I Just Threw Up In My Mouth a Little*

The fact that it's a Guest Essay in the New York Times.

The fact that they're casting themselves as the wise and far-seeing "we" here, and apparently everyone else is the "you" that got it all wrong.  

The fact that about halfway through they haul out the hoariest and (surprise!) most New York Times-pleasing of all media lies to elevate themselves above Both Sides:

Each of the major parties has pulled away from the libertarian elements of their coalitions (small-government, free-market types for the Republicans and civil libertarians for the Democrats), preferring instead the instant gratification of grasping power and wielding it as aggressively as possible for the period they hold it.

The fact that it's the fucking Libertarians.

And the fact that it just ain't so.

Meet Anthony L. Fisher:

When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies. It was a "sideshow," I was told.

[image or embed]

— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 8:10 AM

Then there is this from The Daily Beast, which was cited further down the BlueSky thread:

A leading critic of “cancel culture” is being accused of canceling one of its own—for speaking out too loudly and too often against President Donald Trump.

Throughout the Trump era, Reason magazine, a digital and print publication published by the nonprofit libertarian Reason Foundation, has routinely sounded the alarm about the perceived threat posed by “cancel culture,” the modern phenomenon in which people are publicly and professionally ostracized for heterodox beliefs or remarks. The magazine has lambasted other outlets like The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Intercept for firing or pushing out key staffers whose views or actions were determined to have conflicted with their respective editorial missions.

And yet, a long-time Reason columnist and policy analyst alleges that the libertarian magazine dropped her over her vehemently anti-Trump views.

“After 15 years, the curtains came down for me at Reason today. My views, I was told, had become too out-of-step with those of the organization,” Shikha Dalmia announced Tuesday evening in a Facebook post.

“Reason has some amazing writers who do great work on a whole host [of] issues that I will continue to read and share. And it has been an honor and pleasure to work with them,” she added. “However, I had a staunch and uncompromising anti-Trump voice calling out his authoritarian tendencies unambiguously. That this made many libertarians uncomfortable raises all kinds of interesting questions about the state of the liberty movement.”

From The Cato Institute (yes, it makes me feel dirty just writing that, but onward):

What’s Donald Trump Doing at the Libertarian Party Convention?

The Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention is coming up this weekend, with Donald Trump as a featured speaker. This is apparently the first time in US history that a political party has had another party’s nominee at its own nominating convention. And what a choice!

The Libertarian Party was founded to “challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual” and to specifically run candidates for office on a platform of personal liberty, economic liberty, and a peaceful foreign policy.

Needless to say, that’s not Donald Trump’s platform, nor does it describe his actions as president...

To be clear, I do appreciate various Johnny-Come-Latelies (even the Johnny-Galt-Come-Latelies) finally arriving where Liberals have already been for decades

I appreciate it even though, when they finally got to the party, it was already far, far too late. And I appreciate it even though these same people mocked and dismissed those of us who were right all along as alarmist crackpots right up until they had their long overdue moments of clarity.

What I do not appreciate -- what I might even call vexing (if you'll pardon the salty language because I know how important "tone" is in determining whether someone is right or wrong) -- is that every new arriviste to where the Left has been all along carries with them the same overweening, self-aggrandizing, and very thirsty, psychological disorder, best summarized here by the character of Bert Cooper on Mad Men

*(H/T @airbagmoments.bsky.social on Blue Sky for the heads up)

I Am The Liberal Media

UPDATED: Sunday Morning Comin' Down: How Long Has This Been Going On?

UPDATE:  Thank you all for the guesses.  No, I didn't write this in the 1980s or 1990s, because while I did think such things and say such things, blogging didn't exist then.  Nor did I write this in 2001 - 2003 because I didn't start blogging until early 2005, which is when I did blog this:  October 25, 2005.  

18 years ago.  

In lieu of an umpteenth vivisection of the Sunday Shows to reveal how godawful they are --

Biden hasn’t handled Hunter’s case at all. What is Chuck Todd even talking about? pic.twitter.com/xkeksW4so7

— John Aravosis 🇺🇸🇬🇷🏳️‍🌈 ex-verif’d (@aravosis) August 13, 2023

-- and how godawful they have always been, today -- if you're up for it -- a little one-question quiz the likes of which I guarantee you will never see in The New York Times.  

Ready?

Go.  

If I told you I had written the following...

This morning, rolling along... full of dying flu virus, I almost felt the meekest, most theoretical peek of pity for the poor Moderate Republican coming on.

Not, of course, the Fundy CHUDS who shame the good name of Christ with every breath they draw.

Not the three-toed, chittering Failed Men who make up the vast George Wallace wing of that Party...

But for the Mods...[because in  a few] short years, the Moderates have lived to become everything they detest. Every word of clucking reproach they yelped in snickering glee during the [previous Democratic administration] has gotten caught up in the [following Republican administration] Treason Cyclotron, sped up to light-speed, and is now coming screaming back at them like a sack of radioactive axe-heads.

