• • The High Cost of Opportunity 
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When discussing poverty and the distribution of wealth, two views typically emerge. Conservatives, fond of both Randian self-accreditation and those proverbial bootstraps we're all supposed to use as leverage, tend to hold the single individual responsible for their own destiny, regardless of where they started. Liberals, fond of blaming the system and clinging to the "entitlement programs" that seek to alleviate the stresses of said system, are more likely to forgive the personal missteps that often hold individuals in poverty.  

• The Dick Cheney Presidential Library in Dallas 
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Atlas Shrugged  | W, incurious about the world and possessing marginally average intelligence, was smart enough to realize that he could play at the presidency while Cheney ran the world like John Galt.  

• • Is the Entire Deficit Debate Based on a Big Mistake? 
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Paul Ryan  | Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, the Tea Party Republicans, billionaire Peter Peterson and much of Wall Street really don’t give a damn about facts or even about the debt. Their real goal is the destruction of government programs that serve the collective good. Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan detest the very idea of government social programs for anyone. They want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as a matter of principal. In the Randian universe, all forms of collective support provided through government are evil. The destruction of the 90 percent threshold won’t dent such strongly held beliefs.  

• Atlas Has Shrugged: West, Texas 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Reference in title only.
 

• • Comedy Relief 
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[T]hose chosen by the Right to shepherd the next chapter of their Assault On America are reacting to their audience's restlessness and slipping in puddles of their own flowing flop-sweat: Rick Santorum dedicating his life to dragging the country back to a time when people wore big buckles on their hats; Herman Cain giving CEO's even a worse name than they already have; Mitt stuffing his suit with whatever fluff he happens to be standing in at the time; Rick Perry about to go full birther; Michelle Bachmann unable to hide her love of wild-eyed fundamentalism; the now painfully obvious abortion fetish and the glorification of Ayn Rand's malignant, narcissistic sociopathy which permeates all dyed-in-the-wool GOPers; and -- of course -- the relentlessly reflexive kneecapping from the FOX folks and related fiends. It's sedition as vaudeville.  

• • Bill Maher Slams Paul Ryan, Rand Paul For ‘Ruining’ Libertarianism 

Video  | On this week’s episode of “Real Time,” Bill Maher used his final “New Rule” of the night to take on Libertarianism and the conservatives whose obsessions with Ayn Rand have “ruined” the political philosophy for him.  

• Alternate Universe America Marks 10th Anniversary Of President Gore’s War On CO2 

Atlas Shrugged  |Rand Paul  | RAND PAUL SUPPORTS PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP NOT DEPORTING 12 MILLION PEOPLE - This being Rand Paul, undocumented immigrants will probably travel down the pathway on the John Galt Line. Choo! Choo!  

• Oryancare. Obamacare for Seniors. Really. 
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Paul Ryan  | The latest version of the Ryan budget -- really his old budget, for three years running now - came out this week. The document generated near universal dismissal by the mainstream media as an act of pointless political grandstanding - to the Right, a courageous statement of fiscal responsibility, to the Left, a defiant display of Randian cruelty.  

• • • Paul Ryan’s Budget, Ayn Rand’s Dream 
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Alan Greenspan  |Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Individualism  |Paul Ryan  | The inspiration for Paul Ryan's budget comes directly from Ayn Rand. In fact, far too much of the current budget debate is shaped by her philosophy that so viciously divides the world into "creators" against the "moochers" -- the "makers" against the "takers." How else it is possible to propose a budget that so favors the wealthy and so cruelly punishes the less fortunate? How else to explain why both parties are engaged in a foolish deficit reduction dance that will undermine social programs and exacerbate the real problem -- the lack of decent, sustainable employment?  

• • • Ideology Won’t Solve Our Problems 
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Capitalism  |Paul Ryan  | The chief author of the GOP's new House budget proposal, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), is an acknowledged disciple of the late political philosopher Ayn Rand, an advocate of a Utopian system that would eliminate almost all government involvement in the economy. To pass an ideological litmus test, Republican office seekers must sign a written "pledge" that they will never vote to raise taxes.  

