Barack Obama's 30-minute television takeover reminded me of John Galt's 60-page airwave assault in Atlas Shrugged. "This is John Galt speaking," Ayn Rand's hero tells the world. "I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world." John Galt is the anti-Obama.

If it weren't for troubles, the Democratic Party would have them. Barack Obama's seven-station infomercial highlighted the struggling, the left behind, the put-me-on-your-back America. A visitor from another planet would get the impression that America isn't America at all, but 1970s Albania. In Barack Obama's America, there are no successes--only hardcases Barack the Redeemer can uplift. Every vignette in Obama's half-hour commerical can be summed up by the words of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," only substitute Obama for That Other Guy.

Viewers met Juliana Sanchez, whom the Democratic nominee informed "is a widow with two kids and a mortgage." Did you know, "Every morning, she's up before the sun"? She has a second job and takes teacher training classes. She explains of her money troubles, "You feel like you can't breathe even though you need to breathe." There's the retiree whose pension has been slashed, the Kentucky couple--Melinda was laid off and Mark's hours have been cut--and the employee at the tire-retreading plant who has a torn meniscus and can't afford an operation. Larry Stewart, a B&O railroad worker, retired ten years ago--or so he thought. "With [wife Juanita's] rheumatoid arthritis, and other ailments, their medical bills are rising," Obama explains. Larry has to work as an associate salesman at Walmart. He grumbles, "Each year it gets worse and worse and worse."

The worse it gets, the better it gets if you are a Democrat office seeker. The Democrats are the party that profits from pain. This isn't the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But Democrats want you to think it is. Times are tough for some, but we are not even in a recession. No matter. "Quiet on the set!" "Cue the tears!" "Action!" If America is not in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Hollywood will gather down-on-their-luck Obama supporters and create a video making everyone believe that we are. Manufacture reality.

Though the omnipresence of Barack Obama's simulcasted speech may remind one of the pirate transmission of Atlas Shrugged's John Galt, the similarities end at the broadcast bombardment. Whereas Obama asks the haves to sacrifice for the have-nots, Galt appeals to the have-nots to stop holding back the haves. Indeed, the simple, yet ingenius, idea behind Rand's Atlas Shrugged is imagining what would happen if the world's hardworking talent--rather than the people employed by that hardworking talent--went on strike. What would happen to the world then? As Obama may find out, when you punish success success always goes on strike. This is the blank out--yet another Randian concept outlined in Galt's speech--that Obama and the Obamaites suffer from: government can't give without taking first. Who does Obama seek to take from? The successful, who will be punished by his wealth-transfer schemes--just as the striving but less successful will be punished too. Let's face it: Joe the Plumber can't employ Juliana Sanchez, Mark and Melinda, and Larry Stewart when Obama the Taxer confiscates his success.

"You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder," Galt notes, in a passage that seems particularly relevant to the Obama supporters. "You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration." That, in a nutshell, is the economic psychology of socialists.

"This is Barack Obama speaking...

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will always live for the sake of another man, and ask another man to live for mine."

When the thinking man creates, his fellows receive overwhelming benefits. In a free society, the wealthiest men do not carry the biggest guns or cry the largest pools of tears; they are the thinkers who think up the greatest ways to assist their fellow men. They earn their profit; they benefit by benefiting others.

The legitimate capitalist, unlike the statist and his "taxation", does not give the ultimatum: "Your money or your life;" he does not offer a stickup. Rather, he says, "How about your money for your life;" he offers a handshake. By this, he means that his product or service makes his customer's life better, happier, more full - or even longer; a capitalist benefits by benefiting others.

As Dan noted in a previous post, capitalism without risk soon morphs into capitalism without reward. Likewise, capitalism without capitalists that benefit soon morphs into no benefits at all. Without winners, there are no winnings.

Terrific post.

I did think the music and opening shots of grain were a bit much. If you were a die-hard fan, then the infomercial was probably like being on ecstasy.

But if you were skeptical of the man, then this commercial was further proof of Obama's artifice.

I was hoping the link would take me to the Spaceballs scene, but Louis will have to do.

Found it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcYKKNNcjSo

There are just no boundaries to what Barack Popeil Obama can do with our money, is there?

I get the impression that everything is possible as long as American suckers provide more or their hard earned income.

On an important issue, Dan it appears you won last weeks AYRFSF, with a 10-3-1 record.

Am I to take it that your attitude towards Ayn Rand is softening?

Ayn Rand: good novelist, bad deity.

Wrong deity Dan. We rational ones worship the God Validity, not the woman.

Dan, what do you mean by worship?

I'd say Ayn Rand's work deserve high reverence and honor, but it'd be a bit weird to worship her by singing hymns and dancing to praise songs composed to worship her. A true Objectivist does not worship Ayn Rand; he worships the principles of Objectivism. And in so doing, he worships himself.

B.Hussien has the ego and speaks like a man,who has never drawn a breath of air,or paycheck,in the real world.
This man has spent a lifetime sucking on the government teat and has a result is naive,beyond belief and has no clue about how the real world operates.
B.Hussien is a man who promotes ideas that can only work in his own mind,a college classroom,or a university faculty lounge,which is full of cowardly, lazy,losers, who have spent a lifetime living their lies or fantasies, all in order to avoid the harshness of the real world and the risks as well as where results as well as consequences are measured in actual results,not on meaningless words and good intentions.

When the enemies of the USA see this whimpy little man, complete with a the narrow weak shoulders and even weaker stomach, it only perpetuates the myth of American weakness and lack of will to take the necessary risks to protect the country.

Biden is no better,he has spent a lifetime in Washington, never failing to take the route of,"the easy way out" when it comes to foreign policy matters. He refused to support the confrontation of communist agression and he,in his own deranged mind, believes he can talk the Islamic Barbarians into liking us as well as talking them out of using terrorism as a weapon to promote their sick fantasy of the caliphate.

Two weak men, who are naive to the core, have no chance to effectively provide the will and stomach,to take the action or make the tough decisions, necesssary to defeat an enemy, bent on the destruction of the USA.