ayn rand assholes
tim
The Bitch is Back
2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves
money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her
spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault.
By Andrew Corsello
October 27, 2009
Goddamn, the experience of being 19 years old and reading Ayn Rand! The
crystal-shivering-at-the-breaking-pitch intensity of it! Not just for that
19-year-old, but for everybody unfortunate enough to be caught in his
psychic blast radius. Is "experience" even the right word for The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? Ayn Rand's idolization of Mickey Spillane
and cigarettes and capitalism-an experience? Her tentacular contempt for
Shakespeare and Beethoven and Karl Marx and facial hair and government and
"subnormal" children and the poor and the Baby Jesus and the U.N. and
homosexuals and "simpering" social workers and French Impressionism and a
thousand other things the flesh is heir to: experience?
Does a 19-year-old "experience" the likes of "She looked at the lone
straight shaft of the Taggart Building rising in the
distance-and.understood: these people hated Jim because they envied him"?
(The lone straight shaft-get it?) Please. Ayn Rand is an imbuing. A
transfiguring, even.
A weirdly specific thing happens with the books of Ayn Rand. It's not just
the what of the books, but when a reader discovers them-almost always during
the first or second year of college. Rand grabs a reader at a time of
maximum vulnerability and malleability, when he's getting his first accurate
sense of how he measures up in the world in terms of intellect and talent.
The longing to regard oneself as misunderstood and underrated can be
powerful; the temptation to project oneself as such, irresistible. But how?
How to stand above and apart?
Enter Howard Roark, the heroic and misunderstood architect, square of jaw
and Asperger-ish of mien, who at the end of The Fountainhead blows up his
own masterpiece after a bunch of sniveling "parasites" and "second-handers"
tinker with the blueprints.
GODDAMN!
Then enter Atlas Shrugged's John Galt, the heroic and misunderstood
engineer, square of jaw and Asperger-ish of mien, who, after persuading "men
of talent" to retreat to his Colorado aerie while the country goes to seed
(in order to show the "mediocrities" left behind what life is like without
their betters), delivers a 35,000-word speech decrying bureaucrats and
regulators.
SIXTY PAGES, BITCHES!
Finally, enter Objectivism, the name Rand gave to her moral defense of
"reason," individualism, and unfettered capitalism.
SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!
The days during which that 19-year-old has Rand's worldview vectored into
his cerebral cortex are feverish and sleepless. Days of beautiful affliction
during which the intransigence of others-roommates, a coed the patient has
been hitting on, professors, parents, everyone-are shown to be the product
of their shortcomings, their idiocy and sublimated envy of the patient's
intelligence and talent. Days during which the infected comes to see himself
and Roark/Galt as avatars of one another: superheroically mirthless
protagonists in a drama of historical import. It's the damnedest thing. One
day you've got a bright young kid dutifully connecting the dots of his
liberal-arts education; the next, he's got Roark and Galt in the marrow and
has become.an insufferable asshole.
None of this matters, right? We're talking about a phase, no different from
purple hair and lip rings, right? Well, yes, it's true that in most cases,
the fever breaks. That kid stands up, walks outside, and reflects on the 727
pages of Fountainhead and 1,168 of Atlas he's just wolfed down. And
realizes: That was nearly 2,000 pages (more, really, given that Rand's
loathing of collectivist parasites is matched only by her loathing of
paragraph indents) without a single instance of irony or humor. Or subtlety.
Or grace. Nearly 2,000 hectoring, brook-no-ambiguity,
you're-either-a-lion-or-a-leech pages of breathtaking psychological
obtuseness.
In time, he begins to understand that his ordeal consists of two phases.
There is the reading itself, which is one thing. And then there is the
digesting, which is quite another. Overall, the experience eerily replicates
that of devouring a family-size bag of Cheetos in a single sitting.1 During:
irresistible, bracing, the thing at hand imparting vitality, fertility,
potency. After: bleccchh.
Make it go away, he thinks. The metallurgist protagonists. The operatic
rapes heralded by whips and rock drills. The pirates with
cat-coughing-up-hairball names like Ragnar Danneskj�ld. Please, God.
He may even feel his "recovery" marks him as a savvy and well-adjusted
individual, yes?
No. He is a stupid and insolent boy. No one gets done with Ayn (rhymes with
"mine") Rand. It is not in one's power to do so. That boy (or you, or I) can
dismiss the books as a "phase" and attempt to busy ourselves with the kind
of degenerate "stylists" Rand scorned (Faulkner, Nabokov). But none of us
can escape the shadow of the lone straight shaft of the Taggart Building
tumescing in the distance.