Their worst nightmare is in the process of coming true, big as a mountain in stilettos, carrying a sledgehammer in one hand and a 40-foot-long straight razor in the other, and there is not shit all they can do about it. Because everything they believed or touted or crowed about or tried to rub in our faces is in the process of coming down around their ears.

Every. Single. Thing.

...and this...

The leaders who swore to them it was all holy and justified ... are outed as a Confederacy of traitors and liars and fools. 

Their pet media, nothing but perambulating pustules, refilled with hate and mendacity every night by White House messengers.

That they have never been anything to the GOP but chumps: little sacs of cash and votes and “mandate” to be squeezed dry with impunity, because Moderates are basically beat-down whores who will always go wriggling back to their abusers.

But now it’s not one thing that’s melting down; it’s everything. The serial cons that have kept the grubby Mods goggle-eyed and heroin-loyal are all falling apart simultaneously and there’s nothing but decibels left in the Shiny Object Bag to keep them from noticing the awful truth.

That their Leaders are traitors.

Their heroes are liars.

Their dogma is a joke.

Their President is a feeble-minded creep who has fucked up everything he has ever touched.

It’s as if their mothers suddenly ripped of rubber masks and have shown themselves to be the spree killers they’ve always been.

...and this...

How terrifying that must be. I mean, I’m wrong about a lot of stuff...but everything?

Every God Damned Thing?

And worse – so very much worse – not only were they utterly wrong about everyfuckingthing, but the Evil Liberals were right all along.

The big picture. The fussy details. The arithmetic. The real, racist heart of the GOP. The various myriad, casual betrayals by the ... White House.

All of it.

The Liberals were right, and the Moderates had been given no fewer than 30 years of warning that this is precisely where their idiocy would land us.

I can’t even imagine how it must feel to know at some level that your whole world is a farce, and your whole belief system is a Ponzi Scheme run on you by thugs who never gave a shit about you, or your family or your dearest peon dreams.

... after counting the tree rings,  and checking the carbon dating, when - within a year or two -- would you guess I had written it?

Answer in comments or on Twitter or wherever.    And then meditate on why our Never Trump allies really, really don't want to hear a mumbling word from us Dirty Disreputables of the Left.  

I Am The Liberal Media

It Just Gets Better and Better

Allow me to remind our Beltway media once again that as long as refuse to use the special glasses they will never understand how completely predictable it was that the Republican campaign for president would come to this.

From Politico:

David Duke defends Trump, blames Jews for judge criticism

By NICK GASS 06/09/16 11:52 AM EDT

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke defended Donald Trump on his radio show earlier this week from criticism of his comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, blaming "the Jews" in the media for propagating a long-running negative agenda against the presumptive Republican nominee.

The white supremacist radio host dropped the names of Fox News' Chris Wallace, along with Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer on CNN, who Duke said he had "exposed ... as a Jewish agent." Jeff Zucker, the current president of CNN Worldwide, is "another Jewish extremist," he remarked.

“And more recently, Fox News, the shabbat goy shiksa Megyn Kelly, 'cause they love to have some gentiles doing it," Duke continued, according to audio of the segment Tuesday. "They don’t want Jews always out front.”

...

Conservatism?

You're soaking in it!

Hello, Dollar! *

"Atlas Shrugged: A Thousand Pages of Bad Science Fiction About Sock-Puppets Stabbing Strawmen with Tax Cuts."

-- driftglass

Oh lord:

Ayn Rand-Inspired Sci-Fi Musical The Anthem Sets World Premiere

Jason Gotay, Remy Zaken, and Randy Jones will lead the cast of the political piece.
By Hayley Levitt • Apr 8, 2014 • New York City

The Anthem, a sci-fi musical inspired by Ayn Rand's novella Anthem, will make its off-Broadway world premiere at Culture Project's Lynn Redgrave Theatre this May. Performances will begin May 20 in advance of an official May 29 opening...

On the one hand, Anthem is very bad, short science fiction (as opposed Atlas Shrugged, which is very bad, looong science-fiction).  So if very bad science fiction is like unto, say, shooting yourself in the foot, then turning very bad science fiction into a musical on purpose is like taking another, bigger bullet and sloooowly pounding it through your through your other foot with a ball peen hammer.

On the other hand, I want to write the lyrics for at least one of the tunes so much it hurts.

*Judges would have also accepted The Lyin' King and The Wealth Producers. What other musical parody names can you think of?  The ones that crack me up will be posted with attribution on the front page of this blog.

Who Is John Galt?

File Under: "What did Paul Ryan know about Ayn Rand and when did he know it?"

If you are unfamiliar with the name "John Galt", one wag once described him as:

"...a two-dimensional, stamped-out-of-chipboard Ayn Randite protagonist whose Pimpernellian exploits on behalf of poor, oppressed capitalists are shot through a vast, steaming heap of bad science fiction called "Atlas Shrugged" like veins of undigested corn."

