Liberty Song Saturday: We Con the World--A Parody

Remember We are the World?

The Chem Geek Princess was born that year, and hormones being what they are, I spent many an evening news broadcast sniffling through scenes of hungry children in Africa. We all joined Hands Across America the following Memorial Day weekend--we stood on Central Avenue with the CGP in a baby-backpack--and raised money (sort of) for those same starving children.

Those were more innocent times when we thought that humanitarians bringing aid carried babies in back-packs instead of their own clubs, knifes and stun grenades. I never dreamed I would in my own lifetime see again the rise of virulent anti-semitism on the left and on the right, as part of the package of collectivism and statism as my beloved "sweet land of Liberty" moved inexorably away from its founding promise based on rights of individuals rather than privileges granted to pressure groups.

Each time someone challenges the sovereign right of Israel to self-defense, and Israel responds by defending herself, a new and nastier wave of antisemitism can be found in the statements of "world leaders", members of the press, in the pages of newspapers, and on the internet. It does not matter that fewer than half the world's Jews actually live in Israel. It does not matter that many American Jews try to appease the anti-semites by joining in the condemnation of Israel and worse, their own people. From Hamas, from Iran, and more depressingly, from the UN and the capitals of Europe, calls are renewed once again for the destruction not only of the Jewish state, but of the Jewish people.

In the parody I will feature below, the chorus goes:
"We'll make the world abandon reason,
We'll make them think that the Hamas is Mama Teresa,
The truth will never make its way to your TV."

The problem IMO: You don't make a better day for anybody when you try to get the world to abandon reason. You don't make peace by creating moral hazard in which you give aid and comfort to those who will not rest until Israel is completely deligitimized and her people bombed out of existance.

Today I opened my newspaper and read Charles Krauthammer's column on the Op-Ed page. Writing about Israel's traditional defense tactics, he pointed out that being a small country surrounded by enemies, Israel uses forward defense--fighting wars on the enemy's territory--and active defense--military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the newly armed mini-states in southern Lebanon and Gaza. But, Krauthammer writes:

". . . under overwhelming outside pressure Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgenciesand therefore withdrawal . . . would bring peace. . .
What did [Israel] get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
Land for peace. Remember?
. . .The result? The Lebanon War of 2006 and the Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded land-for-peace withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the UN Goldstone Report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli--the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war--effectively deligitimized any active Israel defense against its self-declared terror enemies."

According to Krauthammer, this leaves Israel with nothing but passive defense--a blockade preventing enemy rearmament. And with the blockade-running flotilla set-ups, that is also being delegitimized by a world "community" united by nothing so much as their hatred of Jews. Krauthammer asks, then what is left? He writes:

"Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million--that number again--hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists--iranian in particular--openly prepare a more final solution."

And what are we Jews left with? Our traditional black humor in the face of hatred.
Here is the Latma crew with their parody, playing on theme of what really seems to unite the world--unceasing hatred of Jews. Here is We Con the World:





Do watch the original We are the World (linked above) and see the loving detail with which the Latma crew parodies the original in order to make their point about the so-called peace activists.

NOTE: You Tube has banned the original video, but here is a FREESPEECH version of it. Keep the Internet Free and Irreverent!

Reality Bites: Physical Limitations and Political Magical Thinking

Science education in the United States has suffered.

I was going to talk about the problem solving that BP engineers have to deal with in order to deal with a damaged well-head in 5000 feet of salt water, but I realized that the problem that they have in being confronted by Obama-like politicians has to do with a lack of scientific understanding among the pols and the general public.
So I'll begin by restating my first sentence and continue from there.

Science education in the United States has suffered. And the main reason that it has suffered has nothing to do with the intelligence of the students or of the teachers.
Science education in the United States has suffered because of the prevailing philosophy in our schools of education and in the humanities in general. That philosophy is post-modernism, which can be crudely stated as teaching that there is no objective reality.