1. An association bolstered by Howard Roark's flaming orange hair.
This is because there are boys and girls among us who have never overcome
the Randian infection. The Galt speech continues to ring in their ears for
years like a maddening tinnitus, turning each of them into what next year's
Physicians' Desk Reference will (undoubtedly) term an Ayn Rand Asshole
(ARA). They constitute a relatively small percentage of Rand readers, these
ARAs. But they make their reading count. Thanks to them, the Rand Experience
is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It's metastasized.
You, me, all of us, we're living it. Because it's the ARA Army of
antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades
gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while,
it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to
spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative
crater that was left behind.
Feeling fisted by the Invisible Hand of the Market lo these past fifteen
months? Lost a job lately? Or half the value of your 401(k)? Or a home? All
three? Been wondering whence the too-long-ascendant political and economic
ideas and forces behind Greenspanism, John Thainism, blind Wall Street
plunder, bankruptcy, credit-default swaps, Bernie Madoff, and the ensuing
Cannibalism in the Streets? Then you, sir, need to give thanks to Ayn Rand
Assholes everywhere-as well as the steely loins from which they sprang.
*****
Does that moniker "Ayn Rand Asshole" strike you as a contrivance? Do you
disbelieve the proposition that a person could read Atlas Shrugged almost
purely at the level of injunction-taking the things John Galt says and does
as straight as a biblical literalist takes the eye of the needle?
Then meet Michael Malice. No, really. That's his name. He's a New York City
author and blogger who calls himself both a genius and an "elitist
anarchist." What's that mean? It means that if a panhandler asks him for a
little money or food, Malice says, "I could, but then you might live longer,
so you see my dilemma."
Does Michael Malice admit to being an unreconstructed 33-year-old Ayn Rand
Asshole? He does not-he proclaims it. "My reviews were incredible," he says
of 2006's Ego & Hubris, the story of his life that Harvey Pekar of American
Splendor fame told in graphic-novel form. "The Village Voice called me 'the
face of jackassery.' Your magazine called me a 'slacker genius.' Did you
know that? The Onion called me 'a hateful blowhard who touts his
genius-level intellect and dismisses most of the world as inferior, deluded,
or hypocritical.' They also called me a 'human cockroach,' because I'm
indestructible. Which I am.
"I own Ayn Rand's personal first-edition, first-print copy of The
Fountainhead," Malice continues. "I got it for my twenty-first birthday. It
came from her estate. Whenever I'm with other Randians, I so have the
biggest dick in the room. 'Oh yeah? You've read all her books? Well, check
this out, bitch!' "
Malice also possesses an arguably rarer relic: a copy of Atlas Shrugged
signed by William F. Buckley Jr. Only another Ayn Rand Asshole can properly
appreciate such a curio. Rand, who died in 1982 at the age of 77, was prone
to barking, "What are your premises?" when shaking strangers' hands; upon
meeting the devoutly Catholic Buckley, she demanded to know how a man so
evidently brilliant could truck in such piffle. Buckley later returned the
compliment by assigning Whittaker Chambers to review Atlas Shrugged for the
National Review. Money quote: "From almost any page.a voice can be heard,
from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber-go!' "
"Buckley didn't know what he was signing," Malice explains. "It was a little
personal triumph for me."
Malice also owns the domain name.eh, forget it. You'll just think I'm making
this stuff up. Here's the interview transcript:
mm: It's funny you should call me an Ayn Rand Asshole, because I happen
to own the domain name assholism.com.
gq: Ah, now you're fucking with me.
mm: Really. I own it.2
gq: Really?
mm: I really do.
gq: If that's true, you are not a Randian Asshole. You are the Ayn Rand
Asshole.
mm: Well, an asshole is just an assertive person you don't approve of,
right?
2. Go ahead. Type it in. You'll see.
During my own college days, I did observe that a number of the fresh-minted
Randroids in my midst became intellectually disciplined to a degree I
wouldn't previously have thought possible. I also admit that a few of them
became better questioners of ideas and of themselves-which in turn made them
more honest people. But most fell into that hapless group of Rand
readers-the ones whose postadolescent insecurity was alchemized upon contact
with The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged into a bizarre unlaughing
superiority. Some snapped out of it after a semester or two, becoming people
who later in life-like Hillary Clinton-could refer with a shake of the head
to their "Ayn Rand phase." Some didn't, and I lost them as friends. And for
years I've wondered whether they:
(a) bolted upright in bed at three in the morning a year or two after we'd
graduated and exclaimed, "Mon Dieu! I have been an Ayn Rand Asshole! I must
immediately cease and desist!"