Which is, of course, unimpeachably true.

"John Galt"  is also the pivot on which Ayn Rand's infamous, behemoth novel turns, every bit as much as "What is the 'Matrix'?" drives the plot of "The Matrix" and the search for the meaning of "Catch-22" propels the book and movie of the same name.

During the novel's first 2 million pages or so, John Galt remains largely a phantom, slipping in and out of society and spiriting away it's hero capitalists, leaving behind hordes of increasingly desperate moochers and "mystics" to cry into their rapidly-souring collectivist milk. We learn somewhere along the way that John Galt was once an engineer at an automobile plant the "20th Century Motor Company"* (which I previously and mistakenly elided in my head into the "20th Century Motors Company") who (entirely on his own with no help from anyone else, thank you very much!) discovered a hitherto-unknown domain of physics, worked out all the details (again, entirely on his own) and then (after apparently mining, forging, refining, milling, stamping and tooling all the materials necessary entirely on his own) constructed a prototype engine from scratch which generated electricity literally out of thin air, thus creating -- single-handedly -- the world's first clean, portable and limitless supply of electrical power.

So far so good, right?

But then (because this is "a vast, steaming heap of bad science fiction" and not the real world) rather than ending up a celebrated multi-billionaire on the cover of every business magazine in Christendom, John Galt is instantly beset by a gang of two-dimensional, mustache-twirling villains (union thugs and "collectivists", naturally) who attempt to steal his awesome invention and treat him so rudely that instead of hanging around one minute longer (to, say, single-handedly invent a cheap box fan capable of generating the tiny breeze necessary to blow these strawmen back into the little piles of hay from whence they came), he immediately gives up on humanity generally and storms away, taking his unique knowledge of his miraculous engine with him (so complex and tricksie is it that it cannot not be understood or reverse-engineered by anyone else on Earth) and promises to "Stop the motor of the world".

(Which, when you run it through the Adolescent Boy Tantrum Translator, comes out as "I am an unappreciated genius in a world full of loser assholes who shit all over me.  Fuck you, world!", thus explaining why "Atlas Shrugged" is very popular with smart, angry adolescent boys.)

As the novel slouches ever more slouchily onward (towards Bethlehem Steel to be born, one presumes), the phrase "Who is John Galt?" (the verbal shrug of exasperated hopelessness spoken talismanically every time some poor producer gets tangled up by the incomprehensibly evil traps and snares of Big Gummint, Unions or Religion) becomes so ubiquitous that by the time one has threaded through vast armies of straw men and traversed thousands of mile of leaden prose it becomes so blindingly obvious that Answering! This! Question! is the whole point of the novel that even a skeevy collectivist parasite like me figured it out all by myself without having to ask my Communist Party handlers to explain it to me even once! 

And in the most sustained slab of screechy, pedantic, Manichean writing in the entire book, Ms. Rand helpfully answers that question.  And whether you're an acolyte who gets that dreamy, fuck-the-poor, Objectivist glint in your eye every time you think of "The Speech", or you are a normal human being who recalls it dimly as "that interminable, godawful, blunt-force-trauma screed that seemed to go on and on and hellishly on forever" it is the one part of the novel that everyone remembers.

Everyone.

(Hell, it's the primary reason why, about 10 seconds after Barack Obama took the Oath of Office, the Right whipped itself into another of their trademarked fake-apoplectic frenzies, threatening this time to "Go Galt!" by walking away and leaving their batshit blogs untenanted. Or something. According to legend this "strike" by America's leading Conservative  "producers" ended once someone explained to the likes of wingnut welfare queens such as Rich Lowry and Michelle Malkin that copying and pasting RNC talking points was not actually the same as inventing the Bessemer process or building an aircraft out of bicycle parts, sailcloth and resin.)

However, for the fusspot who lives to look things up, the specific citation is Chapter VII of Part III, entitled "This is John Galt Speaking".

The speech begins as follows --

"For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing-you who dread knowledge-I am the man who will now tell you."

-- runs on for 64 more pages, and it is why, in addition to being a two-dimensional, stamped-out-of-chipboard Ayn Randite protagonist and the pivot on which "Atlas Shrugged" turns, John Galt is also the big, shiny, public petard* tenterhook from which Paul Ryan now finds his career dangling;  the smoking-gun proof that Paul Ryan is, beyond any doubt, a first order pathological liar whose sudden, magnetic-poles-reversing-themselves denials about Ayn Rand are so...tectonic...that he genuinely "out-Herods Herod".

Or at least out-Romneys Romney.

Here is the video where Ryan publicly cuts his own throat by violating the first rule of effective lying:  keeping your damned story simple-simple-simple.