But working scientists and engineers deal with objective reality every time they put on their lab coats and hard hats and go confront the real world. There is no way to evade it or obviate it; the laws of physics remain the same everywhere in the known universe. This is the meaning behind the ultimate geek bumper sticker:

3.14 X 10 ee 6 meters per second: It's not just a good idea--it's the LAW!

Politicians, on the other hand, due to the prevelent philosophical sloppiness in the humanities at our colleges and universities, and due to what cannot be called anything else but magical thinking, do not feel the need to actually deal with reality; their eyes glaze over when the calculators come out, and so they believe that energy can be created by decree, and that no trade-offs are necessary to maintain the modern standard of living that is made possible by what they call "miracles" of science and technology.

And that brings us to the present oil well accident in the Gulf of Mexico, what it would take for BP engineers to "fill that hole, Daddy", and why lawsuits are not going to either fill it or prevent future accidents of this nature. (Unless we could plug the line with lawyers, which could kill two problem birds with one stone).

Although we do not yet know the proximate causes of the well breach a mile under the ocean in the Gulf, we do know the ultimate problem. It is that BP was drilling for oil with a well head in the continental shelf under the Gulf that was one mile under water down to a reservoir whose surface was 13,000 feet under the surface rock below that. This kind of deep water drilling is currently at the very edge of our current technological development, mainly because of the pressures involved. When people are operating on the thin edge of technology, one small problem can become one huge nightmare; and in this case, an explosion that breaches the line at the top of the rock formation can rapidly spin out of control, because the technology developed to fix it operates much less efficiently at the high pressures involved.

The question then becomes, so why was BP drilling at a location that places the well at the laser-edge of technology? And the answer is not because they are irresponsible; the answer is because politicians and environmentalists, neither of whom appear to have any clue about risk/benefit calculations will not permit drilling in shallower water, where our technology is much more robust for solving the inevitable problems that develop when moving parts and entropy collide. (Entropy--the tendency of any system to go to maximum disorder unless energy is brought into it--is another physical constant that politicians tend to ignore and evade. This is why much of the infrastructure of this country is in such poor shape).

I will give the answer to the problem here, before I detail the problem: For the nonce, DRILL ON LAND OR IN SHALLOW WATER. There, it's in capitals so the Pols in Washington can read it without putting on their spectacles.

So what, in reality, would it take for Obama to answer in the affirmative to the question, "Daddy, did you plug that hole yet?"

I once worked for a very short time in the oil industry as a geologist. My husband is a mechanical engineer who has worked in the Geotechnical Engineeering Department at Sandia National Laboratory for 28 years. He has extensive experience with underground oil storage, and the associated fluid mechanics and materials required to get oil out of the ground or into it. Between us, we came up with the following calculations of what it would take to plug the hole using extant technology. All numbers are reasonable approximations. Data was obtained from information received from BP. NOTE: BP is not able to "plug the hole" because of the enormous pressures and the material constraints involved.

The current well head is broken at the surface of the rock formation, under 5,000 feet of water, which has a specific gravity of 1, and which is exerting an absolute pressure of 2,300 PSI(A) on the wellhead. The top of the oil reservior is ~ 13,000 feet below that, under a continental shelf formation that has various layers catalogued by mudloggers, each of which has a density somewhere between that of concrete and that of granite, and the average density of the whole formation exerts an absolute pressure of 13,000 PSI(A) on the reservior. Together then, the total absolute pressure on the top of reservior is that of the mile of water and the more than two miles of rock sitting on top of it, which is approximately 15,300 PSI(A). (The pressure exerted by the atmosphere above the ocean, which is approximately 15 PSI(A) at sea level, is negligible in comparison). The line from the wellhead to the reservior is likely a 20" line, extending 13,000 feet down. And since the wellhead is broken, the oil is flowing with a pressure difference of 8500 PSI(D),and the gauge pressure at the top is ~ 3,000 PSI(A).