(b) took it all the way, and now spend their days in the bowels of the Cato
Institute, stroking hairless lap cats and smirking sourly as they develop
strategies for deregulating the law of gravity.
*****
"as a fiction writer, she's absurd," says author and Vanity Fair columnist
Christopher Hitchens, who is arguably the most opinionated Homo sapiens
since Rand herself. "But if you're young and not particularly wanted and not
particularly brilliant, reading Atlas Shrugged provides all the feelings of
compensation one might need for any period of terrifying inadequacy."
"Atlas Shrugged was a life-changing event for me," says John Allison, who
recently retired as the CEO of the BB&T Corporation and remains the chairman
of the huge North Carolina-based bank. During his last five years as CEO,
BB&T's charitable arm awarded nearly $13 million to support the study of
capitalism from a moral perspective on college campuses-in most cases with
the stipulation that Atlas Shrugged be required course reading.
"I was a 19-year-old at the University of North Carolina the first time I
read it," Allison recalls. "I was already struggling with my religious
beliefs and with what my parents had taught me. Then, on top of that, I had
to contend with my professors-this was the 1960s, so even at UNC the
intellectual environment was socialist. It was tough for me, because as Ayn
Rand herself says, we think alone. And then to find this book, to have
somebody defend ideas I agreed with, ideas that were inconsistent with what
I was hearing at the university-it just gave me great comfort and strength."
It speaks to Rand's mojo that when an ARA as off the grid as Michael Malice
speaks of the hour he first believed, his thoughts and words all but
duplicate those of an establishment Randian like John Allison.
"There is a reason she appeals to the young," says Malice. "Because when
you're young, you hunger for moralism. You know there are things that are
right and things that are wrong. But the two choices traditionally put
forward by mass culture are Jesus or 'helping everybody,' which are both
fraudulent and ridiculous. And dull. And then you read those books and it's
like a punch in the gut, especially if you're a gifted kid like me. To have
her saying that you are right and that everyone against you is wrong. Well,
it's just something that people who are gifted need to hear."
"In terms of literary influence, only Kerouac compares," says Nick
Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.com and Reason.tv (offshoots of Reason,
the libertarian magazine founded in 1968 by a Randian). Pointing out that
Atlas Shrugged and On the Road were both published in 1957, he adds,
"Kerouac has had a more diffuse influence on American culture. He created a
broad-based conception of what was cool and hip. Rand hasn't brushed the
culture as widely. She touches individuals-immensely and deeply. It's useful
to think about her impact in terms of Catcher in the Rye, another novel of
individuation. Everyone agrees it's beautifully written, but it's losing its
grasp on the public imagination. Same with Catch-22. Yossarian was a perfect
antihero for the '60s generation, but does anybody give a shit about him
now? Or about Portnoy? A few days ago, I was watching an old clip of Andrew
Dice Clay's stand-up act from 1987. He made a joke about jerking off into a
liver, and no one in the audience knew what he was talking about. Think
about that. You can still make Howard Roark jokes that play, but it's been
at least twenty years since you could do that with Portnoy. Portnoy's dead.
Philip Roth is a great writer, but his signature character has had far less
purchase on the collective imagination than Galt or Roark. No matter what
you think of Rand, there's no denying that the woman just swings a really
big dick."
It's curious, that dick of Rand's. In fact, one cannot understand what an
Ayn Rand Asshole is without considering that dick. ARAs acclaim it with
great frequency and passion. Its size. Its swing. The countless
"nonentities" and "looters" who've been slapped upside the head with it.
ARAs extoll the Dick for the same reason they embrace their own "asshole"
moniker: to celebrate Ayn Rand's essential Us-vs.-the-Losers combativeness.
For ARAs, being dickish is the point.
*****
The speech. To understand what an Ayn Rand Asshole is, you have to study
that sixty-page Speech Rand stuffed in John Galt's mouth at the end of
Atlas. She spent two years writing it. Her publisher asked for cuts. "Would
you cut the Bible?" she snapped. Thing is, Rand was right. (And not just
because a Library of Congress/Book-of-the-Month Club survey conducted
thirty-four years after its publication ranked Atlas Shrugged the second
most influential book ever written after, you guessed it, the Bible.) She
viewed the Speech as the keystone to.everything. And to a degree that still
confounds mainstream academic philosophers (most of whom find Rand's work
laughable), that is how it has been taken. Which means there are three
things that all Americans must know about it.
