• TV’s ‘Netflix model’: is it all just a House of Cards? 
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[E]ven a generally under-appreciated episode [of The Simpsons] like “A Streetcar Named Marge” only increases in stature the more I revisit it (if you don’t cackle hysterically at this The Birds reference at The Ayn Rand School for Tots — genius […].  

• • ‘Take your best shot’: Gillard’s political timeline 
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Tough? or just obstinate? That kind of blind faith in oneself without regard to fact or evidence for the position being defended is Ayn Randian.  

• • The Twitter alternative you might be willing to pay for 
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[A]s documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis portrayed in All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, the entire process [of Silicon Valley business culture] is suffused with the Randian vision of a leaderless society where computer networks automatically fulfil our every desire.  

• • Obama is chiselling himself a space on Mount Rushmore 
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[H]aving stood fast on pushing through tax increases on the rich — which marks off his progressive credentials — and leading on a deal on cuts, which commits to a 10-year program of deficit reduction and debt paydown, [Obama] will have stolen the Republicans’ position. Leadership, co-operation and a commitment to fiscal discipline, shorn of the moralising Ayn Rand babble about debt, government, etc, Obama will be the complete leader.  

• Rundle12: no one understands how utterly unconservative Newt Gingrich is 
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[Newt Gingrich’s] Americanism is not that of Jefferson or Hamilton still less of Calhoun or Rothbard, and not even of Ayn Rand – it is the America of Buckminster Fuller, of Norbert Weiner, of a more aggressive Bill Gates, and a smarter Jack Welch. Gingrich sees the US as the manifest destiny of humanity, but he sees that destiny as unrealised. He doesn’t want to balance the budget and get on the gold standard. He wants the private sector to go to Mars.  

• Rundle: Occupy could lead to the Church turning on its own 
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Capitalism  | The bankers et al of the city have any number of thin rationales to sustain their self-belief — from simple individualism, to inherited and barely examined notions of what is “proper”, to various Ayn Rand-Hayek-Gekko mashups. But as Hayek himself noted, the social system he proposed can never ground itself.  

• The Power Index: meet the megaphones, Janet Albrechtsen at #8 
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[Janet Albrechtsen has] carved out a niche as Australia’s answer to Ayn Rand: anyone who’s anyone in conservative intellectual circles reads her, as do the bigwigs in the Liberal Party.  

• A nation tenses in anticipation 
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Behind the screen of Spanish, Mexico seemed an ancient and stately land, death-obsessed and serious in which the matters of the universe are discoursed upon in a manner equal parts Catholic scholastic and Mayan cosmic consciousness, but let's face it, once you work out what they're saying, they're probably just being d-cks like everywhere else. The last translated op-ed piece in the English-language Mexican daily I read drew on Ayn Rand to admonish the southern indigenous communities from dwelling in romantic notions of culture etc etc. Doesn't fill you with confidence.  

• Rugged individualism 
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Letter to the editor.
Well John Goldbaum, rugged individualism -- how very Ayn Rand of you. America adopted this kind of "rugged individualism" with the result that today, in the wealthiest and most developed country the world has ever known, 37 million people live below the poverty line, 3.5 million people live on the streets and 18,000 Americans die yearly because they can't afford health insurance.  

• Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups 
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Letter to the editor.
What matters is the rigour of the substantive work, not the associations of the person, or their political leanings. Nobody thinks the analyses of Alan Greenspan are worthless, because he happened to have associations with Ayn Rand, and her creepy Objectivist cult, as a naive graduate.  

• Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups 
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The idea that a new Utopia can be built by perfect implementation of the market principle - which is where [Mark] Hardcastle turned - suggests that he fell in love with Ayn Rand 50 years ago and never lost the dream. At least Ms Rand had the excuse that she had seen the failure and evil of communism with her own eyes.  

•Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups 

Peter Lloyd writes: [....] [Timber company] Gunns' statements to the ASX [on a proposed pulp mill] have contradicted the public line at several points. What do business analysts such as Henry 'Ayn Rand' Thornton have to say about that?  

•Keating too kind on Howard record 
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It’s time to wheel out the famous Singo quote from Rip Van Australia once again: "Malcolm Fraser says he admires Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand says she admires Malcolm Fraser. Neither has a clue what they are talking about."  

•Philosophy, name-calling and ambition 
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John Singleton said everything you need to know about the philosophical pretensions of our politicians back in his 1977 classic Rip Van Australia: "Malcolm Fraser says he admires Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand says she admires Malcolm Fraser. Neither has an idea what they are talking about."  

• •Vizard has one friend/fan left 
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Letter to the editor defending Australian businessman businessman Steve Vizard, who has been found guilty of "insider trading."
I'm reminded of a gentleman named Hank Rearden from Ayn Rand's classic novel Atlas Shrugged. Vizard's no steel industrialist but the whole shambolic media circus reminded me of Hank Rearden going before a tribunal to defend his right to do business in steel because vindictive power motivated interests wanted to destroy him!