Given that living on the surface of the earth, we are used to a pressure of 15 PSI(A), and can withstand a maximum of a bit more than that, the pressures calculated here are truly impressive. And given these impressive pressures, here is what it would take to "plug the hole". To place a plug near the reservoir surface, which would be necessary, because at the wellhead the pressure would increase to 15,300 PSI(A) once the flow is stopped, BP would need to lower a packer that weighs in at ~3 million pounds. Oil mixed with mud injected earlier, would flow past the packer and back up the well. When the packer is in place, it would be expanded to make a seal, but even so, at those depths and pressures, some oil would continue to flow past it. Once the packer is sealed, the line would then need to be backfilled with about 4 million pounds of concrete. BP will most likely not be doing this because solutions that have already been tried have made it nigh unto impossible to do it this way.

FYI: BP had a plan in place for dealing with this accident, and had possible solutions ranked from first to last according to increasing difficulty and likelyhood of failure. There is some evidence that the Obama administration dictated a different order, most likely for political reasons or worse. If so, the hubris of these men--who have no real world experience doing much of anything other than community organizing--is absolutely astounding.

Ideally, when this accident occured, the Obama adminstration should have followed an EPA plan already in place to use the Coast Guard and various state agencies belonging to the states the border the gulf to contain the oil and mitigate the damage to the coastal waters. In the meantime, BP would be working to stop the flow or oil at the well. But the administration did not follow the plan that was in place, choosing instead to "study the problem" at the behest of environmental groups concerned that burning the oil at the surface would cause air pollution. It is certain that there would have been smoke, but all in all, the damage from that would have been much less severe than the damage caused by oil drifting to the Gulf Coast. At the same time the administration was dithering about whether to follow the EPA plan, it was also engaging in empty rhetoric about "pushing BP out of the way" and having a "foot on the neck" of BP, presumably to point fingers elsewhere and try to mitigate the political damage to the president. Because this kind of political behavior is an evasion of the real situation, it only succeeded in making the admininstration look more and more foolish.

Case in point: As Barack "Emperor Hadrian" Obama was commanding the tides to stop by magical insults hurled at BP, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana sought permits to construct artificial barrier islands to stop the oil. The EPA dithered and Obama, indecisive as ever, promised to "study the problem" and get back to Jindal, after his Memorial Weekend vacation and Paul McCartney concert. Jindal waited in vain, and thus missed the opportunity to prevent coastal damage.

This failure of leadership seems to result from the fact that Washington D.C. sits inside a magic beltway, where the laws of physics, and the trade-offs made necessary by the needs of a technologically complex society that must deal with entropy, are less important than fingerpointing and blame games intended to obviate political damage. I have no illusions that any other politician would have done much better; however, Obama, whose real-world experience is negligible, and whose socialist political philosophy has already been demonstrated to be a total failure during the last century, seems to personify the absolute nadir of leadership.

Good leadership in a crisis requires that one first focus on solving the immediate problem, and only after that problem is dealt with, doing a thorough investigation that considers both the technological failures and any decision-making errors that exacerbated them. As the immediate problem is dealt with, evidence of what actually went wrong is often uncovered, but the general procedure is to get rid of the alligators before determining what went wrong with draining the swamp.

Further, human error is always part of the equation of any accident, but human error does not automatically translate into moral culpability. In general, there is a good body of law that deals with accidents like this, and BP--knowing its fiduciary responsibility--has already exceeded the legal cap on the amount of damages recoverable and has already volunteered to pay all costs related to the mitigation and clean-up effort. They have done so, even though the damage has been substantially multiplied by federal inaction over six weeks now, caused directly by the failure of leadership coming from the President of the United States himself.

Ideally then, a good leader deals with the immediate problem, and then considers the why's and wheretofores of an accident rationally and without immediately assigning blame. What has our president done? Filed a lawsuit.
Because that's really going to "plug the hole, Daddy."

Environmentalists, because they refuse to face the reality of entropy, and because they discount the place of human beings on the earth, refuse also to acknowledge that all life alters the environment, and that every technology involves trade-offs and hard choices. There is no magic bullet that lets any species function without changes on the earth. This magical thinking is exacerbated inside the beltway due to the unreality of the political game--which is not about taking responsibility--a key leadership trait--but rather obviating blame and political fallout. The combination has turned an accident into a crisis.

