A New Lexicon For Our Ti . . . Ti . . . Times

A lexicon is a stock of terms; in short, a vocabulary. These crazy times certainly have rendered passe the traditional meaning of words like ghetto, morality and zombie, to name but three of the 26 entries below. And it's no accident that this new lexicon is accompanied by a surrealist painting.

A is for ASS

Funny that Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury would wait until five days before Bush left office to cover his ass and disavow the bulk of Cheney/Addington/Libby's legal reasoning for permitting torture, doing illegal warrantless surveillance, unilaterally suspending international treaties, and using the armed forces for domestic policing purposes.

-- BOOMAN

B is for BALLS

Rod Blagojevich is outdoing Chicago hog merchants famous for marketing every part of the pig but the squeal by signing a book contract for his story. . . .The publisher, Phoenix Books, has announced a "six-figure deal" for a memoir by the ex-governor to be titled The Governor to go along with their current volumes -- "a sexy, darkly funny, and surprisingly poignant memoir" by a hooker known as the $2000-an-hour woman and a tome, Interview With a Cannibal, about a German gentleman who "killed a man and ate him with a glass of fine red wine."

-- ROBERT STEIN

C is FOR CLOWN

The Republican party is now a clown car. The sane, thoughtful conservatives have left it over the years, some prominent ones quite publicly last year, either more openly by stating they are leaving GOP, or a little more carefully, by endorsing Obama for President. Racist, sexist, homophobic, femiphobic, xenophobic, Creationist, authoritarian, theocratic, cowardly scuzbuckets like Rush Limbaugh, Michele Backmann, Bobby Jindal, Steve Sailer, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter and Joe the Plumber.

-- COTURNIX

D is for DESTROY

The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees. Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the CIA and its treatment of terrorism suspects intensified.

-- CARY JOHNSON and JOBY WARRICK

E is FOR EDITION

The Daily News will soon be printed as an edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, though the two papers will maintain separate news staffs and still compete for stories. . . "Instead of telling advertisers we have 330,000 circulation (at the Inquirer) plus the Daily News, it will help to say we have 440,000 daily circulation," [the publisher] said.

-- DAVE DAVIES

F is for FAIL

At his closing speech at the CPAC conference, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh doubled down on his widely-controversial claim that he wanted President Barack Obama to fail, insisting that he meant what he said, and chastising those who were critical of him. . . . The crowd, watching in three individual ballrooms because of overcrowding, went absolutely wild.

-- SAM STEIN

G is for GHETTO

The current economy has made ghetto a non-adjective. When something becomes ubiquitous there’s no longer any need to describe it. There was once a point when degreed and salaried black folk pointed a crooked, shame-filled finger at behaviors we deemed inappropriate and hurled the G-word at stereotypical acts in order to deflect any guilt by association. A black person lives way beyond his means? Ghetto. He engages in irresponsible consumption and lives to flash his pseudo-wealth? Ghetto. From where I stand, ghetto is worse than nigger because at least the latter doesn’t give black people an inflated sense of well-being too.

-- JELANI COBB

H is for HILLARY

Signaling a new direction in Middle East diplomacy, the Obama administration will dispatch two senior officials to Syria to begin discussions with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. Noting Syria’s influence across the region, as well as the troubled history between Syria and the United States, Mrs. Clinton said, "It is a worthwhile effort to go and begin preliminary conversations."

-- MARK LANDLER

I is for IMPLOSION

Regarding the Limbaugh-Steele tussle . . . it is fairly disastrous for all involved when the chairman of the RNC and CPAC's keynote speaker can create a controversy that understandably inspires multiple comparisons to re-education camps. I am guessing that Steele's faux pas in challenging the Man with the Golden Microphone (comparisons to Blofeld are too easy and obvious) will more or less smother the chances for any reform ideas he may have had.

-- DANIEL LARISON

J is for JUDICIAL

Even by the standards of the congressional GOP, this is truly ridiculous. The same people who said judicial filibusters were literally illegal are threatening to launch judicial filibusters. What's more, they also want to see the failed former president's unsuccessful judicial nominees put on the federal bench for life -- just a gesture of goodwill.

-- STEVE BENEN

K is for KOBAYASHI MARU

The term comes from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and refers to an examination given to students at Starfleet Academy. On the surface it seems to be a character test of sorts. The student is supposedly on a routine patrol when he receives a distress call from a civilian vessel. Unfortunately, the ship is in a restricted area and for the ship to go to the rescue would be a violation of regulations and possibly lead to war. So the student has to choose between sacrificing the ship in distress or violating the rules and putting his ship at risk. . . . [I]n many ways the United States now faces something of a Kobayashi Maru moment when it comes to dealing with the myriads of our current problems.

-- PATRICK EDABURN

L is for LEADERSHIP

Margaret, do me a favor and ask that Republican husband of yours a quick question: During this very difficult time for the country, who does he want in charge? A Harvard law graduate and former constitutional law professor, or a disc jockey with a drug addiction who flunked out of college, divorced three wives and publicly made fun of a disabled person? Because that is the choice we have between Barack Obama as leader of the free world and Rush Limbaugh as leader of the Republican party.

-- HELEN PHILPOT

M is for MORALITY

In Kansas, economic problems are often viewed as the consequences of moral lapses. Former Sen. Sam Brownback, whom Rep. Todd Tiahrt and Rep. Jerry Moran are now running to replace, is known to believe that "the cause of poverty is spiritual rather than mechanistic." Much like Brownback, Rep. Tiahrt has asserted on several occasions that what afflicts the communities of Kansas is a "crisis of the soul" that has come from an abandonment of God and family values.

