The apples of the valley hold the seeds of happiness
The ground is rich from tender care, which they do not forget, no, no
Dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrant's face is red
Oh, war is the common cry, pick up your swords and fly
The sky is filled with good and bad, mortals never know
Oh well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow
The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
"People ask, 'Why do you hate President Obama?' Well, I have always loathed his policies because he is a Progressive -- the same would have been true if John Kerry or Hillary Clinton had become President -- and I didn't start out hating him. Unfortunately, after years of being the object of his demonisation, targeting, lies, and hatred, I figured I might as well return the feeling. Just so that we are perfectly clear: I have no problem with his black half, which seems like a perfectly nice, good husband and father. I think his white half is the most incompetent, arrogant, asshole ever to occupy the Oval Office."
- Sophie
By Victor Davis Hanson
We
recently saw lots of sit-down strikes and demonstrations — the various
efforts in Wisconsin, the Occupy movements, and student efforts to
oppose tuition hikes. None of them mattered much or changed anything.
There is a sit-down strike, however, that has paralyzed the country and
has been largely ignored by the media.
Most economists since 2009 have been completely wrong in their
forecasts, reminding us that their supposedly data-driven discipline is
more an art than a science. After all, a great deal of money is invested
and spent — or not — based largely on perceptions, hunches, and
emotions rather than a 100 percent certainty of profit or loss. And the
message Americans are getting is that the Obama administration is
hostile to investment and business, and thus should be waited out.
Barack Obama’s original economic team — Austan Goolsbee, Christina
Romer, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag — have long fled the administration,
and have proved mostly wrong in all their therapies and prognostications
of 2009.
Despite the stimulus of borrowing over $5 trillion in less
than four years, near-zero interest rates, and chronic deficits, the
U.S. economy is in the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and
mired in the longest streak of continuous unemployment of 8 percent or
higher — 38 months — since the 1930s. The Mexican economy is growing
more rapidly than is ours. Why did not massive annual $1 trillion–plus
deficits spark a recovery, as government claimed an ever larger
percentage of GDP, and new public-works projects were heralded by the
administration?
Much of the answer is found in the collective psyche of those Americans
who traditionally hire, purchase, or invest capital. An economy is
simply the aggregate of millions of private agendas, of people sensing
and reacting to a commonly perceived landscape. Yet since January 2009,
that landscape has been bleak and foreboding.
Take the debt. The problem is not just that Obama has borrowed $5
trillion in less than four years, but also that he has offered few plans
to reduce the ongoing borrowing and none at all to pay down the debt.
Instead, he has demonized as heartless anyone who opposes his serial $1
trillion annual deficits. That demoralizes the public, who privately
know that they cannot buy everything they might wish, and who expect
that government will not, either. In the business community, there is
the unspoken assumption that, at some point very soon, either taxes will
have to rise, the currency will have to inflate radically, or debts
will have to be renounced — all equally foreboding for those with
capital. Some even believe that Obama is not a haphazardly profligate
spender but a deliberate one who welcomes the radical measures on the
horizon to stave off bankruptcy as laudable in themselves.
Take energy. We are reminded that the ANWR field in Alaska — and
others far greater there — are still off limits. So too are over 25
million barrels off the California coast. Federal leases have been
vastly curtailed in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Eastern Seaboard, and in
the American West. The cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, which
would have kept billions of U.S. petrodollars inside North America,
coupled with Solyndra-like federally subsidized solar and wind
boondoggles, sent the message that the government would oppose energy
that was profitable and subsidize sources that were not.
Worse still, in less than four years, we have now an entire corpus of
Obama-administration quotations blasting fossil-fuel energy. The
president himself promised skyrocketed energy prices with his
now-stalled cap-and-trade proposals. He mused that new regulations might
bankrupt coal-burning companies. He ridiculed the idea of increasing
oil and gas supplies by more drilling and instead pointed to the
importance of proper tire pressure and regular tune-ups and spoke of
tapping America’s vast algae resources. Secretary of Energy–designate
Steven Chu mused that he wanted gas to reach European price levels,
apparently in hopes of curbing fossil-fuel consumption while making
alternative sources of energy more competitive. Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar, who as a senator had claimed that even $10-a-gallon gas would
not prompt him to open up federal lands for oil and gas leases, shrugged
that there is no way of knowing whether $9-a-gallon gas is on the
horizon. More recently, it was disclosed that an EPA regional
administrator, Al Armendariz, had bragged of trying to “crucify” and
“make examples” of gas and oil companies in the manner that the Romans
did to conquered peoples.
The current renaissance in American oil and gas production is
primarily a private effort to drill on private land, despite rather than
because of the Obama administration. That the Obama administration
takes credit for private companies’ finding new sources of low-priced
oil and gas, despite government hopes that they would fail, only
heightens the sense of private-sector cynicism and pessimism. The result
is that “speculators” do not believe the oil companies will be given
access to enormous energy reserves on public lands — and that, to the
degree they drill new wells on private lands, a horde of apparatchiks
from academia such as Mr. Armendariz will make life difficult for them.
Take also new mandates. The problem with Obamacare is not just that it
represents a vast new entitlement at a time of record annual deficits,
but that no one knows how much it will cost employers to enroll their
employees.
Potential hirers instead suspect only that their health-care
expenses will spike, and those who are politically connected for that
very reason have sought and obtained exemptions from the Obama
administration: All companies, liberally owned or not, want out, not in —
exactly the opposite of what the administration forecast. The public
likewise suspects that Obamacare will come to resemble the hated TSA
they see at airports — lots of employees milling around, little
guarantee that the job at hand is done well, and an evident resentment
of federal employees toward the public they serve.