Here is a partial transcript for those who have better things to do than watch  doddering old whore Brit Hume obediently deliver his softballs by slow freight (emphasis added):

Brit Hume, FOX News: What is your view of Ayn Rand? Are you an Ayn Rand disciple?

Rep. Paul Ryan: No. I really enjoyed her novels, Atlas Shrugged in particular. It triggered my interest in economics. That's where I got into studying economics. That's why I wanted to study the whole field of economics.

I later in life learned about what her philosophy was, it's called Objectivism. It's something that I completely disagree with. It's an atheistic philosophy. But I think what she's done is she's showed -- she came from communism. She showed how the pitfalls of socialism can hurt the economy, can hurt people, families and individuals and that to me was very compelling novels. Which says freedom, free enterprise, liberty is so much better than totalitarianism and socialism. Those novels, I thought were interesting. But her philosophy, which is different, is something I just don't agree with.

And right there -- right at the point where Paul Ryan states categorically that "Atlas Shrugged" (which Paul Ryan "really enjoyed" so much that he made his staff read it and handed copies of it out as Christmas presents)  is "different" than Ayn Rand's philosophy "called Objectivism" (with which Paul Ryan "completely disagree[s]") -- is where Mr. Ryan knowingly tells what may  be the biggest and most consequential lie any Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate has told in recent memory.

It's not just that "Atlas Shrugged" was written by Objectivism's inventor and chief spokesperson.  Oh my no.  It's that the novel's philosophical apogee and most memorable element -- that deadly, long-ass "This is John Galt Speaking" slab of awful that swallows up 64 pages of its  pages -- was consciously designed by Ayn Rand to be a comprehensive introduction to her Objectivist philosophy -- a philosophy which excoriates those who claim to act out of a religious faith that teaches charity and mercy as mere dictators and degenerate "mystics" whose only "craving is to kill" and whose "only satisfaction is to torture": 

... 

“Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims-as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force-he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious: reason, to him, is a means of deception, he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason-and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and press on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it. 

“Just as the mystic is a parasite in matter, who expropriates the wealth created by others-just as he is a parasite in spirit, who plunders the ideas created by others-so he falls below the level of a lunatic who creates his own distortion of reality, to the level of a parasite of lunacy who seeks a distortion created by others. 

“There is only one state that fulfills the mystic’s longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity: death. No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence-and the feelings that move him from then on are hatred for all the values of man’s life, and lust for all the evils that destroy it. A mystic relishes the spectacle of suffering, of poverty, subservience and terror; these give him a feeling of triumph, a proof of the defeat of rational reality. But no other reality exists. 

“No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare of God or of that disembodied gargoyle he describes as ‘The People,’ no matter what ideal he proclaims in terms of some supernatural dimension-in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture. 

“Destruction is the only end that the mystics’ creed has ever achieved...

Question:  How do you know this?

Answer:  Because Ayn Rand fucking well said so!   

Question: But why should we take your word for it, driftglass?  After all, isn't this just the sort of thing that a skeevy Liberal collectivist parasite such as yourself would lie about?

Answer: Well, duh!  Fortunately you don't have to take my word for it.  In fact, any idiot with a browser and access to the internet (I'm looking at you, David Gregory) can look these exciting facts up for themselves because the good people at "The Atlas Society" -- the organization to which Paul Ryan delivered the following speech in 2005 during which he explicitly states that he "goes [back to] the 64-page John Galt speech" whenever he needs to check his ideological bearings (at around the 3:30 mark) -- 



-- has an entire page devoted to painstakingly tongue-bathing John Galt's speech and explaining its Pure Objectivist Awesomeness in excruciating detail (emphasis added):

... 

In Atlas Shrugged, the hero, John Galt, makes a radio speech to the nation revealing the strike of the producers and explaining its rationale. The speech resolves the philosophical mystery of the plot: Why are the most productive people leaving their work and disappearing from society? As such, it provides a comprehensive introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy, though one that is tailored to the events and characters of the novel. In later works, Rand presented specific elements of her philosophy in nonfiction terms.

Ayn Rand regarded Galt's speech as the shortest summary of her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. "I knew it was going to be the hardest chapter in the book," she told an interviewer in 1961. "I underestimated. I thought, with a feeling of dread, that it would take at least three months. Well, it took two years." Rand began outlining the speech on July 29, 1953; it was not completed until October 13, 1955. Her biggest challenge was not the speech's philosophical content but its literary requirements. In a novel, she could not present her ideas in the form of a dry, systematic treatise; she had to state them dramatically, in the form of a revolutionary leader's manifesto and challenge to a corrupt society.

"I started by making an outline of the issues to be covered," Rand explained. "I originally began the theoretical presentation with metaphysics, starting with existence exists, going from metaphysics to epistemology, then planning to go to morality. After writing quite a few pages, I had to stop because I knew it was absolutely wrong. That is the logical order in non-fiction, but you can't do it in fiction. The speech had to start by presenting the morality, which is the real theme of the book, and where Galt would have to begin his explanation to the world. So I had to rewrite the whole thing."