The first is that the Speech serves as both the foundation and finished
edifice of Objectivism, Rand's utopian vision of an entrepreneurial elite
freed at last from any obligation, financial or moral, to the hangers-on of
the world; free from religious hokum and from having to feign concern for
the wee; free to exercise the "virtue of selfishness" in pursuit of money
and glory. (The novel ends with Galt atop a mountain, raising a hand to
trace the sacred sign of the dollar over the desolate earth that he and his
A-Team are at last ready to return to and revive.) Is greed good, you ask?
My friend, in the Objectivist world of Ayn Rand, whose funeral featured a
six-foot dollar sign made out of flowers next to the open casket, greed is
God.
The second thing is that it is helpful to conjure Keanu Reeves in his What
would you DO? proclamatory mode when reading it (silently or aloud):
Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of
punishment, of pain.and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a
mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animal's
race, since pleasure cannot be moral.
The third thing you must understand about the Speech is that it's extreme
stuff-but it's not fringe. Not anymore. Randroids abound. They run
influential libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute in D.C., and
that's one thing. But they also tend to be people who-unlike all those
semiotics majors who'd written off Rand as Nietzsche in a bra even before
they'd graduated-impact our lives in direct ways. Randians run some of
America's biggest companies (Ralph Lauren, John Mackey of Whole Foods),
hedge funds (Victor Niederhoffer, Peter Thiel), and banks. Clarence Thomas
makes his clerks watch the 1949 Gary Cooper film version of The
Fountainhead. Mark Cuban requires no explanation.
And as if the publication of a major new biography, Ayn Rand and the World
She Made, by Anne Heller, weren't enough, there's this: In the first quarter
of this year, as rightists shrilled about the president's "socialism," Atlas
Shrugged (re)cracked Amazon's top fifty; early estimates place its 2009
sales at 400,000 copies-about double its 2008 total.
Ayn Rand Assholes, they're not just teeming-they're breeding.3
*****
pop quiz: Which individual has most influenced the lives of Americans in the
past twenty-five years? He's an Ayn Rand Asshole, yes, but old-school.
Married one of Rand's friends. Rand herself called him the Undertaker. A
good moniker, with its whiff of luchador, but she should have dubbed him the
Deregulator.
3. There's even an Ayn Rand dating Web site, for Christ's sake: the
Atlasphere. Which presents two related questions: Do Objectivists look to
the novels for amorous, as well as economic, instruction? If so, is a given
Objectivist coupling what it was in The Fountainhead-"an act of scorn. Not
as love, but as defilement.[by] a master taking shameful, contemptuous
possession"? For which I have answers: Yes, and yes. I cite my junior year
of college, during which I frequently experienced precipitations of plaster
dust onto my face while lying in bed, thanks to the ARA who lived above me,
and his girlfriend. I could never determine whether it was their
Richter-scale copulations that shook the dust loose or the 120-decibel
stereo blastings of the Ayn Rand-inspired band Rush that they used to
soundtrack and enhance them. (No, his mind is not for rent / To any god or
government!) I only know that whenever I trudged upstairs to ask him to dial
down the fucking and the Rush (lest the lone straight shaft of the Taggart
Building crash through the ceiling and impale me where I lay), the answer
was always, merely, unsmilingly: "No."
Right: Greenspan. Man was there at the creation. A member of the so-called
Collective that in the early 1950s gathered on Saturday nights in the
sanctum sanctorum-Rand's New York apartment-as the master held forth on the
evils of taxes and altruism and read from her Manuscript. According to My
Years with Ayn Rand by the woman's acolyte/lover, Nathaniel Branden,
Greenspan was prone to such utterances as, "Upon reading this one tends to
feel exhilarated." After the Times panned Atlas upon its publication,
Greenspan sent an oddly strenuous letter that the paper published:
To the editor:
"Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is
unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality
achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose
or reason perish as they should.