• • Sequester This! How Did We Get Here? How Do We Get Out? 
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4. The Ayn Rand Republicans control the debate:
Once the president accepted the Republican terms of debate, the Ayn Rand wing -- the taker-maker gang who see working people and the poor as moochers -- realized they had no need to compromise. The more they held out, the more liberals had to come their way. This was their golden moment to destroy as much of government as they could because in their playbook, government by definition is evil. Facts don't matter in this discussion. It's all about faith, values and conviction.  

• • Sequester: The Rise of Republican Anarchists 
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Egoism  | The March 1 sequester budget cuts are yet another product of crises manufactured by the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party. These Tea Party extremists have one objective: crush the federal government. Motivated by a strange brew of Old Testament Christianity and Ayn Rand's "objectivism," they're a lethal force within the GOP -- anarchists.  

• • • The Devil and Alan Greenspan 
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Alan Greenspan  |Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Individualism  |Personal life  |The Fountainhead movie  | Almost from the beginning of Mr. Greenspan's domination of the Fed, I dreamed of being a member of either the House or Senate finance committees, for one reason, to ask this question:

“Mr. Greenspan, would you please tell the members of the committee why you worship Ayn Rand?" [....]

Had even one member asked [...] then perhaps the myth of Alan Greenspan’s “genius” might have been shredded and exposed, as he should have been exposed, the disciple of a woman whose economic theories and views of humanity strike at the very heart of American idealism and the promise of the Constitution -- that all men are created equal.  

• • Blaming the Tea Party-Controlled GOP for Sequestration Isn’t Partisan, It’s ... 
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Republicans in the House and Senate, afraid of primary challenges and, in some cases, the product of them, have handed their party over to the lunatic fringe. They have placed a purist, anti-government, anti-taxes, pro-wealthy, anti-middle class, Ayn Randian ideal above the practical, compromising, hard work of actually governing. They have created a toxic atmosphere in Washington, in which damaging the country (again, we are talking about a million people losing their jobs) is preferable to working with a president they irrationally despise and compromising to move even an inch closer to where the majority of voters stand on the issues.  

• • • Academy Awards 2013: Animated Shorts 
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Alan Greenspan  |Atheism  |Egoism  |Paul Ryan  | [In The Longest Daycare] Madge drops off Maggie to spend the day at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. A bit of background for those who are unfamiliar with Ayn Rand: Rand (1905-1982) was an atheist philosopher whose ideas have attracted such supporters as Rep. Paul Ryan, ex-Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She believed that selfishness is a virtue and that some people are simply born better than others. The most popular film expression of Rand's philosophy is the Pixar animated feature The Incredibles, in which a family born with super powers are the good guys, and the young man who is born normal, but uses intelligence and hard work to develop similar powers, is the villain.  

• • Cosmopolis on DVD & On-Screen, Tonight @ Museum of The Moving Image 
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The Fountainhead  | [An] omission that might have worked in-film is the book's demolition-site lovemaking scene between Elise and Eric, which seems to me like a terrific reversal of the Ayn Rand stone quarry primal sex scene twixt Howard and Gail in The Fountainhead, insofar as it depicts individuals adrift, and on the decline.  

• • If a For-Profit College Becomes a Non-Profit, Is That Good? Not Necessarily 
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Ayn Rand Institute  |Capitalism  | [Carl] Barney is on the Advisory Board for the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and the board of the Ayn Rand Institute. Given Barney's strong defense of the profit motive in higher education, how can it be that conversion of the school he owned [Stevens-Henager College] into a non-profit meets his long-term vision for the school [...]?  

• The Pro Life Movement at a Crossroads 
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Capitalism  | The [Republican] Party elders were willing to put up with the pro-lifers when it seemed they could deliver elections by persuading large segments of the white working class to vote against their economic interests in the name of social values. But a leadership obsessed with Randian economics will not long tolerate a movement that brings discredit and defeat to its side.  

• • • Ayn Rand Book Pushed For Idaho Schools 
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Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism  | A Republican state senator in Idaho has introduced legislation that would require all high school students in the state to read an Ayn Rand novel that has become popular with the Tea Party movement.  

• As Public Makes ‘Hard Choices’ on Social Security, Alan Simpson Ducks His “Moment of Truth” 
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The Fountainhead  | The rich CEOs of "Fix the Debt," another [Pete] Peterson shell organization, [....] created a deficit-reduction "game" called "Budgetball," which we preferred to describe as The Fountainhead meets Deathrace 2000.