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| Larry Elder |
Townhall - "'ObamaCare' ... is a disparaging reference to the President of the United States. It is meant as a disparaging reference to the President of the United States. It is clearly in violation of the House rules against that," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. "ObamaCare," according to several blogs, is the new "n" word. When did "ObamaCare" become a slur? Proponents, after all, boast that President Barack Obama succeeded in signing "universal care'' legislation when every Democratic president since Harry Truman failed to "get it done."
Why isn't President Obama flattered to have his name attached to his signature achievement and a now-fulfilled campaign promise? Was there a hissy fit over "HillaryCare" or the widely used "RomneyCare"? A LexisNexis search turns up what might be "ObamaCare's" first use in print. An April 4, 2008, enthusiastically supportive article in the Salt Lake Tribune said: "Obama's national health insurance program, let's call it "ObamaCare," provides Americans with affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles." Hmmm, not too much racial insensitivity there. Alrighty then, what exactly is the problem? Assume, for the sake of argument, "right-wingers" use "ObamaCare" in a "mean-spirited" way. The left well understands and embraces the tactic: personalize or make a caricature about a policy; or use a description to induce a negative reaction.
Here are a few: "Reaganomics": Used to personalize and attach to a "cold-hearted conservative" president an economic agenda the media opposed and assumed would fail. Incredibly, New York Daily News' Joshua Greenman recently wrote, "(HillaryCare and ObamaCare) were used, from the get-go, as slurs, unlike, say, 'Reaganomics.'" Nonsense. Many Reagan supporters actually liked the term, but opponents meant it as a slur. We know this because when President Reagan's policies began to show results, the media's use of the term nosedived. "I could tell our economic policy was working," Reagan said, "When they stopped calling it 'Reaganomics." Read full column here:
News New Mexico
Elder: Is "Obamacare" a Disparaging Reference?
From the Weekly Standard - by Johnathan V. Last - My dishwasher is an amazing machine. The manual runs a brisk 63 pages. I read it cover to cover, highlighting and annotating as I went, marking the manufacturer’s preferred method of arranging dishes and the proper way to sit utensils in the dedicated wash basket. At first the dishes were so clean you could eat off of them. But a few months ago I started noticing problems. A fork would come out with food between the tines; a glass would have bits of grime stuck to the bottom. Surely this was a fluke? Alas, no. My dishwasher no longer shines. What went wrong? It so happens that in the last six months, a lot of people have suddenly discovered their dishwashers don’t work as well as they used to. The problem, though, isn’t the dishwashers. It’s the soap. Last July, acceding to pressure from environmentalists, America’s dishwasher detergent manufacturers decided to change their formulas. And the new detergents stink. One of the key ingredients in dish detergent is (or was) phosphorus. Phosphorus is a sociable element, bonding easily and well with others. In detergent, it strips food and grease off dirty dishes and breaks down calcium-based stains. It also keeps the dirt suspended in water, so it can’t reattach to dishes. Best of all, it prevents the washed-away grime and minerals from gumming up the inner-workings of your dishwasher. Traditionally, phosphorus was loaded into dish detergent in the form of phosphates, which are compounds of phosphorus bonded to oxygen. Prior to last July, most detergents were around 8 percent elemental phosphorus. Now they’re less than 0.5 percent phosphorus. Read more News New Mexico
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