Speak your mind accurately

Excerpts from the Liddy Letter

OBVIATEto anticipate and prevent (as a situation) or make unnecessary(as an action). The distaste for press questions based on innuendo and rumor does not obviate the fact that someone who wants to be president and the chief law-enforce-ment officer of the country has not categorically denied using an illegal substance.

CUSP-point, apex; a point of transition (as from one historical period to the next): turning point; edge; verge. Peering into the future on the cusp of the 21st century is daunting, for we are currently in an era of technological innovation that includes the Internet, cell phones, high-speed computing, artificial intelligence, global communications, and advances in biochemistry and biology.

ARCANA-mysterious knowledge, language, or information accessible only by the initiate. In a new book by Charles R. Morris, Money, Greed, and Risk, Morris elucidates the arcana of the new Wall Street: IPOs, leveraged buyouts, collateralized mortgage obligations, junk bonds, stock parkings, and derivatives.

INCIPIENTbeginning to come into being or to become apparent. As Hillary prepares to throw her hat in the ring for a Senate seat from New York, we may finally learn the incipient senators winning strategy in cattle futures.

FECKLESS - weak, ineffective; worthless, irresponsible. If the proposed U.N. administration for Kosovo follows past patterns established in, say, Bosnia or Haiti, it will be indecisive at best and feckless at worst in dealing with the problems there.

PASTICHE - a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous works; also, such stylistic imitations. The plays of George Bernard Shaw, infrequently produced today, are replete with a pastiche of trendy but dated ideas.

ENTROPY - a process of degradation or running down, or a trend to disorder.
Entropy is a fact of history, in that cultural movements or worldviews tend to exhaust themselves, or lose their plasticity, over time.

AEGIS - protection; controlling or conditioning influence; auspices, sponsorship; control or guidance by an individual, group or system.
The prime aim of Hitler and the Nazis was a new world order, at a minimum the economic union of Europe under German aegis.

DEPREDATE - to lay waste, plunder, ravage
Depredations of perjury and obstruction of justice overshadow other abuses that may be introduced in Clinton's impeachment inquiry, such as Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Donorgate, and Kathleen Willey's accusations of groping.

EQUIVOCATE - to use language of uncertain nature or interpretation to mislead, confuse, or deceive; to avoid committing oneself in what one says.
In his defiant four-minute nationally televised statement, in which he called Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation politically motivated, Bill Clinton, an equivocator without equal in contemporary American politics, conceded he lied to the American people about his scandalous affair with a former White House intern young enough to be his daughter.

LUGUBRIOUS - mournful; dark; brooding; dramatic
Instead of telling jokes lugubrious academics write learned tomes on the analysis of humor.

OSSIFY - to change into bone; to become hardened or conventional and opposed to change; to make rigidly conventional and opposed to change
China was a country in decline in the late eighteenth century, and by 1800 had become a static, introverted society governed by an ossified bureacracy.

TROVE - discovery, find; valuable collection; treasure, haul
Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition across the American continent in 1806 with an immense trove of information about the Indians, diverse geography, and abundant resources of the trans-Mississippi West.

NASCENT - coming or having recenty come into existence
As the government of the nascent United States looked westward in 1786, its first probem was to unsnarl the conflicting claims of several colonies, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts among them, to most of the country beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

PANJANDRUM - a powerful personage or pretentious official
Senator Fred Thompson's report of this committee's investigation of campaign-finance abuses and fraud suggests that some donors who funneled money to the Clinton 1996 Presidential Campaign may have been high panjandrums of the Chinese government.

DROSS - waste or foreign matter; something base, trivial, or inferior
Despite the educational value of most accounts of the economic demvelopment of nations, the reader often has to wade through the dross to capture the gold.

UNDERGIRD - to form the basis or foundation of
Understanding how nations evolve and prosper, or fail to, requires a knowledge of the political institutions that undergird their economic system.

PRESCIENCE - foreknowledge of events; foresight
Goldman Sachs' market guru Abbey Joseph Cohen's prescient advice to investors in 1997 was to buy more stock.

CONCOMITANT - something that accompanies or is collaterally connected with something else; accompanying, especially in a subordinate or incidental way
Democracy and business development--steady and impressive economic growth--have been shown to be vital concomitants in former Communist countries that now offer greater self-government.

SHTICK - show-business routine or piece of business to gain a laugh or draw attention to oneself
Corporate executives looking for a light touch in their speeches often turn to gag writers who can produce shtick.

PROSAIC - dull; ordinary; everyday
Mutual funds specializing in small company "value" stocks buy companies that are usually more prosaic than cutting edge.

SENESCENT - aging; becoming old; the state of being old
The lure of information technology is so powerful that even the news agency of the senescent Communist stronghold of North Korea is now on the Web.

FRACTIOUS - tendency to be troublesome; unruly; quarrelsome
France has always been fractious over U.S. leadership in NATO, unless there is real trouble affoot for France, as in Bosnia.

DEFLECT - to turn aside, especially from a straight course or fixed direction; deviate
Clinton's extraordinary ability to deflect comes from an obsession with never being wrong, or never quite getting blamed for anything.

IMBROGLIO - an intricate, complicated, or perplexing situation.
The imbroglio over Asian fund-raising by the Democratic Party, like other controversies dogging the Clinton presidency, is fraught with possible conflicts of interest and scandal.

OMBUDSMAN - an employee of an institution who investigates reported complaints, reports findings, and helps to achieve equitable settlements.
Another hospital resource besides your physician and the discharge coordinator in questioning a discharge plan is the hospital ombudsman, a staffer supposed to stick up for patient's rights.

DECRY - denounce; to speak out against strongly andy.
If Americans decry the lack of personal character and integrity, the paucity of acceptable ideas and wise policies, of the Clinton Administration, then they should exercise sound electoral judgment in November and elect Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.

PALPABLE - easily perceived by the senses; recognizable, perceptible, noticeable, etc.; obvious; evident, plain.
As we move toward the November 1996 presidential election a palpable public yearning for mature, determined, honest national leadership seems ubiquitous.

FLOUT - to mock or scoff at; show scorn or contempt.
Most Americans correctly view our social welfare system as a dysfunctional bureaucracy that flouts the values of work, marriage, and parental responsibility and feeds a self-perpetuating culture of illegitimacy, depedency, antipoverty.

ACCULTURATE - the process of becoming adapted to a new or different culture; to undergo, or alter by, acculturation.
Others in the world are impressed by America's ability to acculturate diverse people into our way of life.

ESCHEW - to shun, avoid, asbtain from something.
As a hands-on executive, she eschews committee meetings and management layers, relying instead on a small, savy group of financial professionals.

CONVOLUTED - rambling, spiraled, intricate, complicated, extremely involved, coiled.
Although President Eisenhower's speech was convoluted in many of his press conferences, Ike usually knew exactly what he was doing and saying.

MINION - a subordinate offical, deputy, or he like; a fawning, servile follower.
Under Communism, the state monopoly on all goods and services allowed surly minions in the shops to tell their customers to take it or leave it.

DUPLICITY - hypocritical cunning or deception.
For duplicity, it's hard to outdo the Clinton White House.

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