Alan Greenspan
It's a remarkable letter for two reasons. The first, of course, is that
Greenspan wrote it; a line can be drawn from that letter to the wholesale
deregulation of the American economy, to the invention of hydra-headed
derivatives and credit-default swaps, and finally to the collapse of the
financial and housing markets. He may not be the Ultimate Ayn Rand
Asshole,4, but no ARA has ever tucked the Objectivist football and taken it
to the hole like Alan Greenspan.
The letter's second remarkable quality is its quintessentially Randian
temper: absolute, proclamatory, severe. Rand writes at great length about
the "joy" that results when "men of talent" are left to their own
devices-but invariably in the most sneering tone imaginable. A reader
wonders: Is it joy for which she and her followers salivate? Or is it the
perishing of those parasites?
"Yes, Rand's writing is strident, but she's not concerned with aesthetics,
and it's a mistake to judge Atlas by 'normal novel' standards," says Todd
Seavey, a 40-year-old libertarian blogger whose politics were
"substantially" altered after he read Rand as a college sophomore. "It
should be read as if it's an extended philosophy word problem. You may want
characters who are full-fledged psychological portraits unto themselves, but
one of her arguments is that there are no moral grays, and that 'aesthetics'
should be about romanticism rather than neuroses and flawed characters. She
knows what she's doing. I mean, would you have gone to Nietzsche and said,
'You're not writing calm, balanced essays. You're writing like a crazed
man'?"
I like to think I would have, yes. Because when it comes to ARAs, that
dictatorial tone isn't just the how but the what. You can't spend more than
five minutes on a Rand-related chat room without seeing a teacher (or social
worker, or environmentalist) declaimed as a "risk avoider/merit denouncer."
This affect, it should be added, is the trademark symptom of a collegiate
Randian infection. Where, say, undergraduate Marxists share a certain
narcoleptic insouciance, freshly afflicted Randians evince a showier
disregard for those who can't or won't see the light. Showy-but serene, in a
way that's cultish and weird. And unintentionally funny, since the only
other young people possessed of such grim serenity are those homeschooled
Christian fundamentalists who have the ability to transmit-with nothing more
than a silent, pitying look-that they know (1) the Rapture is imminent, (2)
they'll be taken up, and (3) you'll be spending eternity steeping in a
liquid-shit Jacuzzi.
Not surprisingly, Christopher Hitchens isn't the only cultural critic who
links the Rand and Rapture fascinations. GQ's own Critic columnist, Tom
Carson, puts it best: "Her books are capitalism's version of middlebrow
religious novels like Ben-Hur and the Left Behind series." Even Todd Seavey
sees a parallel: "Hard-core Randians tend to regurgitate Randian
observations in a way that's not mindless but very redundant. Unless you're
fully signed on, they assume you're not getting it. Which is exactly the way
some Christians are when they can't get somebody to accept Jesus Christ as
their savior."
In the end, it's not the books but the smug, evangelical certainty of Ayn
Rand Assholes that causes me to loathe Ayn Rand in a personal way. The thing
I liked most about college was being around so many young people who were as
earnest as they were dauntingly smart. People who didn't (yet) feel the need
to own every room they walked into. People who knew how to ask questions.
That was it. All that elevated question-asking, and the pliancy of
temperament it entailed.
We were children. Then came Rand, "the Rosa Klebb of letters," as
entertainment journalist Gary Susman calls her, to body-snatch some of the
best of them. Rhetorical question: Is there anything more irritating than a
20-year-old incapable of uttering the words "I don't know"?
Actually, there is: an 82-year-old Alan Greenspan admitting in October
2008-at least ten years too late-that he'd found "a flaw in the model that I
perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines how the world
works."
4. That would be the abovementioned Nathaniel, the twentysomething grad
student who, after joining Rand's inner circle, changed his surname from
Blumenthal to Branden-Rand folded within ben, the Hebrew word for "son of."
(A coincidence, he claimed.) The prot�g� and his fiftysomething mentor
eventually called their respective spouses to a meeting where it was
announced that for self-evidently "rational" reasons, the master/apprentice
relationship would henceforth be sexual, with twice-a-week scheduled trysts.
No, wait, forget Greenspan, who avoided both purpose and reason when he
declined to comment for this story.5 When it comes to irritation, the capo
di tutti capi is an Ayn Rand Asshole who responds to the headlines of the
past fifteen months by.doubling down. Who claims that there should have been
less regulation of the markets. Who admits that, yeah, Alan Greenspan was
the one who put this country in an economic hole-but only because he wasn't
nearly Randian enough.