Will X-rays for our
kidneys resemble the sort of scanning process and pat-downs we endure at
airports? And the more the government seems to take over private
enterprise — the car bailouts, the mortgage industry, student loans,
wind and solar partnerships — the more private enterprise is frightened
of being the next small guitar company or the next Chrysler creditor.
Government seems now to be not only incompetent but arrogant, as if its
vast recent growth ensured its impunity from oversight — whether in the
GSA scandal, the Secret Service debacle, or the Fast and Furious mess.
Take wealth. There is a crass war against wealth. Obama has ridiculed those who have done well as the one-percenters, the fat cats,
the corporate-jet owners, and the ones who don’t pay their fair share
or don’t know when to stop making money. But the problem with this
boilerplate populism is that it does not emanate from the muscular
classes and is not aimed uniformly at the proverbial rich. The first
family vacations in Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, Vail, and Aspen,
not at Camp David; and the lieutenants in this class warfare are
themselves one-percenters, an Al Gore, John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi.
Likewise, who determines whether to go after the Koch brothers or Warren
Buffett; is this week’s enemy to be Exxon or Google? Why is the
non-income-tax-paying GE under Jeffrey Immelt apparently approved, while
a CEO on Wall Street is deemed a fat cat? Is it give to Obama and you
are canonized; give to Romney and your name is posted on an
enemies-list, pro-Obama website?
The only thing more discouraging to investors than class warfare
generally is a certain type of class warfare: a hypocritical crusade
that emanates from the upper classes and selectively targets enemies on
the basis not of wealth, but of the degree to which they have failed to
buy exemptions with their wealth. Meanwhile, on the other end, the
message is more weeks of unemployment insurance,
vastly more food-stamp recipients, and constant promises of
mortgage-debt relief, credit-card-debt relief, and tuition-debt relief.
If one were to dream up a perfect way to destroy incentives on both the
top and bottom ends, one could do no better than what we have seen since
2009.
.
He has added to his enemies his fellow citizens, who he chooses to demonise on a daily basis in a way unseen in my lifetime.
The net result is that those with capital, even if they are small
businesses, do not believe that the Obama administration likes them.
They feel that regulations will increase, that taxes will increase, that
energy costs will increase, and that as they pay more to government and
keep less, government will nevertheless become even more arrogant and
inefficient — and they will become even more demonized. When people pay
over 50 percent in payroll, federal, state, and local taxes and are
still caricatured as “not paying their fair share,” a sort of collective
shrug follows and bodes ill for the economy at large. One need not be
liked to make money, but the constant presidential harangues finally
take their toll in insidious ways.
Countless times each day, a contractor chooses to hire only a
part-time electrician, a CEO hoards cash rather than opens a new plant, a
renting family declines to buy a reasonably priced new house, an
indebted graduate heads home to kick back and wait until “something
turns up,” and an unemployed worker wonders whether it is not wiser to
receive all two years of federal benefits before reentering the work
force.
I don’t know whether Mitt Romney’s economic package will bring
instant prosperity. But I suspect that the fact alone that it is not
what we have seen and heard for the last four years will unleash a
pent-up energy of the sort we have not seen in a long time.
In short,
President Obama has achieved the impossible — he has convinced millions
of rational, profit-minded Americans eager to invest, buy, and hire that
he doesn’t worry much whether they do.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and
historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author
most recently of The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidises non-work."
- Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate
The Battle of Evermore by Led Zepplin
The Queen of Light took her bow and then she turned to go
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom and walked the night alone
Oh, dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The Dark Lord rides in force tonight, and time will tell us all
Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, race now to my bow
Side by side we wait the might, of the darkest of them all
I hear the horses thunder down in the valley below
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow
The apples of the valley hold the seeds of happiness
The ground is rich from tender care, which they do not forget, no, no
Dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrant's face is red
Oh, war is the common cry, pick up your swords and fly
The sky is filled with good and bad, mortals never know
Oh well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow
The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
The drums will shake the castle wall, the Ringwraiths ride in black (ride on)
Sing as you raise your bow, (ride on) shoot straighter than before
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold
Oh, dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back, bring it back
At last the sun is shining, the clouds of blue roll by
With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes
Oh, bring it back, bring it back...
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom and walked the night alone
Oh, dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The Dark Lord rides in force tonight, and time will tell us all
Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, race now to my bow
Side by side we wait the might, of the darkest of them all
I hear the horses thunder down in the valley below
I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow
The apples of the valley hold the seeds of happiness
The ground is rich from tender care, which they do not forget, no, no
Dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrant's face is red
Oh, war is the common cry, pick up your swords and fly
The sky is filled with good and bad, mortals never know
Oh well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow
The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
The drums will shake the castle wall, the Ringwraiths ride in black (ride on)
Sing as you raise your bow, (ride on) shoot straighter than before
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold
Oh, dance in the dark night, sing to the morning light
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the balance back, bring it back
At last the sun is shining, the clouds of blue roll by
With flames from the dragon of darkness, the sunlight blinds his eyes
Oh, bring it back, bring it back...
1 comment:
I have NO USE for his black parts, his arab parts, or his white parts. I think that they are ALL working together to bring down the country that I LOVE. I think he is so self-centered, he sees his family as accessories to further HIS magnificence, and nothing else!
As the sticker in your other blog says. Four words- GET.THE.FUCK.OUT
Damnbitchin' tune to read by, also.
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