Though the speech is written as a single, continuous presentation, it can be divided into three sections. In the first, Galt presents the moral code of reason and individualism (The Morality of Life) that the producers embrace. In the second, he explains and attacks the opposite moral code of mysticism, sacrifice, and collectivism (The Morality of Death), showing how it has always been used to exploit the producers. In the third section, he explains the strategy of the strike -- the withdrawal of "the sanction of the victim" -- and urges his listeners to reexamine their moral assumptions. This section also presents the political ideals that follow from the moral code of rational individualism. 

...

Or to put in in terms any novitiate Randite would understand,  ("Atlas Shrugged" = Objectivism) as clearly and unambiguously as (A = A), and anyone who has ever read and "enjoyed" "Atlas Shrugged" and says otherwise is either a pathological liar or mentally ill.

So who is John Galt? 

Well, if we had any honest national political journalism left in this country, "John Galt" would be fiery wreck that ended Paul Ryan's public career, and the iceberg that finally sank Willard Romney's presidential dreams once and for all.

+++++++++++++++

* UPDATE:  Thank you to both people who corrected me on my use of "petard", as well as the individual who corrected me regarding John Galt's place of employment.


Why yes, the author of this post would be delighted to take your money!

On The Eve of our Great National Debate ™ Over Ayn Rand -- UPDATE

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It is helpful to remember that Paul Ryan is every bit as big a flip-flopper as Mittens. 

As Lawrence O'Donnell's video shows, Congressman Ryan has spent most of his adult life as a proud and fervent acolyte of Ayn Rand. 

The atheist, pro-abortion-on-demand-through-the-ninth-month Ayn Rand. 

The Ayn Rand who wove her deep contempt for religion and for people of faith into everything she ever wrote. 

That Ayn Rand. 

Then as his public profile began to grow with the fundamentalist, anti-science, anti-Planned Parenthood teahadist base, he did what any good Fox News Teapublican would do:

Verily I Say Unto Thee 

That this night

Before the kooks crow

Thou shalt deny me

Thrice.

Over at "The New Yorker", Jane Mayer homes in on this enormous breach in Paul Ryan's political armor. First, there are the protestations of eternal love and fidelity:

AYN RAND JOINS THE TICKET 

Posted by Jane Mayer

With the choice of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney adds more to the Republican ticket than youth, vigor, and the possibility of carrying Wisconsin—he also adds the ghostly presence of the controversial Russian émigré philosopher and writer Ayn Rand.

Although she died thirty years ago, Rand’s influence appears on the rise on the right. As my colleague Ryan Lizza noted in his terrific biographical Profile of Ryan, Rand’s works were an early and important influence on him, shaping his thinking as far back as high school. Later, as a Congressman, Ryan not only tried to get all of the interns in his congressional office to read Rand’s writing, he also gave copies of her novel “Atlas Shrugged” to his staff as Christmas presents, as he told the Weekly Standard in 2003.

Two years later, in 2005, Ryan paid fealty to Rand in a speech he gave to the Atlas Society, the Washington-based think tank devoted to keeping Rand’s “objectivist” philosophy alive. He credited her with inspiring his interest in public service...

Later, when happy-fun-time is over and dragging her around in public becomes a liability with the people he is trying to impress, comes the breakup.

First, he stops returning her phone calls. Then he avoids her at the annual Galt's Gulch Anti-Christmas, Religion-is-for-Mentally-Ill-Parasites Party

Then, this:

More recently, however, Ryan distanced himself from Rand, whose atheism is something of a philosophical wedge issue on the right, dividing religious conservatives from free-market libertarians. This year, with his political profile rising, Ryan stressed not only that he had differences with Rand’s atheism—a point he had made as far back as 2003—but went so far as to denounce her whole system of beliefs, describing his early attraction to her writing as little more than a youthful dalliance. He admitted that he had “enjoyed her novels,” but, as Mak notes, he stressed that, “I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas

The craven Mr. Ryan has downgraded Ayn Rand -- once the love of Mr. Ryan's ideological life  -- to nothing more than a clingy weirdo with whom he once had a little strange on the side; a political embarrassment to be heaved under the bus the minute she became an inconvenience.

In Republican-speak this is known as "Pulling a Gingrich".  


UPDATE:  

To the "driftglass is bashing atheists!" persons in the comment section, point to me please where in this post I bash atheists.  

I have correctly described the opinions and beliefs of Ayn Rand as she opined and believed them.

I have pointed out that Ayn Rand's stated beliefs and opinions are diametrically opposed to the beliefs and opinions of the fundamentalist Republican Base which Mr. Ryan is now trying to court.

Have at it, and if you find my voice bashing atheists in this post I will happily issue a public apology.