"There is no question in my mind that it's government policy that created
[the financial meltdown]," says BB&T's John Allison. "It began with Alan
Greenspan's mismanagement of the Federal Reserve, which controls monetary
policy. Look at his early writings! He strongly recommended getting rid of
the Federal Reserve and going to the gold standard. Once he got in power, he
never moved at all in that direction."
How to respond to this kind of resolve, this kind of faith? There are no
words-you're better off trying to convince a birther that our forty-fourth
president was born in our fiftieth state-save those I've been sitting on for
more than twenty years.
Fuck you, Ayn Rand.
Fuck you for turning some of the most open and interesting people I ever met
into utopian dickheads.
Fuck you for injecting them with a sneering sense of superiority, and with
the tautological belief that anyone who didn't "get it" was a jealous
know-nothing-which, ipso facto, only proved that superiority.
And fuck you for prose so bad that the only way to measure it is with a meat
scale.
There. I feel better.
But wait-Ayn, you know that letter I just got informing me that my equity
line of credit is being frozen despite my perfect credit history, and
despite the fact that I bought a house I could actually afford?
Yeah, fuck you for that, too.
5. He will perish as he should.
andrew corsello is a subnormal nonentity.
High Miles
> GQ
>
> The Bitch is Back
>
> 2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves
> money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her
> spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault.
>
> By Andrew Corsello
>
> October 27, 2009
>
You must be either a lion or a leech.
You make that choice based upon what nature and biology have given you.
Then you kill or disable anything that stands between you and your goals.
Simple isn't it.
You game playing guys should recognize what it takes to survive and thrive.
Weak and whiny creatures must be eaten by the strong.
It's right and natural.
Soft, gentle creatures are make believe and suitable for children's stories
and the mindless romance novels read by sad housewives.
The last two shot clinics have gone much more smoothly.
I merely mentioned that we should tell the people in line - how many doses
we actually have. Then hand out simple number tags.
If there are more than four hundred or a thousand people in line, the rest
need not wait. They will not be shot on this day.
Bill
"High Miles" <2blue...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:aXkMm.25615$ZF3....@newsfe13.iad...
> The last two shot clinics have gone much more smoothly.
> I merely mentioned that we should tell the people in line - how many
> doses
> we actually have. Then hand out simple number tags.
> If there are more than four hundred or a thousand people in line, the rest
> need not wait. They will not be shot on this day.
>
High Miles
I merely see how much juice we've been sent for a specific location,
and see that people who want it, get it. Free.
Also, we try to avoid the seriously disgruntled rejects who arrive too
late, or don't meet the criteria.
Bill
What criteria have the Obama death panels in your area set?
High Miles
>
> "High Miles" <2blue...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:bmnMm.25634$ZF3....@newsfe13.iad...
>> Bill wrote:
>>>
>>> "High Miles" <2blue...@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>> news:aXkMm.25615$ZF3....@newsfe13.iad...
>>>> The last two shot clinics have gone much more smoothly.
>>>> I merely mentioned that we should tell the people in line - how
>>>> many doses
>>>> we actually have. Then hand out simple number tags.
>>>> If there are more than four hundred or a thousand people in line,
>>>> the rest
>>>> need not wait. They will not be shot on this day.
>>>>
>>> I take it you are on one of Obama's death panels.
>>>
>> Wish I was Bill.
>>
>> I merely see how much juice we've been sent for a specific location,
>> and see that people who want it, get it. Free.
>>
>> Also, we try to avoid the seriously disgruntled rejects who arrive too
>> late, or don't meet the criteria.
>>
>
> What criteria have the Obama death panels in your area set?
>
Those with chronic illnesses - asthma, diabetes, auto immune stuff.
Finally, those over 64 and any old other body who wants it.
The idea is to protect those most at risk first.
Besides....................anyone over sixty can be spared.
We're not contributing that much any more.
Bill
High Miles
Is it a deep respect for the bimbo who created that phrase, or are you
becoming.......................one of them ?
Besides, who over sixty five is vitally important ?
Bill
tim
Doctor-patient conversation this morning:
You still against taking flu shots?
Yes, in today's world I don't feel right philosophically or morally using
scarce medical resources while there are those who need them more in our
sorry medical system in America today.
Well, OK, and we don't have any vaccine anyway, so I guess it doesn't
matter.
High Miles
>
>
> Doctor-patient conversation this morning:
>
> You still against taking flu shots?
>
> Yes, in today's world I don't feel right philosophically or morally
> using scarce medical resources while there are those who need them more
> in our sorry medical system in America today.
