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Obama Uses Euphemism to Obscure His Unpopular Agenda
Townhall.com ^ | September 5, 2011 | Carol Platt Liebau

Posted on 09/05/2011 5:40:49 AM PDT by Kaslin

This week, as President Obama prepares for a big jobs speech (yet again!), even his partisans have begun to lose hope that he’s going to have any new or effective ideas about how to create jobs in America’s stalled economy. But one thing is certain: Whatever he says, it will be cloaked in euphemism.

There’s an old cliché insisting that fuzzy speaking means fuzzy thinking. Somehow, however, the Obama Administration has managed to turn the aphorism on its head. The President and his supporters resort to the use of euphemisms not because their thinking is fuzzy, but because they believe that ours is.

Take, as an example, the host of euphemisms that’s been trotted out as part of the Obama Administration’s approach to the war on terror. Since 2009, “rogue states” have become “outliers”; vague phrases like “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” “countering violent extremism” and – most recently – “kinetic military action” have entered the national lexicon.

It’s not an accident, and it’s not because the administration is unaware of the ugly facts about the war on terror; in fact, President Obama has retained most of the Bush-era policies. It’s because members of the administration hope that watered-down language will help Americans forget the existential threat our country still faces from Islamic jihadists – and thus more willingly accede to a less powerful, less exceptional America, content to “lead from behind.”

Similarly, when the President addresses the nation on Thursday night, be prepared to hear a lot about “investment” rather than “government spending.” The term “stimulus” – discredited by his earlier, failed almost-trillion-dollar boondoggle – will be replaced with the innocuous-sounding “targeted measures.” Realize that when he advocates higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” he’s really talking about individuals earning more than $200,000 per year, or couples earning more than $250,000. And just know that when the President invokes “revenue enhancement” and “shared sacrifices” and “a balanced approach” and “making spending reductions in the tax code,” he’s trying to make his single-minded obsession with tax increases more palatable to a government-weary, overtaxed electorate. Put simply, however novel (or creative) the words, the song will be the same: More taxing, more government spending, and more efforts to “spread the wealth around.”

Certainly, per the old cliché, it would be dispiriting to believe that President Obama’s constant resort to euphemism is a result of fuzzy thinking. But it’s even more unpleasant to know that it’s part of an effort to obscure a far-left agenda to which Americans are deeply (and increasingly) hostile. And most of all, it’s profoundly insulting to realize that the President thinks that we are “intellectually challenged” (read: stupid) enough to fall for it.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: bastardized; bastardizedlanguage; euphemism; investspend; jobsspeech; language; obamaeuphemisms; spendinvest
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1 posted on 09/05/2011 5:40:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Obama can go euphemism himself.......


2 posted on 09/05/2011 5:42:31 AM PDT by jakerobins
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To: Kaslin
‘The Same Old Song’ worked for the Four Tops but it won't work for O’Slacker.
3 posted on 09/05/2011 5:48:16 AM PDT by JPG (Palin '12)
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To: Kaslin

4 posted on 09/05/2011 5:48:53 AM PDT by radioone ("2012 can't come soon enough")
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To: Kaslin

I predict Obama is going to try and make it sound like he is going to make gov’t into a dynamic, effective organization with efficiencies never seen in the private sector.


5 posted on 09/05/2011 5:53:10 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
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To: Kaslin
I remember when obama upbraided the congress for 'waiting until the last minute' to pass legislation on the raising of the debt limit. He told congress even his daughters did not wait until the last minute to do their homework. They would not spend 'all night' to get their homework done.

Now fast-forward to just prior to the "Mathas' Vinyard" vacation when he declared, 'as soon as I get back from vacation I will put forth a 'jobs stimulation bill' forward'. Then, like a junior high schooler, he tried to get in the face of republicans by usurping the date of the republican debate by scheduling a 'joint session of congress'....sort of in-your-face, middle finger to the republican-this joke is on you antic, expected to be found at a public school idiot, rather than the president of the United States. Now, he says he will dribble out PLAN....in other words, he will wait until the last minute....because there was no plan....there is no PLAN....this mindless nitwit obama is absolutely clueless.

6 posted on 09/05/2011 5:53:45 AM PDT by Texas Songwriter (I ou)
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To: Texas Songwriter

2012 can’t get here too soon.


7 posted on 09/05/2011 5:57:51 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (I want a Triple A president for our Triple A country)
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To: Erik Latranyi
I predict Obama is going to try and make it sound like he is going to make gov’t into a dynamic, effective organization with efficiencies never seen in the private sector.