OTOH, if it turns out that this is a product of your imagination, I reserve the right to hang you out as a pinata and to add the phrase "those thin-skinned, chimera-chasing atheists" to my public vocabulary :-)

Yours in Christ,

driftglass

Now They'll Have To Like Me!

Mittens feeds the beast.

From the AP:

AP source: Romney picks Ryan for running mate

NORFOLK, Va.—Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate, according to a Republican with knowledge of the development. They will appear together Saturday in Norfolk, Va., at the start of a four-state bus tour to introduce the newly minted GOP ticket to the nation.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to disclose the decision.

In a statement issued Friday night, Romney's campaign would say only that the running mate would be revealed at 9 a.m. EDT at the Nauticus Museum. Berthed at the museum is the USS Wisconsin -- which offered a hint about Romney's choice.

Before Romney's team issued the statement, all signs seemed to point to Ryan, the seven-term Wisconsin congressman whose nomination could help assuage the conservative base of the party that has been reluctant to fully embrace Romney.
...

If the last 30 years of American political history has proven anything, it's that trying to appease the monstrous appetites of the Right only makes them exponentially hungrier and crazier.

Apparently no one affiliated with Team Romney is familiar with the story of "Little Red State Fundy".

If You Love Conservatism, Let it Go.

If it returns, it was always yours.

Or something.

You know, whenever Andrew Sullivan drops a few too many tabs of Rancho Reagan Shinola and goes all maudlin and squishy and mystical over the great, untrammeled Conservatism that Never Was of his youth, and how these kids today with their crazy hair and Toby Keith music have gone and ruined it all...

Left, Right And Time
29 Mar 2011 10:10 am

I suffer, it seems, from an affliction that bedevils many. I now find myself largely opposed to most Republicans and in favor of a Democratic president as an even tempered pragmatist. But I have not reimagined myself as a leftist. Others have, of course, but I wince a little every time. Take the issue of taxes - and you see where the right-left paradigm is totally insufficient to the occasion.

Income tax rates are now lower than they were under Ronald Reagan and far lower than they were under Eisenhower. And yet it has become a Norquistian non-negotiable that no taxes can be raised at all on anyone, let alone the beneficiaries of the last thirty years - and those who differ must be "leftists" - even when the US is facing debt of historic and dangerous proportions. Someone advocating what Eisenhower was perfectly comfortable with would be regarded by the Republican right today as a communist. And yet, of course, Eisenhower was emphatically not a Communist, whatever the John Birch society believed.
...

I cannot help but be reminded of this delightful 1998 item from "The Onion"

Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?

By Bruce Heffernan
October 28, 1998

Look, I'm not a hateful person or anything–I believe we should all live and let live. But lately, I've been having a real problem with these homosexuals. You see, just about wherever I go these days, one of them approaches me and starts sucking my cock.

Take last Sunday, for instance, when I casually struck up a conversation with this guy in the health-club locker room. Nothing fruity, just a couple of fellas talking about their workout routines while enjoying a nice hot shower. The guy looked like a real man's man, too–big biceps, meaty thighs, thick neck. He didn't seem the least bit gay. At least not until he started sucking my cock, that is.

Where does this queer get the nerve to suck my cock? Did I look gay to him? Was I wearing a pink feather boa without realizing it? I don't recall the phrase, "Suck my cock" entering the conversation, and I don't have a sign around my neck that reads, "Please, You Homosexuals, Suck My Cock."

I've got nothing against homosexuals. Let them be free to do their gay thing in peace, I say. But when they start sucking my cock, then I've got a real problem.

Then there was the time I was hiking through the woods and came across a rugged-looking, blond-haired man in his early 30s. He seemed straight enough to me while we were bathing in that mountain stream, but, before you know it, he's sucking my cock!

What is it with these homos?
...

See, this thing of it is -- the thing that Mr. Sullivan will never admit to himself or his readers -- is that he does not owe his long and successful career to being a "real" Conservative.

He owes it to being a Gay Conservative. A token. A front-man. Mr. Outside. A "roper", in the parlance of the confidence game.

It is a subject on which I have touched before:

The Trajectory of Falling Objects

...
The Modern GOP, as is now painfully clear, has always been the furious white guy party. The Jebus party. The gun-fetish party. And the all-of-them-riding-the-short-bus-to-school-together Party.

Not exactly an appetizing bill of electoral fare -- certainly not the kind of people you’d ever trust to baby-sit your Constitution -– but fortunately the Party of God was also the Party of Money, and so the GOP did what any hagged out failure with a ton of cash would do: it went out and bought itself some credibility!

It bought itself a whole religion, complete with satellites and universities. It bought institutes and governments. It underwrote think tanks and teevee networks. Book publishers and spokesmodels. Coast-to-coast radio coverage and “serious thinkers”.

And it bought itself a teevee-friendly veneer of diversity.

What the Right needed was a light coating of urbane respectability to buy them enough time and access to destroy the country.