>
> Well, OK, and we don't have any vaccine anyway, so I guess it doesn't
> matter.
>
>
LOVE IT !
High Miles
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> tim wrote:
>
>> Well, OK, and we don't have any vaccine anyway, so I guess it doesn't
>> matter.
>>
>>
>
> over, unless it rebounds.
>
> Susan
Quite a lot of people in my area have already had
it..................and survived.
They describe it as being just a coughing flu.
Maybe it's worse in little children. I don't know any.
Joel Olson
news:so-dnXWMe9BtMJzW...@earthlink.com...
Wow. Don't anybody tell him about _Anthem_ and _We_.
Seriously, though, there are a few others who share the blame.
---------------------
He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along
the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.
- Ayn Rand
----------------------
Joel Olson
I got one of the regular shots. Cost me $30.
But I didn't shop around. Impulse purchase. :-)
tim
"Joel Olson" <joel....@cox.net> wrote in message
news:okLMm.20611$gi1....@newsfe19.iad...
A jeremiad of jerks.
Wiley Nielson
seasonal and H1N1.
Joel Olson
news:s-adneNER_PGx5nW...@giganews.com...
Actually, I think my plan will reimburse me ...
if I get around to sending in the form they gave me at the clinic.
Wiley Nielson
> Actually, I think my plan will reimburse me ...
> if I get around to sending in the form they gave me at the clinic.
>
submit your claim (or at least get the form) on-line right here:
Joel Olson
I'm not eligible for Medicare.
Worked hard enough, but not long enough. :-(
Wiley Nielson
> I'm not eligible for Medicare.
>
> Worked hard enough, but not long enough. :-(
>
second person I've learned isn't covered. Some alternative from the NWS?
The other guy I know works for the BNRR.
Joel Olson
The civil service already had a pretty good retirement system, CSRS,
when Social Security was proposed. So we got left out of it, unless we
worked outside the government long enough to qualify. Even then,
there are quibbles and adjustments to the annuity, from accusations
of "double-dipping".
tim
> GQ
>
> The Bitch is Back
>
> 2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves
> money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her
> spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault.
>
> By Andrew Corsello
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Celebrate Thanksgiving the Ayn Rand way: Thank yourself
The Christian Science Monitor
By Debi Ghate Debi Ghate - Wed Nov 25, 4:00 am ET
Washington - Ah, Thanksgiving. The word conjures up images of turkey dinner,
pumpkin pie, and watching football with family and friends. It kicks off the
holiday season and is the biggest shopping period of the year.
Children are taught that Thanksgiving came about when Pilgrims gave thanks
to God for a bountiful harvest. It seems we vaguely mumble thanks for the
food on our table, the roof over our head, and how lucky we are in spite of
these hard economic times. After all, our lives are so much better than,
say, those in Bangladesh.
But surely there is something more to celebrate, something more sacred about
this holiday.
What should we really be celebrating on Thanksgiving?
Ayn Rand described Thanksgiving as "a typically American holiday" whose
"essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is
a producers' holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant
consumption is the result and reward of production." She was right.
This country was mostly uninhabited and wild when our European forefathers
began to develop the land and then build spectacular cities, shaping what
has become the wealthiest nation in the world. It's in the American spirit
to overcome challenges, create great achievements, and enjoy prosperity.
We recognize that individuals free to produce create enormous wealth. We
uniquely dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
It's no accident that Americans have a holiday called Thanksgiving - a
yearly tradition when we pause to appreciate the bountiful harvest we've
reaped.
What is the contemporary version of this bountiful harvest? In spite of the
current state of the economy, it's our affluence. It's the cars, houses, and
vacations we enjoy. It's the medicines we rely on, the movies we watch, and
the safe, clean streets we live on. It's the good life, for the long haul.
How do we get this bountiful harvest? Watch any hardworking American. We
create it by working hard year after year, and by wanting excellence for
ourselves and our loved ones. What we don't create ourselves, we use our
best judgment to trade value for value with those who have the goods and
services we need, such as our bankers, hairdressers, and doctors. We alone
are responsible for our wealth. We are the producers and Thanksgiving is our
holiday.
So, on Thanksgiving, we should thank ourselves and the other producers who
make the good life possible. Why don't we?