Well put. That's what he's always implied. And, it has better moral values than the private sector, too.

8 posted on 09/05/2011 5:58:27 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: Kaslin

bump


9 posted on 09/05/2011 6:01:06 AM PDT by Christian4Bush (PSA. As of 9/5/11, 428/503 days 'til we vote out/take out the trash. (Nov 6 2012))
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To: Kaslin

Creating a job is easy. Someone has an idea for a product or service, then produces it, often at quite a financial risk. They then sell the product or service for more than it cost to produce. This is called profit. Make enough profit, you can hire someone to help with the work demand. That is called creating a job. More profits mean more work demand, which means more jobs.

The problem for our Dear Leader is he doesn’t believe in the aforementioned equation for job creation because it doesn’t run through government. Government never has created wealth, nor will it ever. Government can only TAKE wealth. Obummer simply falls back on his Marxist/Socialist beliefs.

Are businesses sitting on money? Yes, and they should right now. Why risk capital when the leader of our country is doing everything in his power to take it from you, or at the very least, throw up as many roadblocks (regulations) as possible to the creation of wealth?

Mark my words, if a conservative wins the White House in 2012 and says “This country is open for business!”, the floodgates will open. The economy won’t turn around overnight but it will be roaring by 2016, which should get him/her reelected.

Kharis13


10 posted on 09/05/2011 6:01:15 AM PDT by Kharis13 (That noise you hear is our Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.)
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To: Texas Songwriter
Which one would you rather be watching this Thursday?

VS


11 posted on 09/05/2011 6:03:14 AM PDT by Evil Slayer (Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war)
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To: Erik Latranyi
I predict Obama is going to try and make it sound like he is going to make gov’t into a dynamic, effective organization with efficiencies never seen in the private sector.

I predict that before he gets to that point, he will point out all the things he inherited and tell us how many roadblocks and resistance there has been to all his plans to turn this thing around. He'll say that if only he had free rein, he could finish the job - that's a eupamism for "put the last shovel of dirt on America's grave" - the only shovel-ready job he really supports.

12 posted on 09/05/2011 6:04:19 AM PDT by trebb ("If a man will not work, he should not eat" From 2 Thes 3)
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To: Kaslin
More taxing, more government spending, and more efforts to “spread the wealth around.”

And not one word about getting the democrat freeloaders off their lazy butts and into a job. Not one word about sharing the WORK!

13 posted on 09/05/2011 6:04:23 AM PDT by concerned about politics ("Get thee behind me, Liberal")
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
2012 can’t get here too soon.

ANYBODY but Oboma!!! (ABO-2012)

14 posted on 09/05/2011 6:06:54 AM PDT by concerned about politics ("Get thee behind me, Liberal")
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To: Kaslin
Different shade of lipstick.
Same old pig...
15 posted on 09/05/2011 6:09:20 AM PDT by FDNYRHEROES (It's 3 AM. Let me sleep on it. I'll get back to you in 16 hours.)
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To: concerned about politics

http://obamaclock.org/


16 posted on 09/05/2011 6:09:59 AM PDT by Evil Slayer (Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war)
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To: Evil Slayer
$2 trillion of QE and 860 billion flushed down the DC crapper - and it got us what?

 Barry can't figure out what went wrong
 The people aren't singing his song
 Well, here is the gist
 The people are p...ed
 And we'll vote him out before long
ob-cheese3
 America has a systemic crisis due to the failed policies and incompetent leadership..
17 posted on 09/05/2011 6:13:30 AM PDT by BobP (The piss-stream media - Never to be watched again in my house)
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To: Kaslin
Liberals want to have people fed a diet of processed information. They don't believe that people should be allowed to engage in the analysis of information, they want information presented to everyone as a fait accompli, its "truth" or validity already established.

I believe there are two main reasons for this, and both emanate directly from the basic tenets of liberalism:

1.) The first reason is that Liberals do not believe that people possess the capability to critically think about issues on their own. They believe that since everything is relative and that there are no absolutes, that normal people cannot distinguish this on their own, and it must be decided for them. The citizen cannot distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. This cuts to the heart of liberalism. It is why the adherents and followers of liberalism would be appalled if they really understood the contempt that they are generally held in by the people they look to for leadership.

This is a key and basic cleavage point in the difference between liberalism and conservatism.