And it was people like Sullivan who happily lent it to them.

On the Left, the technical term for a gay or minority political writer is…writer.

But on the Right, the technical term is “celebrity”, which meant as long as people like Sullivan were onstage doing their dancing Conservative monkey act, the Party of God could point to them and say “See, we’re not haters” to the press.

And as long as the con game played itself out, times were good in Tokenville, high-paying gigs were plentiful.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but without the word “Conservative” tacked to their resumes, people like Andrew Sullivan, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks and a growing nest of “Obamacons” would all have had to go looking for honest work a very long time ago.

And so Sullivan miraculously managed to miss the moral dumpster fire that was the Conservative movement as it burned cheerily away in his own back yard year after year after year…

…until the day that Conservatism’s Brand Identification started to fall faster than Port A Potty stock the day after scientists figure out how to turn shit into gold.

Which leaves the Apostates with a serious cash-flow problem.
...

Without the "conservative" bit, Mr. Sullivan is just another anti-DOMA, pro-pot, gay Gen-Xer clipping articles out of the local Penny Saver and writing occasional paeans to Obama. And according to the one million Liberal anti-DOMA, pro-pot, Penny-Saver-article-clipping, Obama-paean-writing gay bloggers I know, the ROI on that gig is slightly less per annum than what you can dig out of the sofa cushions of the average community college teacher's lounge, and certainly not enough to launch anyone to the top of Mt. Beast.

And so, Mr Sullivan finds himself trapped in a odd sort of Hell of his own making: a cramped little Malebolge of the Deceivers where, in order to continue to enjoy the fruits of being the Gay Conservative, he is compelled to continually undermine the credibility of everything else he writes by ritually and publicly polishing the turd of Conservatism's Once and Future greatness over and over and over again.

...
For the Palinites, the lie is that history began on January 20, 2009, when the Black Guy became president; for the Sullivanites, the lie is that history began in 2003, when George W. Bush apparently snuck into Ronald Reagan's crypt and peed on the Great Man's mortal remains.

Because every bit as much as any Birther flake or Death Panel stooge -- every bit as much as Sarah Palin -- Andrew " Reagan-Thatcher pragmatic Christian Tory" Sullivan hangs onto his position and paycheck only by tirelessly hawking his own brand of discredited, self-absolving, self-deluding revisionist bullshit ("Bush Betrayed 'Real' Conservatism"). Mr. Sullivan dresses his crackpottery up by nudging the time-line back a little bit, but the object is the same: to exempt himself from the same, harsh judgment he wants to lavish on the Palinites by excusing himself from the much larger and more destructive crime of helping to create the environment in which moral monsters like the Palinites could flourish.

And because Mr. Sullivan builds his critique of the Palinites on fundamentally corrupt ground, his observations of them not only come across as deeply dishonest, but also loudly and unintentionally hilarious.

Tomorrow, when I hold my breath and balance my checkbook, I might well find the whole sham infuriating.

But today I just find it pitiable.

A Scammer Darkly

Juan Williams...

...by day, straight-arrow member of a venerable institution fighting a rear-guard action against a sinister and secretive alliance that seeks to destroy civilization.

...by night, a fully-paid-up member of that sinister alliance.

And then one day he starts to lose his mind because a human being cannot exist in both worlds: cannot stay sane as a committed defender of society, while at the same time collaborating with those committed to obliterating that society.

Why does this sound so familiar?

Oh yeah. Because it is a novel by Philip K. Dick written 33 years ago called "A Scanner Darkly":


If Mr. Williams wanted to work a day job managing an IHOP, and a weekend gig making balloon animals at children's parties, no one would have given a damn. But instead, Mr. Williams wanted to make a living -- a very handsome living -- working for the NEWS and the ANTI-NEWS at the same time.

666 years before Dick, Dante Alighieri wrote about such people in Canto III of "The Inferno". They were the "trimmers" (as they later came to be called): those who are condemned to eternity in the Vestibule of Hell for spending their lives changing or modifying their positions or beliefs for reasons of expedience:

Inferno: Canto III

...
And I, who had my head with horror bound,
Said: "Master, what is this which now I hear?
What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?"
And he to me: "This miserable mode
Maintain the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise.
Commingled are they with that caitiff choir
Of Angels, who have not rebellious been,
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.
The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair;
Nor them the nethermore abyss receives,
For glory none the damned would have from them."
And I: "O Master, what so grievous is
To these, that maketh them lament so sore?"
He answered: "I will tell thee very briefly.
These have no longer any hope of death;
And this blind life of theirs is so debased,
They envious are of every other fate.
No fame of them the world permits to be;
Misericord and Justice both disdain them.
Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass."
...

Mr. Williams' real problem is not what he did or did not say; his real problem is that, after years of being permitted to romp around the American media paddock free and unfettered, he finally ran into one of the last intact sections of the rusty, run-down fence-line that once delineated the boundary between actual journalism and the farce of Fox News.