One that will undoubtedly not be wasted in Obama's march to fascism.

Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!

The Clouds of War: Why the Flotilla Crisis is a Distraction

There has been a good deal of discussion at most patriot and conservative sites about political solutions to our present crisis. Discussions involve the upcoming elections and possible moves to impeach the president. Meanwhile, generally, much discussion along the political spectrum has been about the Israeli commando raid on one of six ships in a flotilla that was aiming to run and break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. There is much outrage on the left, where nobody mentions the Egyptians have a blockade of Gaza as well, and for the same reasons: Gaza was forcibly taken over two years ago by the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas, which has dedicated itself to the cause of destroying Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel. Hamas--they're not the kind of people you want living next door to you. The Egyptians know that as well as the Israeli's do.

I believe the flotilla that was boarded and towed, as well as the ones now on the way to run the blockade, are mere distractions perpetrated mostly by useful idiots while Iran and Syria prepare for war. Here is my contribution to a discussion that mostly consisted of political responses to an article about the video 33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age. (You can view trailers here).

My response:

This discussion has gone for the most part toward poltical solutions such as marches and impeachment.
These are important discussions in their own right and for all the reasons (and more) that have been brought up.

We also need to be thinking about preparations, and a few people have mentioned food insurance.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are headed for war. This summer.
Iran has promised to wipe Israel off the map, and the United States is depicted by Achmadinajad as an even greater evil to be destroyed.

The present "Flotilla Crisis" is most likely a distraction to keep the world busy while the real war is planned.
Consider this interview with a retired American general put out by PJTV on May 6:
Former US General Warns of Chemical Attack Against Israel

In the interview at PJTV, this general says that he fully expects Achmadinajad to attack Israel and from a container ship, attack the United States with nukes.

Then consider the news from the UN--the new Mid-East Non-Proliferation Treaty. CNN is hailing it as "multi-lateral" missing the fact that Israel is named, but Iran is not considered a nuclear power. Israel rejected the NPT, but named Israel and not Iran singles Israel out for condemnation:

From Jewish Telegraphic Agency (English Language):

"Israel rejected the final document of a United Nations review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying that by singling out Israel it "ignores the realities of the Middle East."
The monthlong conference ended last Friday. The conference's final resolution called for a conference on establishing a nuclear-free Middle East to take place in 2012. It also called on Israel, which has never confirmed or denied that it has a nuclear weapons arsenal, to sign on to the treaty and allow the United Nations nuclear watchdog group to inspect its facilities. Iran was not mentioned in the resolution."

Finally, on Monday it was confirmed that Iran has the ability now has enough enriched uranium to make two warheads. Here is the Fox News report, but the news is everywhere:

"VIENNA (AP) — Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is only pursuing civilian nuclear energy.
The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium."

And consider this, from Fox News yesterday:

"Things in Middle East are quickly spiraling out of control. The Palestinians want to import weapons from Iran, to stockpile for the next war with Israel, but are prevented from doing so by the Israeli naval blockade. They realize they can’t stop the Israelis militarily, so they’ve turned to the world court of public opinion. . .
. . .The next few ships to challenge the blockade will likely be filled with more children’s toys and baby formula. But once the blockade is broken, those ships will be filled with missiles, weapons and ammunition bound for Hezbollah and Hamas. . .
. . . Meanwhile, the clouds of war are gathering."



Like Chamberlain, Barack Hussein Obama refuses to believe what Achmadinajad has been saying over and over. But unlike Chamberlain, I believe that Obama knows full well what he is doing. And by the time we got to congressional hearings on impeachment, they might well be taking place by candlelight.



Save those tin-foil hats, fellow patriots. The thing is spinning out of control. Remember what General Vallely said. We may need that foil to make Faraday Cages for our sensitive electronics.


