Daily Music SelectionWhat a shock – greedy Republicans at the top scamming the gullible lower on the ladder for money! Somebody tell Fox News! “[The national] Tea Party Patriots don’t really do anything for the local groups … There are a lot of frustrated people. There are a lot of other people in the country who’ve done events and have gotten screwed over. We are all volunteers. We do not get paid like [Jenny Beth Martin, national TPP director] does. They don’t say, ‘Thank you.’ They use you and abuse you.” – Joy McGraw, Georgia state Tea Party Patriots coordinator, as quoted by Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones.com. McGraw was stuck with a $5,000 bill for catering that was supposed to be paid by the national TPP organization.
Ever wonder where current Republican twits like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann get some of their goofiest, dumbest twists on history, society and government? Seems they are simply borrowing from the ‘Master,’ the same mental colossus many members of the GOP want engraved on the dime and enshrined on Mount Rushmore: “Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?” – Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980. “Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal.” – Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976 “I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary.” – Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965 “I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” – Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966 “Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border.” – Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.) “…a faceless mass, waiting for handouts.” –…
[Editor's Note: Actually, when I read "The Fountainhead" as a teenager, I took it as a tale of an artist, in this case an architect, displaying his integrity by creating only what he wanted, and flouting the establishment rather than selling himself out to the highest bidder and producing mediocre work. The unregulated capitalist 'Libertarian' side of the novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, was not immediately apparent to my young eyes - if anything, it showed those wealthy men who ran big businesses and other power-brokers in a poor light, with a few exceptions. That said, Rand's anti-government 'Objectivist' philosophy became the basis for Libertarianism, and much of the justification for selfishness and cruelty to others we now hear expounded daily by the GOP, so the author's use of government social programs like Medicare in her waning years is a particularly acute form of hypocrisy.] Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them by Joshua Holland, AlterNet, January 29, 2011 Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping “moral philosophy” that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor…
