With elections coming up it might be hard to choose which candidate you like best. What do they actually stand for? With this handy reference you can determine exactly what they are saying.
How to use this dictionary: Pay attention to what a politician is saying, whenever he or she uses one of the phrases listed below in bold, promptly replace it with the related text.
Its a tax cut for the wealthy:
If we let you keep the money you earned, we would also have to let people who make more money keep the money they earned. But they would keep more money, and that would be unfair. So instead, we will just take your money from both you and them to make sure everyone is equal.
Targeted Tax Cut:
We could let you keep your own money, but to do so you are going to have to do something for us. This is to make sure everyone is equal (see tax cut for the wealthy). If a wealthier person manages to keep his money but you don't, its because ‘special interest' have conspired against you. Don't blame us.
I want to Protect Social Security:
I believe in spending your retirement savings immediately, and then placing an enormous tax on some poor chap to give you a substandard income when you retire because we think you are too dumb to save for your retirement yourself.
Lets Disarm Criminals:
We would like to disarm criminals, but we can't. So we are going to disarm you instead.
Lets put social security in a ‘lock box':
We will pretend that we are not immediately spending your retirement.
I'm for seniors:
I'm for screwing you over and taking your money, but only until you're 65 years of age. Then I will reward you with measly subsidies or put you in a retirement home.
Let's act Civilized:
1) Let's slap some new regulations on big corporations, because the last 10,000 didn't seem to do the job.
2) We need a new tax.
I believe in a woman's right to choose:
I believe that a woman has the right to choose to abort fetuses. This does not mean I believe that a woman (or anyone for that matter) has the right to choose how to spend her own money, save for her retirement, run her own business, or teach her children about sex, but those are trivial anyway.
I believe in the right to life:
I believe that the right to life of fetuses should be protected against abortion. This does not mean I believe that the right to life of innocent civilians in third-world countries should be protected against my bombing raids.
I have faith in the public education system:
I'm either a liar or an idiot.
Lets Pay off the National Debt:
Lets create an 8-year plan. In the first four years, we will rapidly increase spending on all programs and go further into debt. In the last four years, we will pay off the national debt. The plan will terminate 2 years after being initiated. If this doesn't make sense, its because you lack the intricate knowledge of economics necessary to understand it.
Lets balance the budget:
Lets create ‘spending caps' so we can ignore them.
Voted to cut spending on (insert government program here):
Voted to increase the budget of (government program) by a mere $120 million instead of the usual $125 million, thus having a horrible catastrophic world-ending impact on the lives of those dependent upon the program.
Voted against education:
Pissed off the NEA.
Voted to Privatize Social Security:
Trusted you with small amounts of money, a crime against humanity.
I'm for affirmative action, but against quotas:
I believe that the only way to stop discrimination is to discriminate more, but I don't like the word ‘quotas' because its too narrow-minded.
We need to reduce class size:
We need to tax you and dump the money we gain somehow.
We need to increase teacher pay:
We need another excuse to take your money.
We need local control of schools:
We need to pass more federal regulations regarding education.
This election, the President may end up choosing 3 Supreme Court Judges:
It just means that I will appoint judges. I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
I believe in sex education:
I believe that children's parents can't teach them about sex education effectively, but the state can by using teachers who were bumped into sex education classes because they could not teach math or English and they could not legally be fired, to teach 30 students at a time about sex.
I believe in medically accurate sex educations:
I believe in classes that teach children moral values about sex entirely foreign to the will of their parents, by substituting such narrow-minded concepts such as abstinence with ‘alternative methods of releasing sexual tension' such as masturbation. If students find out that actual sex turns out to be a better way of relieving sexual tension, its probably the parents' faults. Also, its important to teach children this stuff at the age of 6, that way they learn better.
We need to provide aid to foreign countries:
We need to bomb somebody we armed 10 years ago.
We need to ‘get tough' on terrorism:
We need to bomb even more countries we armed 10 years ago.
We need to ‘get tough' on crime:
1) We need to pass curfews restricting the freedom of innocent people.
2) We need to throw a few 16-year-old teenagers in prison for smoking weed.
3) We need to zap people
We need to stop ‘hate'.
We need to create more government policies that deliberately discriminate against everyone.
We need hate crime legislation:
We need to base the crime on the race of the individuals involved in the crime, rather than the severity of the crime.
I believe in the American worker:
I believe in TAXING the American worker.
We need to focus on the issues:
We need to ignore the fact that I'm a crook.
We need to protect children from ‘harmful' content on the Internet:
We don't have regulations on this thing?! We need regulations now!
Its about the children:
1) Its about giving us another excuse to tax you.
2) Its about giving us another excuse to regulate you.
3) Its about giving us another excuse to ignore the Constitution.
4) Its about giving us excuses.
I believe in compassion:
I believe in spending money I didn't make.
I believe in honesty and integrity:
I'm lying.
Sided with the NRA:
Trusted you with weapons, almost as bad as trusting you with money.
Lets put the past behind us:
Lets pretend I'm not a criminal.
We cannot go back to the past:
1) We cannot give you a tax cut.
2) We cannot give you more freedom or responsibility.
We must look toward the future:
1) We must tax you.
2) We must regulate you.
We need to focus on our economy:
We need to focus on spending money we don't have.
We need safe schools:
We need to treat children in public schools like criminals.
We must protect our children from pornography:
Pornography only belongs in the White House.
We must take the violence and sex out of Hollywood:
I'm accepting contributions from Hollywood, but I like saying
this anyway.
I believe in protecting the environment:
1) I believe in creating more excuses to tax and regulate you, like preventing ‘global warming' (not to be confused with the disastrous global cooling that took place 30 years ago due to the same automobile emissions) and ‘ozone depletion'.