From a young age, we are bombarded with messages designed to undermine our
confident pursuit of values: "Be humble," "You can't know what's good for
yourself," "It's better to give than to receive," and, above all, "Don't be
selfish!" We are scolded not to take more than "our share" - whether it is
of electricity, profits, or pie. We are taught that altruism - not mere
benevolence or generosity, but selfless sacrifice for others - is the moral
ideal. We are taught to sacrifice for strangers, who inexplicably have a
claim to our hard-earned wealth. We are asked to bail out failing banks and
uninsured patients. We are asked to serve rather than lead. We are taught to
kneel rather than reach for the sky.
But morally, each one of us should reach for the sky. Electricity, profits,
and pie can only be truly earned through individual production - giving each
of us the right to savor their consumption. Every decision, from which
career to pursue to whom to call a friend, should be guided by what will
best advance an individual's rational goals, interests, and, ultimately, an
individual's life. We should take pride in being rationally selfish.
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to appreciate and celebrate the fruits of
our labor: our wealth, health, relationships, and property - all the values
we most selfishly cherish. We should thank authors whose books made us
rethink our lives, engineers who gave us the BlackBerry and iPhone, and
financiers whose capital has helped build entire industries. We should thank
ourselves and those individuals whose production makes our lives more
comfortable and enjoyable - those who help us live the much-coveted American
dream.
As you sit down to your sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner, think of all the
talented individuals whose innovation and inventiveness made possible the
products you are enjoying, even if the spread is a little smaller this year.
As you celebrate with your chosen loved ones, thank yourself for everything
you have done to make this moment possible. It's a time to selfishly and
proudly say: "I earned this."
Debi Ghate is vice president of academic programs at the Ayn Rand Institute,
which promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and
"The Fountainhead."
Joel Olson
And then there are those who pray, "Lord, please let me work."
----------------------------------
Thanksgiving is a simple patriotic holiday with a traditional turkey feast.
It
was inaugurated by Abraham Lincoln with implicit reference to the Civil War;
in the 19th century American governments often declared days of thanks with
more explicit references to military victories. But when Lincoln did it, it
stuck;
later its history was fictitiously connected to an obscure 17th century
feast in
which the Pilgrims invited the Indians. (Thanks to Dror Bar-Natan for
information
on this.) - G. Kupferberg
For the Puritans who arrived in the New World, the resanctification of holy
days
in opposition to the Catholic church was as much at issue as the forging of
religious identity distinct from that of the Church of England. In order to
celebrate
fasts and feast days as special occasions -- the second to Thanksgiving's
two
components -- the Puritans were faced with decisions of symbolic import.
Fast
days were celebrated by the Church of England on Friday, a remnant of the
Catholic dies stationum, with Wednesday as the second choice; Monday in
England at this time was "fish day." In order not to appear "popist," then,
the
nonconformists were inclined to set fasts and feast days on Tuesday and
Thursday. Long after this original rationale was forgotten, Thursday
continued to
be the most common day for the celebration of Thanksgiving throughout New
England and later across the nation; ... - K. Neustadt
----------------------------------
Bill
Do you have an alternative federal health program from your years with the
nws?
Joel Olson
news:IbidnWBPRpEi_sTQ...@giganews.com...
Wow. This is from a long time ago!
The standard civil service deal - choose one of many health plans during
"open season" each fall. They send booklets describing what they cover,
and the costs. Thereafter the costs go up a little every year, and are
deducted from your monthly pension, along with the income tax. Coverage
is also adjusted. The one I'm in is called NALC (National Association of
Letter Carriers.) They pick up about 85% of whatever was needed. Not
sure if I need a burial plan. :-)
Bill
I remembered to ask this even before Tim posted his link to the pie chart
showing how much the government is spending on you.
Joel Olson
The activist groups, MoveOn, 170Million, etc. are trying to defend the
various individual components of the discretionary sector. Just hope the
Dems get their shit together and support Obama's freeze idea. The
senate can send the appropriation bill back to be reworked, can they not?
Bill
I'm not fully into the process. I know the executive branch prepares the
budget, the legislative branches make their changes, and the executive
branch either accepts or rejects the product. Certainly the Senate has some
role in this.
Arche Sworn
> > GQ
> >
> > The Bitch is Back
> >
> > 2009's most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves
> > money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her
> > spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault.
> >
> > By Andrew Corsello
> >
> >
> You must be either a lion or a leech.
> Weak and whiny creatures must be eaten by the strong.
> It's right and natural.
lmfao you sound like you're about to tell your friends not to come to school tomorrow.