Because Fox News is not a news organization. It is -- quite openly and unapologetically -- the propaganda wing of the American fascist movement.

It is performance art on a global scale, designed to constantly push-push-push a radical political agenda and lie to the American people by extruding a hard-right-flavored news-looking product 24/7/365 directly into the skulls of the Republican Base.

Think about that for a minute: every single fucking day, the agenda for the entire media-political-economic engine of the last superpower on Earth is prodded along by a single corporation dedicated to perpetrating one, massive, toxic lie after another.

And everybody knows it.

That's the thing. That's what makes it so sickening; the simple, observable fact that, deep down, the Big Murdoch Lie Machine really fools no one at all but hardcore meatsticks of the Republican Party base. The rest of it -- its day-to-day operations -- is all kabuki, depending entirely on the consensual collusion of thousands of media bean-field hands like Mr. Williams who make their daily bread oiling the cogs of the terrible machine, and who, in turn, depend on the rage and savage ignorance of millions of bitter Pig People who will pay any price to have someone in a suit on teevee tell them that they're actually insightful patriots.

It is a great, reeking crack-house which pays Mr. Williams very well for deejaying in the living room. And because -- like far, far too many of his colleagues -- Mr. Williams clearly believes this is all just a game, he can see no reason why he shouldn't be able to work six days a week for a cut of FoxNews' crack-and-hooker trade, and then duck around the corner just in time to strap on a collar and make another few dollars preaching High Church Journalism from the pulpit at NPR.

But this is not an academic debate over journalistic methodology, Juan.

This is a war.

And in this war you have to pick a fucking side.

The Hoe Toaster*

For the last 80 years, on the anniversary of Black Tuesday, a mysterious woman in black has been seen leaving three roses and an empty bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream on the grave of Herbert Hoover.

She has once again bobbed to the surface to the GOP wine bucket to deliver another paean to wonderful wonderfulness.

Tengrain has the story here.


*(In case you are unfamiliar with the tradition)

Art For Art's Sake

Republican House Candidate Art Robinson goes all-in with the new GOP "Embracing Your Inner Maniac" strategy.

So who is Art Robinson?

You know your crazy uncle? Not the amusingly eccentric one, but the magnetism-is-a-Commie-lie, I-can-smell-the-moon-people-with-my-mind, full-throttle-with-afterburner-crazy one who is perpetually boiling-piss infuriated about something?

Well apparently that uncle has joined something called the "Tea Party" and, in their wisdom, the good Republicans citizens of Oregon's 4th congressional district have chosen him to fight for their values and beliefs against Democrat Peter DeFazio in the upcoming national election.

The good Republicans citizens of Oregon's 4th congressional district did this in very much the same way -- and obviously using very much the same carefully calibrated set of competence-calipers -- that various other groups of Republican citizens (who these days [for very complicated reasons having to do with assuming that everyone else is as stupid and gullible as they are] often like to play dress-up in pantaloons and funny hats while pretending not to be Republicans) have used to select people like Sharron "Both Right and Obtuse" Angle, Christine "Meatballs But No Happy Ending" O'Donnell, Rand "We The Lying" Paul, Jan "Been Through The Desert With a Corpse With No Name" Brewer, Joe "A Noun, A Verb, and 'Unconstitutional'" Miller and Carl "Paulie Walnuts" Paladino to run for very powerful elected offices in their names.

Which is why, when Crazy Uncle Art went on the teevee last night and spent the better part of 18 minutes alternately yelling at Rachel Maddow, smirking at Rachel Maddow, interrupting Rachel Maddow, insulting Rachel Maddow, patronizing Rachel Maddow and calling Rachel Maddow a liar...as she patiently tried to read Mr. Robinson's own crazy words from his own crazy newsletter back to him and get him to explain his very bizarre ideas and/or confirm or deny that he continued to believe them...I literally could not look away.

It was a singular event, and seen from a safe distance, strangely beautiful, in the same way I would imagine the 1908 Tunguska event might have seemed beautiful if one had seen it from orbit.

As our democracy continues its long, painful, nervous breakdown and slide into McFeudalism, it is, I suppose, sometimes a blessing to have someone as purely rage-blown berserk as Art Robinson pop briefly out of the maelstrom, if only to remind us just how hilariously grotesque the Conservative Soul really looks without its makeup and pearls.

The Democratic Underground has your Art Robinson starter-kit here.

As I have said before , and will no doubt be moved to say again: Modern Conservatism is a disease. If you don't understand that, you're already infected.


Update: Blue Gal kills it here.

That Friday Podcast all the Kids are Talking About!

One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

-- Aldous Huxley

Our media juggernaut keeps its whole catalog and (for those included to drop a little dough into chapeau) the PayPal thingie here.

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help.

Some Resourceful Citizens

will always find ways to prosper in difficult times.