-- TIM MAK

N is for NATIONALIZATION

Nationalizing just means buying the banks, and the government can't buy a bank unless the shareholders are willing to sell. If the government will unavoidably overpay for toxic assets, why won't it unavoidably overpay for the shares of the institutions that own these toxic assets? Perhaps, the theory is that if the government announces that it will buy the banks and hence will not buy the toxic assets, the market price . . . . will fall drastically -- because banks are only unwilling to sell them in the first place because they hope that the government will overpay for them -- and thus the banks' market price will fall to zero. With zero market price, the government doesn’t need to pay anything for the banks; it can just take them over.

-- EUGENE VOLOKH

O is for OBVIOUS

Sen. Dick Durbin, who advised Sen. Roland Burris last week to step down from the Senate, acknowledged that racial considerations were at play in the decision by majority Democrats to seat Burris. Durbin, a fellow Democrat and Illinois' senior senator, noted that Rep. Bobby Rush, a Chicago Democrat, appeared at Gov. Rod Blagojevich's announcement of his appointment of Burris and used racially charged language to defend the appointment.

-- DEANESE WILLIAMS and RICK PEARSON

P is for PERCENTAGE

Percentage-wise not a lot of Americans love Rush Limbaugh. The folks who do, though, love him a lot. Without those drooling dittoheads the GOP would fight Greens and Larouchies for folding chairs on election night. It goes without saying that a guy who never has to worry about elections and controls the beating heart of a party will have slightly different incentives than public officials have to worry about.

-- TIM F.

Q is for QUITTER

Judd Gregg jockeyed for a job at a department he once voted to abolish, missed the news that there's a massive stimulus bill in the works, realized at the last minute that leading the "Commerce" department might involve interactions with "spending," and decided that quitting entirely was better than trying to work through differences with a Democratic administration. There's only one word for a guy who pulls something like that. Hero.

-- MARY PHILLIPS-SANDY

R is for RESET

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia's president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Inran from developing long-range weapons. . . . Mr. Obama's letter, sent in response to one he received from Mr. Medvedev shortly after Mr. Obama's inauguration, is part of an effort to "press the reset button" on Russian-American relations.

-- PETER BAKER

S is for SMEAR

Bobby Jindal is a Catholic. He was born to Hindu parents but converted to Catholicism. It bears repeating because it seems likely that Jindal will probably face some version of the same "Muslim smear" that Barack Obama had to deal with all throughout the campaign. . . . My advice to Jindal is the same as it was to Obama -- confront the religious prejudice head-on and ask, so what if he were Muslim? Unfortunately, the GOP seems increasingly hostile to Islam.

-- AZIZ POONAWALLA

T is for TRANSPARENCY

Under the Obama administration's new Transparency-and-Accountability policy -- which applies to Bush-era mischief very selectively, at best -- the Justice Department has posted nine Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos online. The Department of Justice web page from which the memos are accessed manages to capture the ambivalence of the Obama administration's T-and-A policy perfectly: "Due to public interest in this matter, the Department of Justice is releasing these documents in an inaccessible format."

-- SARABETH

U is for UNITARY

One of the worst abuses of the Bush administration was its endless reliance on vast claims of secrecy to ensure that no court could ever rule on the legality of the President's actions. . . . Secrecy claims of that sort -- to block judicial review of the President's conduct, i.e., to immunize the President from the rule of law -- provoked endless howls of outrage from Bush critics. Yet now, the Obama administration is doing exactly the same thing.

-- GLENN GREENWALD

V is for VIDEO

A video showing a King County Sheriff's deputy pummeling a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell was released over the strenuous objections of the officer's attorney. . . . [Deputy] Schene lunged through the door and kicked her, striking either her stomach or upper thigh area, court documents say. He pushed her against a corner wall before flinging her to the floor by her hair. He then squatted down on her and made "two overhead strikes."

-- SCOTT GUTIERREZ

W is for WEALTH

The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth. Politicians will say lots of things in the coming weeks, but they should be pushed relentlessly to address the bottom-line question: Do they believe that a fairer distribution of capitalism's bounty is essential to repairing a sick economy? Everything else is a subsidiary issue.

-- E.J. DIONNE

X is for XENOPHOBIA

Very few people fear dandelions. Or even dangerous things -- like Hummers. We may object to outsized automobiles on principle, but the mere sight of them doesn't make us tremble and sweat and run away. On the other hand, even toddlers show an automatic and powerful fear of snakes, including harmless ones. . . . Why would gender influence these ingrained fears as much as race? It may be that men were more often the aggressors over evolutionary time, so that male faces became a potent cue for danger. So xenophobia is not an equal-opportunity emotion.

-- SCIENCE DAILY

Y is for YIKES

Fourteen masked, heavily armed gunmen launched an attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, killing six policemen and injuring seven players and officials. The driver of one of the buses in the team's convoy was also killed. Two of the cricketers were admitted to hospital. The gunmen approached from four sides, some arriving in rickshaws and at least one car.

-- NDTV

Z is for ZOMBIE

A Zombie Bank is a financial institution whose liabilities outweighs it assets, making its net worth "less than zero." ZBs continue to operate because of the implicit or explicit government guarantee -- along with truckloads of taxpayer monies. Consider the two biggest Zombie banks -- Citigroup and Bank of America. They have each recieved $45 billion in capital from the US government -- far more than either bank is worth. Additionally, the US had guaranteed up to 90% of the bad assets each zombie is holding -- $250 billion and $306 billion respectively.

-- BARRY RITHOLTZ

Top image: "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" by Dali