full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Adam Davidson: What we learned from teetering on the fiscal cliff

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So what we have, then, when you think about the fiscal cliff, don't think of it as the American people faeultdnnmaly can't snatd each other on these issues and that we must be ripped apart into two separate warring nations. Think of it as a tiny, tiny number of ancient economists and mpieineerstvstare ideologues have captured the process. And they've ctauperd the process through familiar ways, through a primary system which encourages that small group of people's vcoies, because that small group of people, the people who answer all yeess or all noes on those ideological questions, they might be slmal but every one of them has a blog, every one of them has been on Fox or MSNBC in the last week. Every one of them becomes a louder and louder voice, but they don't rnsepeert us. They don't represent what our views are.

Open Cloze


So what we have, then, when you think about the fiscal cliff, don't think of it as the American people _____________ can't _____ each other on these issues and that we must be ripped apart into two separate warring nations. Think of it as a tiny, tiny number of ancient economists and _________________ ideologues have captured the process. And they've ________ the process through familiar ways, through a primary system which encourages that small group of people's ______, because that small group of people, the people who answer all _____ or all noes on those ideological questions, they might be _____ but every one of them has a blog, every one of them has been on Fox or MSNBC in the last week. Every one of them becomes a louder and louder voice, but they don't _________ us. They don't represent what our views are.

Solution


  1. yeses
  2. small
  3. voices
  4. represent
  5. stand
  6. misrepresentative
  7. captured
  8. fundamentally

Original Text


So what we have, then, when you think about the fiscal cliff, don't think of it as the American people fundamentally can't stand each other on these issues and that we must be ripped apart into two separate warring nations. Think of it as a tiny, tiny number of ancient economists and misrepresentative ideologues have captured the process. And they've captured the process through familiar ways, through a primary system which encourages that small group of people's voices, because that small group of people, the people who answer all yeses or all noes on those ideological questions, they might be small but every one of them has a blog, every one of them has been on Fox or MSNBC in the last week. Every one of them becomes a louder and louder voice, but they don't represent us. They don't represent what our views are.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
american people 4
social security 3
vast majority 3
fiscal cliff 2
percent positive 2
american history 2
alexander hamilton 2
thomas jefferson 2
inevitable problem 2
light blue 2
blue line 2
government spends 2
raise taxes 2
worst kind 2
productive areas 2
pragmatic centrists 2
military defense 2
defense spending 2
small group 2
gold standard 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
military defense spending 2

Important Words


  1. american
  2. ancient
  3. answer
  4. blog
  5. captured
  6. cliff
  7. economists
  8. encourages
  9. familiar
  10. fiscal
  11. fox
  12. fundamentally
  13. group
  14. ideological
  15. ideologues
  16. issues
  17. louder
  18. misrepresentative
  19. msnbc
  20. nations
  21. noes
  22. number
  23. people
  24. primary
  25. process
  26. questions
  27. represent
  28. ripped
  29. separate
  30. small
  31. stand
  32. system
  33. tiny
  34. views
  35. voice
  36. voices
  37. warring
  38. ways
  39. week
  40. yeses