Remember Glenn Beck's interview with Binyamin Netanyahu in 2006?

Many people ridiculed both Beck and Netanyahu for saying that Achmadinajad sees himself as the harbinger of the 12th Iman, who wishes to destroy Israel and the United States.

Given the news in the past month, I think the time for ridicule is over.

The Meaning of Memorial Day: Reply to a Friend

"In recent decades especially, the connection between American military intervention

and American freedom has become ever more tenuous.

Meanwhile, competence has proved notably hard to come by."

--Andrew J. Bacevich, "Memorial Day for a father whose son was killed

in Iraq", Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2010

Minuteman Memorial, The Green at Lexington, MA

Yesterday, a friend from Continental Congress 2009, who is also a combat veteran, wrote a heartfelt statement questioning the purpose of the deployment of American troops in the undeclared wars the United States has fought in his lifetime, including the war in which he served. He stated that he did not want to participate in Memorial Day activities that would perpetuate the lie that in these wars, our troops are fighting for freedom or dying for our country or our interests. Although his words were published on a private network, they echo what Andrew J. Bacevich, historian, grieving father, and author of the soon-to-be released Washington Rules: America's Path to Endless War, published today in the Los Angeles Times.

These reflections, public and private, have opened up for me the question that I believe many of us in the R3volution struggle with this Memorial Day: How do we honor the loss of our countrymen while at the same time recognizing that the character of America's wars has changed from that of fighting for liberty to that of advancing the interests of a few oligarchs with transnational ambitions?

Certainly the men whose names are written in stone on the Lexington Minuteman Memorial, who died rather than allow themselves to be disarmed, were fighting for their liberty and that of their families and posterity. And just as certainly, we cannot say the same about the loss of the precious lives of those who have been ordered to Somolia, Afganistan and Iraq.

And yet, this year as tyranny unfolds around the world, and the imperial ambitions of our politicians has become evident in a series of disasterous legislation passed, I do not have the stomach to ignore this question further, and distract myself by observing Memorial Day as "a celebration of the beginning of summer", thereby putting the reality of its origin and the dilemma of its current status down the memory hole. I thank my friend, whose identity will remain between us, for pushing me to face the question above squarely and to begin to wrestle with the meaning of Memorial Day in our times.

Here is what I wrote in response to my friend and fellow delegate, edited to suit this post. This is not the end to my questioning, but only the beginning of it:

Dear F.:

In a conversation with a Gold Star Mother from my hometown, I was recently reminded that Memorial Day is specifically to honor the fallen, and Veterans Day is to honor those who served and lived. Maybe, being from the rural Midwest I am too fussy about these things, but I like to keep them separated in my own mind.

As a youngster growing up in rural Illinois, Memorial Day was not a day only for picnics and cook-outs, and it was not a day to celebrate the beginning of summer. Instead, my grandparents still called it Decoration Day, and schoolchildren dressed in their school clothes (remember those?), would be taken to the cemetery, or to the war memoral in the town square, to decorate them with flags and flowers in memory of those who paid the ultimate price so that we might live free, become educated and make something of ourselves.

But my education did not prepare me to answer the following: What do you say to a mother or a wife or a child who has lost a child or a husband or a father in wars to which they never should have been sent? This is difficult, and I believe that most Americans do not know and so avoid the situation that would make us uncomfortable.. And so Memorial Day has become something other than honoring our war dead. All of them.

F., we are going to take your suggestion--no TV today. And we had already decided not to have a cookout. That can wait until the Glorious 4th! Today we will have a quiet day with the family, and think about those who died for freedom, and those who died in unconstitutional wars, and remember that each life was precious, and each one ended too soon. Some lost to the evil outside who threatened our liberty, and some to the evil within who shed and blood and treasure for their own wicked ends. In this way, I believe all of our soldiers died as a reminder, at least, that liberty must be defended, whether from within or without.

