Let Them Eat Argula

http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2010/08/let-them-eat-argula.html

(H/T Instapundit)

First lady Michelle Obama, our "modern-day Marie Antoinette" takes a $375,000 Spanish vacation, closing entire beaches for her private use and "booking 60-plus rooms in a five star Marbella hotel for her entourage."

Meanwhile, the number of people on food stamps back home in America is at an all time high, exceeding 40 million people, the government has just cut funding for the food stamp program, we lost 131,000 non-farm jobs in July, and we lost 221,000 jobs in June. The Dept. of Labor's U-6 unemployment numbers are at 16.5%, but more than a few economists think that even that number is being significantly undercounted, with the actual unemployment at upwards of 22%.

As Hot Air points out, "[i]n a normal recovery with proper economic policies of lower barriers to investor entry, we would see a rapid replacement of jobs . . ." But there are in fact many barriers, as one budding young entrepreneur, seven year old Julie Murphy, found out recently when she opened up a lemonade stand in Portland, Oregon. In what seems a perfect metaphor for the war our government is waging on private business, a health inspector shut her down for failing to have a $120 temporary restaurant license. (The soon to be ex-county Chairman has since apologized for his regulators run amok)

As Peggy Noonan noted recently, America is getting ever closer to "boiling over." That's a nice euphemism for it. As she notes:

In Washington they don't seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They're thinking something else. I'm not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don't seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.

And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take. . . .

When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.

Indeed. Were I the left, I would not fear a second American Revolution in our country. I'd fear a second French Revolution in our country.