congress and his status as a convicted felon on the way to prison for his lying which just happened to be done as an employee of and in defense of the President. 

Did this amount to their tacit acceptance of what Cohen was revealing, the G.O.P. Congressional equivalent of their standing by idly as Trump figuratively shot someone down in the middle of Fifth Avenue?  History will mark 2019 and 2020 as the end of the Republican Party as we have known it since its birth in the 1850’s.



The 'Art of the Deal' Author Flunks Out:  And speaking of the President, his utter failure to accomplish anything in his Vietnam meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un validates the position of prior Presidents, often criticized by Trump, in refusing to meet with that despotic nation’s leaders, because doing so would legitimize their terror-ridden practices.  The President’s vaunted skills as a negotiator amounted to nothing.  In reality, his supposed historic “negotiating” skills amounted to no more than having Michael Cohen, who testified to this, threaten over 500 parties with whom Trump was “negotiating” with expensive and never-ending lawsuits if they didn’t see things Donald’s way. 


This includes his contacting the educational institutions the President attended and the SAT Board as to their keeping his records confidential. (In a recent posting on this blog, I touched upon this point, even questioning his showing up in class, saying that the New York Military Academy, Fordham University, the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School had something about which to be ashamed.)
JL


Internet Causing Political Disruption Worldwide?:
McArdle
Occasional Washington Post and Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle had a recent column, to which I unfortunately cannot obtain a free link, suggesting that the disruption affecting politics today is not caused by either the decline of America’s white working class, their possible racism, immigration, political correctness, the 2008 economic crisis nor the arrogance of America’s “self-appointed mandarin class."  She points out that the appearance of “Trumpish” leaders such as Duterte in the Philippines, Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary parallel what has happened in America on a worldwide basis, so this is not a particularly American phenomenon.

McArdle postulates that “perhaps the most compelling answer is that the internet, and particularly social media, is disrupting politics the way it has disrupted everything else – nearly everywhere and all at once.”  She points out that political upheaval seems to follow advances in communications technology, the disasters of the 1930s (the rise of fascism) being preceded by radio and the confused 1960s (opposition to the Vietnam War) being preceded by television.  These innovations “fundamentally changed people’s relationship with information,” altering politics.  She offers this as a global explanation but anticipates “more convulsions until societies have fully processes the technological shift.”  I feel that this is really an excellent explanation of what's going on today.
JL
Note:  The "Unpublished Letter" mentioned in the previous blog posting was indeed published by the Palm Beach Post a day after the blog went out.



“louche” (pronounced ‘loosh’) – correct answer is “b.”


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