We have decided to stop today, even from preparations for the crisis that is coming, in order to remember the multitude of lives lost in all of America's wars, the good, the bad, and indifferent. We appreciate your service as well, then and now, and will set aside time to honor it specially on Veteran's day, though we strive to remember it every day.

And we appreciate your service to us today as well, the one you did us with your post about your own questions regarding your service in an undeclared war.
Thank you.

Liberty Song Saturday: Memorial Day

Amazing Grace in the wild, mournful tones of the bagpipes, to sing those fallen in battle to sleep.
War is terrible, and death is final. And yet, we become their world --we live their hopes and dreams-- when we remember them.

Accusations of Sedition

Lately, we have heard cries of "sedition" from supporters of the Obama administration, and from supposedly objective news reporters, who are showing their partisan colors with every word that comes out of their mouths. These accusations are heaped upon the heads of those who dare to criticize the current occupants of the executive branch, or who characterize their actions as dictatorial or imcompetent. It seems that the supporters of the Obama administration are floating the idea of sedition as a trial balloon for the possible instatement of some new version of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Unlike President Bush, who's support of the Patriot Act shows his contempt for rights but who nevertheless responded to protestors by saying "It's their right", the Obama adminstration has made no effort to correct the zeal of his supporters for tyranny.

Few of those who throw this word around so lightly understand the principles upon which our government is founded, and therefore are ignorant (at best) of the reason why throwing this accusation around is met by contempt from those who are so accused. Earlier today, I responded to the report of such an accusation on a message board I visit infrequently. There, the moderator reported that he was being accused of sedition by the Daily Kos because he had referred to Obama as "Der Fuhrer". And yet only a Fuhrer, that is a tyrant, would supress the free speech of free people via accusations of "sedition."

Here is my comment:

The concept of "sedition" does not properly belong to the legal tradition of a free society. To see why, consider the definition of sedition from Dictionary.com:

1. Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.

In a free society, any authority the state has comes from sovereign individuals. The state is not sovereign; it is the individual that is sovereign. And sovereign individuals do not owe allegiance to any state, or to any executive or representative thereof. We owe our honor and loyalty to the Constitution that protects our rights. Our rights do not come from the state, and they cannot be taken away from us by the state. Nor can we voluntarily surrender them. That is what unaLIENable means.

Further, according to the Constitution, the government receives any power it has as a matter of duty and privilege; the government has no rights. Rather, "We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union . . ." have from our status as sovereigns, granted the federal government a limited set of duties and privileges for the purpose of protecting our rights. Since liberty is one of those rights, we are at complete liberty to say anything we want about the government that We the People have created, and that extends to the liberty to criticize and lampoon the president and his appointees. By standing for election, the president has put himself if the public eye and must expect to be roundly criticized at his every move by citizens jealous of their right to free speech. If he can't stand the heat, he should get the hell out of the kitchen, as Harry Truman used to say.

This is why the American people objected so strenuously to John Adam's errant signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and why one of this cabinet secretaries stated that he could walk from New York to the Canadian border by the light of his own buring effigies. This is why Woodrow Wilson is considered a tyrant who greviously exceeded his duty and violated the rights of those who voiced their disagreement with the US entry into WWI, when he ordered the Sedition and Espionage Act. And this is why the Patriot Act of 2001 is unconstitutional.

Sedition cannot rightly be a crime in a free society in which each individual is sovereign whose rights are protected by a Constitution such as ours.
If Chairman Obama really wishes to rule as the thin-skinned king he seems to identify himself as, he should go to a country that defines its people as subjects, and conduct his coup d'etat there. He will get no sympathy from the proudly free and sovereign people of the United States.

In this blog, as well in other places, I have dared criticize Obama's policies, and I have used words applied to him and his minions that emphasize how tyrannous and dangerous I believe those policies to be. To paraphrase the immortal words of Patrick Henry to the Virginia House of Burgesses in response to the Stamp Act, I now say:

"If this be sedition, make the most of it."