2) I authorized someone to build a strip mine on my own property and now I want to punish them for it.
We need to get ‘tough' on drugs:
We need to incarcerate teenagers for smoking pot and imprison those who were unlucky enough to get addicted to drugs.
We must prevent global warming:
We need to make those damn electric cars marketable.
We need to protect the everglades:
We need a new tax.
We need to promote racial equality:
We need to empower the government to discriminate.
We need to promote economic equality:
We need the government to confiscate everyone's money.
We need to promote social equality:
We need the state to run your life.
We need to promote equality:
We need another excuse for control and power.
I believe in the freedom of religion:
I believe that I should be able to regulate religion to make sure everyone is ‘free' of it.
I believe in the First Amendment:
I believe that the first amendment only applies to me.
I believe in the Second Amendment:
I believe in ignoring the second half of the second amendment, which gives you the right to bear arms, and pretending it's part of the first half. I believe the first half of the amendment only applies to the states even though the other nine apply to both the people and the states.
I'm progressive:
I believe the world would end without me.
I'm for women's rights:
I'm for women who will vote for me.
Lets reform the IRS:
Lets pretend that the people won't care when we take away their hard-earned money if they are taxed by a ‘reformed' IRS.
We need to protect endangered species:
1) We need to boot people off their own land because it was discovered that the land might possibly be a habitat for an endangered insect.
2) We need to make it illegal for people to help endangered species.
3) We need to play God with endangered species.
We need to protect our environment from ‘big polluters':
We need to confiscate large portions of land in the middle of nowhere under ‘eminent domain' and then let ONLY politically connected companies pollute the land.
I'm a professional politician:
I don't believe that I should have to earn my own money like everyone else.
I'm doing the ‘people's business':
1) I'm doing an even more thorough job of screwing you.
2) I'm pretending I'm not a criminal.
(Politician's name) was an (executive position) for (company name):
(Politician's name) at one time actually earned his money on his own instead of taking it from people.
I believe the we should support charities:
I believe that we should use the government to take over charities.
I believe in ‘Universal Health Care':
I believe in drastically shortening your life span.
I would like to see ‘Universal Health Care' but not ‘Government Controlled Health Care':
1) I believe in drastically shortening your life span, but I don't like the words ‘government controlled health care'.
2) I'm a really big liar.
3) I have no idea about what I am talking about.
We need a guaranteed prescription drug plan:
I'm for screwing up yet another industry.
We need to make HMO's cover ‘basic medical expenses':
We need to make HMO's even more expensive and inflexible, and make it impossible to get health insurance that covers exactly what you want.
We cannot go back to ‘rugged individualism':
We cannot give you more freedom or responsibility.
I believe in smaller government:
I believe that my poll numbers are slipping.
We must reduce the size of government, but we cannot go back to rugged individualism:
We must pretend that this statement is not mutually exclusive.
I believe that Americans should be free:
I believe that my poll numbers are really slipping.
We must protect our youth from violence:
1) We must censor something.
2) We must ignore the first amendment.
3) We must rant about things like the ‘gun show loophole'.
If ‘global warming' occurs, sea levels will rise:
If we pretend that global warming occurs, sea levels would rise if glaciers magically hovered above the surface of the water instead of floating in the water.
I believe in welfare reform:
I like to pretend that welfare works.
We have the best economy in (some duration of time):
I want you to think that I'm responsible for your economic well being.
I voted for (something):
I want you to think that I'm responsible for something important in your life.
I believe that you make America work:
I'm lying.
I support the family farmer:
1) I support taxing the daylights out of the family farmer and making him beg Washington for his money back. If this doesn't seem fair, your not an ‘economic expert'.
2) I support paying people NOT to grow crops.
We need to stop ‘big' corporations from taking over family businesses:
We need more taxes and regulations on both corporations AND family businesses.
There is no controlling legal authority:
There is too much controlling Chinese campaign contributions.
We need arms control:
We need to trust dishonest rulers of foreign countries not to nuke us when we leave our defenses open.
I believe in technology:
1) I believe that technology should be regulated.
2) I believe that technology should available only to those who we ‘license' it to.
3) I believe I invented technology.
We need to ‘modernize' our schools:
We need to authorize the schools to spend $150 per copy on crappy software.
We have an energy crisis:
1) We got carried away taxing oil and gasoline.
2) We prevented people for drilling for oil on our own land.
3) We have another excuse to dump lots of money into subsidies for solar, wind, and tidal power even though they are unmarketable and don't work effectively.
We have a health care crisis:
1) We are paying medical schools NOT to admit new medical students.
2) We need to add another 10,000 regulations to the existing 100,000 on the medical industry.
We have a crisis:
1) We have even more excuses to tax and regulate you.
2) We have a wonderful demonstration of government in action.
We need to raise our educational standards:
1) We need to do something stupid, like add an essay section to the math section of a test.
2) We need to make standardized tests even easier.
3) We need to focus on ‘inventive spelling' and ‘fuzzy math'.
We need to stop social promotion:
We need to pretend that it doesn't exist.
We need to focus on education:
The school boards need to focus on losing money.
We rank last among first-world countries in math and science:
We will learn how to cheat better.
We need campaign finance reform:
We need to make acquiring illegal campaign contributions more rewarding by further restriction of the methods candidates who legally raise funds use. After all, avoiding all those ‘special councils' is hard work.
I support the Supreme Court's decision:
The Supreme Court twisted and selectively ignored the meaning of the Constitution in my favor.
I believe in upholding the Constitution:
I believe humor is important.
That concludes volume one of the Unofficial Dictionary of Political Phrases. If you would like to see volume two, continue to elect these lying idiots. Otherwise look really hard for honest politicians (really, really hard), and vote for them.
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