Peter Ferrara: Obama's Total Eclipse for America
[Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.]
In a seminal speech last week at Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama gave a stunning performance of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In the novel of that name written by Mark Twain over a century ago, a 19th century American entrepreneur drawn into a barroom brawl is knocked over the head with a crowbar all the way back to the 6th century. Literally.
He awakens sprawled on an English field on June 20, 528, with an English knight pointing a lance straight at his nose. Taken prisoner and hauled off to King Arthur's court, he is pronounced the sentence of death by burning at the stake the next day at noon, for the pleasure of the capturing knight. But the Boss, as the Yankee is called in the book, remembers that a total eclipse of the sun occurs the next day, June 21, 538, at precisely 12:03 pm. The Boss proclaims to the court that he is a great magician, and rattles his captors by threatening to blot out the sun if they try to harm him. But Merlin assures King Arthur it is an idle threat.
The next day, around noon, the Boss stood in the open courtyard of King Arthur's castle, before the assembled multitude come to watch the spectacle, chained to a stake surrounded by kindling. The executioner raised a blazing torch, but suddenly froze, petrified. The crowd rose to its feet, gasping. The Boss recounts, in the words of Twain,
I followed their eyes; as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning….The rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk…and the assemblage stared into the sky motionless. I knew this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect.
A panicked King Arthur says to the Boss, "Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the sun." As the darkness spread across the sun, the Boss demands to be named Perpetual Minister and Chief Executive of the Kingdom, sharing in a percentage of all increased revenues. The crowd and the King immediately applaud and embrace the deal.
Similarly, in his speech in Pittsburgh last week, Barack Obama said:
It has now been a little over 16 months since I took office amid one of the worst economic storms in our history. And to navigate that storm, my administration was forced to take some dramatic and unpopular steps. These steps have succeeded in breaking the freefall. We're again moving in the right direction. An economy that was shrinking at an alarming rate when I became President has now been growing for three consecutive quarters.
Consider exactly what Obama is implying in these words. When he came into office, the economy was in "freefall," "shrinking at an alarming rate." It was only because of the "dramatic and unpopular steps" he took that this was stopped, and reversed. Otherwise, without Obama's miracle Grecian formula elixir, the economy would have continued in freefall, all the way back to the stone age.
This claim is in perfect parallel to the claim by Twain's Connecticut Yankee that he was blocking out the sun during that solar eclipse on June 21, 528, wowing the Dark Ages yahoos. The economy was never going to remain in freefall absent Obama's miracle cure innovation of trillion dollar deficits. For centuries now, we have experienced the business cycle in market economies, where the economy goes down, and then recovers. We just don't remember that anymore because Reaganomics was so successful that it banished the business cycle effectively for a record 25 years, with only 2 short, shallow downturns during that time. Even the official scorekeepers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) have suggested that the period be considered one continuous, unparalleled expansion...
Read entire article at American Spectator
In a seminal speech last week at Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama gave a stunning performance of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In the novel of that name written by Mark Twain over a century ago, a 19th century American entrepreneur drawn into a barroom brawl is knocked over the head with a crowbar all the way back to the 6th century. Literally.
He awakens sprawled on an English field on June 20, 528, with an English knight pointing a lance straight at his nose. Taken prisoner and hauled off to King Arthur's court, he is pronounced the sentence of death by burning at the stake the next day at noon, for the pleasure of the capturing knight. But the Boss, as the Yankee is called in the book, remembers that a total eclipse of the sun occurs the next day, June 21, 538, at precisely 12:03 pm. The Boss proclaims to the court that he is a great magician, and rattles his captors by threatening to blot out the sun if they try to harm him. But Merlin assures King Arthur it is an idle threat.
The next day, around noon, the Boss stood in the open courtyard of King Arthur's castle, before the assembled multitude come to watch the spectacle, chained to a stake surrounded by kindling. The executioner raised a blazing torch, but suddenly froze, petrified. The crowd rose to its feet, gasping. The Boss recounts, in the words of Twain,
I followed their eyes; as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning….The rim of black spread slowly into the sun's disk…and the assemblage stared into the sky motionless. I knew this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect.
A panicked King Arthur says to the Boss, "Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the sun." As the darkness spread across the sun, the Boss demands to be named Perpetual Minister and Chief Executive of the Kingdom, sharing in a percentage of all increased revenues. The crowd and the King immediately applaud and embrace the deal.
Similarly, in his speech in Pittsburgh last week, Barack Obama said:
It has now been a little over 16 months since I took office amid one of the worst economic storms in our history. And to navigate that storm, my administration was forced to take some dramatic and unpopular steps. These steps have succeeded in breaking the freefall. We're again moving in the right direction. An economy that was shrinking at an alarming rate when I became President has now been growing for three consecutive quarters.
Consider exactly what Obama is implying in these words. When he came into office, the economy was in "freefall," "shrinking at an alarming rate." It was only because of the "dramatic and unpopular steps" he took that this was stopped, and reversed. Otherwise, without Obama's miracle Grecian formula elixir, the economy would have continued in freefall, all the way back to the stone age.
This claim is in perfect parallel to the claim by Twain's Connecticut Yankee that he was blocking out the sun during that solar eclipse on June 21, 528, wowing the Dark Ages yahoos. The economy was never going to remain in freefall absent Obama's miracle cure innovation of trillion dollar deficits. For centuries now, we have experienced the business cycle in market economies, where the economy goes down, and then recovers. We just don't remember that anymore because Reaganomics was so successful that it banished the business cycle effectively for a record 25 years, with only 2 short, shallow downturns during that time. Even the official scorekeepers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) have suggested that the period be considered one continuous, unparalleled expansion...