Directive 10-289: Obama Becomes Wesley Mouch

In Atlas Shrugged, the novel by Ayn Rand, the government passed Directive 10-289. It was a directive to make everything fair and equal, and was sold to the public as a remedy for the economic mess that the country had gotten itself into via government interference with business and redistribution of wealth. The New Intellectual Blog provides the full text of the fictional executive order here.

Directive 10-289 can be summarized as a series of regulations that attempt to freeze the economy in place, and to end the "creative destruction" that occurs in capitalism as innovation sustains long-term economic growth while at the same time destroying the economic stability of established companies and their employees that have been operating in the existing business environment. Among the eight points that make up Directive 10-289 are those that freeze individuals at their jobs, freeze prices and wages, nationalize patents and other intellectual property, and require that production and consumption rates continue at present levels. The natural consequences of Directive 10-289 drive the plot of the second half of the novel, as the economy of the United States is destroyed, the infrastructure of business and commerce collapse, and the nation falls into ruin due to the loss of innovation and commerce, manufacturing and the normal economic transactions that make life in a modern society possible.

Although no adminstration in the United States has ever attempted all of the mandates in the fictional Directive 10-289, many of the individual points have been tried at various times since the beginning of the progressive era. Readers familiar with the precepts of the New Deal, or of the attempted economic fixes of the Nixon era will recognize some of them. In general the United States federal government has not tried to freeze consumption and production to mandated rates; rather it tries to nudge producers and consumers into acceptable (to the government) levels of production and spending through the use of subsidies, tax breaks and other such inducements.

In the past year however,
Chairman President Obama has in effect created Directive 10-289 through the passage of a number of laws that put the apparatus in place for the federal government to control a major portion of the US economy. The Stimulus Bill and the Healthcare Act have already been shoved down our throats, and now with the Financial Reform Bill, the government stands poised to control 60% of the United States economy, and monitor not only the health and financial records of the entire populace, but also to monitor credit card transactions and spending habits as well.

That this adminstration intends to dictate to citizens how much money they will be allowed to make, what kind of health insurance they will be forced to buy and what healthcare they may have access to, what financial products they may buy and sell, and what property they may own is now obvious. To flagrantly violate our liberty and property rights through such legislation marks this admininstration's intent to enslave the American people to the service of a fascist socialist new world order that is now clearly out in the open.

In Atlas Shrugged, the men who plan the enslavement of the American people claim to do so out of concern for the "common good." They say things like:

"We must not let vulgar difficulties obstruct our feeling that it's a noble plan motivated soley by the public welfare.

"They fail to recognize that production is not a private choice, but a public duty. They have no right to fail . . . they've got to go on producing. It's a social imperative."

"What we've got to think of is jobs. More jobs for more people."

So they lie--some even to themselves--about the true motive for enslaving the people. But some of them know that in reality the issue is not the so-called "common good", it's not the public welfare, the social imperative or even jobs. It's about power. And that power is gained by criminalizing any action that a person would naturally take in the pursuit of his own self-interest.

"We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men.The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

It's the same with the Obama adminstration's collection of laws that add up in practice to Directive 10-289. There's a reason each bill is so long and so convoluted. It is not because any of the publically proclaimed objectives of them need that many pages. Rather, it is in order to slip into the bills the structure that will make ordinary life as free human beings impossible to most citizens; it is to create slaves.

Just remember this as Obama halts one third of US oil production after doing nothing for five weeks, and ignoring the emergency plans for just such an accident as happened in the Gulf. Remember this as he goes on vacation this weekend without answering Bobby Jindal's request for permits to save his own state's coastline. Clearly, his actions are not about saving seagulls and fisheries from oil pollution.

Remember this as he moves to control 60% of our economy, and brings down the economy because of the loss of of fisheries, and the rising price of oil. A member of this adminstration has been recorded as saying that they need the price of oil in the US to equal that of Europe. Remember this when the price of food goes up because oil is the major energy source for its production and distribution across the country.

It's about power. It's about shoving irrational legislation down the throats of the American people in order to put in place an economic-political system that has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried.

Obama has become Wesley Mouch.