Word: snips
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...deteriorated. The Administration began charging that the Sandinistas, backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, were funneling arms to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, often shipping the weapons across the southern heel of Honduras. In December 1981, Reagan gave the go-ahead for a series of covert operations to snip the supply line and intimidate the Sandinistas. Included were financial aid for opposition groups within Nicaragua and military assistance to the various contras (counterrevolutionaries) who conduct raids into Nicaragua from bases in Honduras. For a "covert" operation, the U.S. effort was curiously, perhaps deliberately, open. News of Reagan...
...away. Gone is fully half of the book of Psalms, which might now be better retitled David's Greatest Hits. The prophets are especially victimized. Besides large chunks, telling phrases are lost. Consider the felicitous line from Jeremiah: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt." Snip out the last three words. Or this passage from Isaiah, immortalized in Handel's Messiah: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." Away with the second phrase, on grounds of redundancy. So much for poetry...
White House Chief of Staff James Baker decreed that from now on only the President and Vice President will get their hair trimmed by Pitts in the West Wing. For White House staffers used to in-house cuts, this new inconvenience was surely the crudest snip...
Barber Milton Pitts returned to snip White House personnel on Tuesdays and Thursdays (Reagan gets clipped alone every two weeks), while Beauticians Yves and Nancy Graux coiffed on Wednesdays and Fridays. Unfortunately, this arrangement left everyone with emotional split ends. Beauticians and barber feuded over customers' chairs; maintenance workers had to move a different one into position each day. Against the Grauxes' wishes, Pitts had the shampooing sink lowered two whole inches. The Grauxes, meanwhile, suspected Pitts of watering down their shampoo and demanded better locks for their cabinets. That was all the snipping the White House could...
...sweeten the medicine of the benefit cuts, Schweiker pointed out that the savings might eventually snip the payroll tax rate levied on employers and employees alike from a projected 7.15% in 1986 to 7.05%. A worker in his 20s might thus shave about $33,600 off his contribution to the Social Security system by the time he retires...