Conservatives believe in individualism and self-sufficiency. Presented as an axiom, conservatives believe that if you set high standards for people, they will rise to the occasion and deliver to that level.

Liberals do not believe in individualism, they believe that people cannot survive and prosper without the intervention and aid of the community/government/etc., and they believe that setting standards for people to live up to is unfair to people, since everyone is different and standards are most often uniform.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but nearly EVERY liberal, even those who would deny it if asked directly, holds in their heart the following axiom: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Most run of the mill liberals would innocently agree that this is a great idea, because they do not have the intellectual rigor to "think beyond Stage One" as Thomas Sowell puts it. However, the liberals who DO think beyond stage one to at least stage two would deny this most vociferously, knowing full well the origin of this statement and what the open agreement to this statement would imply. You would have to administer truth serum to get them to tell you the truth on this one, but make no mistake, IT IS WHAT MOST LIBERALS BELIEVE, including the major politicians on the Democrat side, particularly Obama. It is why some of them scream "SLANDER" when they see this graphic I devised:

However, there are large numbers of them not clever enough to try to cover their trails that think comparing Obama to Che is great. Those are the ones too stupid to realize that by openly praising this connection, they are then ideologically undressed so that most thinking Americans can see them for what they are. In this category, I place the campaign workers who openly display the Che Guevara poster in their local Obama for President campaign headquarters.

2.) Secondly, The Liberals need to decide what is valid or invalid, right or wrong, because they do not trust others to reach the "correct" conclusions.

Like most of the people in the media, they do not trust individuals to "think correctly". It is why the vast majority of them see the processing of information before presenting it to the populace as a "sacred duty", a "trust". However, like the person who cannot see their faults because they are taped to their back, the fact that the media have generally held views on what is right and wrong and how to present that to people to get them to reach the same conclusions is not seen as a fault, but a virtue.

If it were not so serious, it would be quite funny in the way they view conservatives. They think that most of us here on FR think they have a giant conglomeration of media interests that all get together, have meetings to figure out the way to present the news, and issue talking points to everyone.

I admit to wondering about that on occasion, especially after seeing the way the word "gravitas" was used in the 2000 election cycle. Now, that is not a word that you hear every day, then...boom! Every single newscast, newspaper and political commentary seemed to mention it, referring to the lack of it in candidate George W. Bush. I had to force myself to remember that this comes from an industry where people (Brian Williams and Dan Rather are great examples of them) who speak words read from teleprompters are viewed as demigods.

The truth of the matter is, they don't have an organized information cartel in that sense. They all simply have the same intellectual underpinnings that allow them to reach the same conclusions, and they also share a lack of imagination that allows words like "gravitas" to catch fire and ricochet around the media world like a tank of compressed gas with the end lopped off.

The bottom line is: Liberals do NOT believe in the First Amendment. They believe the practice of free speech is dangerous.

And it is, as the British found out in 1776 when Thomas Paine authored "Common Sense". The Freedom of Speech IS dangerous when it IS the truth, and YOU disagree with it. One of the most Orwellian facets to liberalism is their disturbing insistence on the malleability of words and their meanings. They believe that changing the meaning of a word can change the nature of what it defines. A good example of this is the substitution of the term "gay" for "homosexual". (If you don't believe me, at the next party you go to, try using the word "homosexual" instead "gay" when discussing an issue. People of "good taste" will look at you as if you just spit in the punch bowl.)

However, contrary to what most liberals think, no amount of hate speech legislation or passage of things like the "Fairness Doctrine" will change the nature of reality. That is, if we don't let them. As John Adams famously said, "Facts are stubborn things..."

Let us do all we can to help the facts stay stubborn.

18 posted on 09/05/2011 6:17:15 AM PDT by rlmorel ("When marching down the same road, one doesn't need 'marching orders' to reach the same destination")
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To: Kaslin

We won’t solve the unemployment problem until Obama is unemployed.


19 posted on 09/05/2011 6:20:10 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator (Obama takes office, and 2-1/2 years later we are saying downgrade and America together!)
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To: jakerobins

I still have Ann Coulter’s words ringing in my ears about Obama’s analogy of the economy as “a car that President Bush drove into a ditch, and now the Republicans want the keys back to drive it into a ditch again...”


20 posted on 09/05/2011 6:22:06 AM PDT by rlmorel ("When marching down the same road, one doesn't need 'marching orders' to reach the same destination")
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