We interrupt our regularly scheduled program...

...to bring you this unbelievable "Atlas Shrugged" moment from today.

Apparently Christine Varney, Obama's new "antitrust cop" has decided to target Google in an unfair business practice investigation.

And why? In an action that seems literally torn from Ayn Rand's classic novel (which seems more pertinent every day) apparently Google is guilty of being too good at the search engines business. This apparently isn't "fair" to other search engines. Also, they're taking advantage of us all by offering everything (like the email accounts so many of us use) for FREE which hurts "competition".

From the article:

But companies still have to make money, so there are limits to how much they can provide free. Not a problem for Google. Its core advertising business is so powerful, dominant and profitable that it can subsidize almost everything else the company does, using Free to get customers in new markets.

How horrible. And the problem?

Is that fair, when so many of its competitors don't have a similar golden goose at the core of their operations?

So because Google was innovative and developed a search engine that was superior to all others which everyone chooses to use on a daily basis, it should be penalized. Awesome. We continue with the article:

Could Free be OK for little companies, but not really big ones? How much market share would you have to have in one market to disallow you from using Free in another?

Hmmm. Is he suggesting that the government order Google to start CHARGING for gmail and search engine usage?! But then some little dotcom clown company that will most likely disappear into obscurity after absconding with investment dollars CAN offer things for free?? Note that the writer isn't speaking for himself, he's exploring what Obama's new "antitrust cop" is going to have to do in order to succesfully prosecute Google.

Did any of us ask for this? Are there people sitting around at home crying about losing such search engine icons as Webcrawler or Lycos or Altavista?? Does anyone even remember that these companies ever existed?? Shouldn't the government expend its resources on things like fixing the housing market or something that might actually be beneficial to the economy and/or the average person? Instead we run up the deficit by paying for this "cop" (and what I'm sure is a whole team of investigators and assistants, not to mention an office and furniture and all the expenditures that go along with it) to chase around the only thing that's still actually free in this world aside from air. Why can't we just leave the internet alone. WHY.

In the meantime the unemployment rate keeps going up, foreclosures continue at an alarming rate, interest rates for mortgages rise despite the government's actions to keep them low and job losses continue to mount as another trillion or so dollars just vanishes into thin air. Another failed policy that is already collapsing in on itself not even four months after going into effect. But we've already moved on to health care and cap and trade and don't ask don't tell and terrible foreign policy that targets our successful friends and helps our failing enemies.

And Google. Google is the biggest problem we have in this country because they have the nerve to be one of the few successful companies in this hell of an economy and because they give away their products for FREE. FREE is now a problem.

This country has lost its mind.

Oh well, who is John Galt anyway?