• Transitions: Patti & Julia’s story 
Diana Fishlock, Patriot-News (Harrisburg, PA) Julia knew she loved Patti within a week of the initial correspondence because of Patti’s “total and unwavering acceptance of who and what I am,” Julia said. Before meeting Patti, everyone Julia dated seemed to have an agenda, viewing her as something exotic, she said. Patti had dated women before, but not transsexuals, she said. “I was interested in finding the person. I didn’t care male. I didn’t care female. I didn’t care,” Patti said. “I was more interested in someone with that intellectual interest, world interest,” said Patti. “In the circles I travel in, people are not reading Ayn Rand.”     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand’s character model of a “real man” was child killing sociopath 
Tim McCown, The Examiner Altruism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Inaccurate  Ayn Rand's writings have no more business being the guiding principles of our political and economic policy than do Marx's. Sadly a brilliant but extremely mentally ill woman never got the help she needed. But sociopathy is not a solution but a mental illness to be treated. Rand's ideas were given very little credibility when she wrote them and they deserve even less creditability now.     Share on Facebook

• • BB&T Ex-CEO Allison slams pay, “too big to fail” 
Joe Rauch, Thomson Reuters Capitalism  [John Allison’s] most prominent office decoration is a bookcase stacked with the works of Objectivist philosopher and author Ayn Rand, whose novels celebrate individualism and unfettered laissez-faire capitalism. While Allison's outspoken anti-bailout views have fueled speculation about a career in politics, he poured cold water on that idea, and insisted he's more interested in trying to influence young minds through his current academic post.     Share on Facebook

• • Why no writer can match Salinger’s voice 
Shoba Narayan, LiveMint.com The Fountainhead  Capitalism  Tomorrow, as you scramble to get red roses for a candlelight dinner with your sweetie, you could raise a champagne toast to any number of things [...]. Or you could dismiss the whole lot as damn “phoneys”. Jerome David Salinger, who died last month at age 91, would approve. He, along with Ayn Rand, inspires hyperbole and cultish devotion. Their books achieve the troika that every aspiring author longs for: original, long-lasting best-sellers. Best of all, not only are their books and characters unforgettable (remember Howard Roark?), they are immensely readable.     Share on Facebook

• Partisanship killing us 
Tom McGeoghegan, Santa Fe New Mexican Capitalism  The Ronald Reagan-Milton Friedman-Ayn Rand-Alan Greenspan myth that we should let the robber barons rule has once again almost destroyed our economy.     Share on Facebook

• Omarr’s daily astrological forecast February 21, 2010 
Jeraldine Saunders, Los Angeles Times Atlas Shrugged  SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Atlas shrugged because he didn't care. Your antics won't impress someone who is bigger and better equipped to deal with the world than you are. In the week to come you may ignore criticisms.     Share on Facebook

• • In praise of rattling good typewriters 
Sunday Business Post Personal life  The best-selling machines include models favoured by famous writers - these include Remington, Smith-Corona and Olivetti, makes favoured by Tennessee Williams. There is also a 1931 Remington Rand Portable, as used by Ayn Rand - the story that she took her name from the machine is a fiction, it is more likely that she chose the brand because it shared her name.     Share on Facebook

• • Lexicon 
Edmonton Journal Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Personal life  Ayn Rand -- An influential writer, philosopher and defender of capitalism. Best known for her novel Atlas Shrugged. A floral arrangement shaped like a dollar sign was placed near her casket at her funeral in 1982.     Share on Facebook

• The cookie club 
Harish Bhat, LiveMint.com Egoism  [The Grabber] has absolute clarity on what he wants in life and will waste no time getting there. Indeed, his philosophy finds both its origin and destination in Ayn Rand’s belief that selfishness is the ultimate virtue.     Share on Facebook

• Freedom matters, freedom works 
Connie Mack, Press Office of Congressman Connie Mack Capitalism  Leading 20th century political and economic thinkers such as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand understood all that freedom and free markets had accomplished, and they recognized the threats posed to individuals and economies by socialism, communism, and other forms of governmental intrusions into freedom around the globe. Their works rekindled the commitment to the very ideals that helped make America free and strong.     Share on Facebook

• Dennis Miller on health care showdown, out-of-control taxes, Winter Olympics 
Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor Atlas Shrugged  O'REILLY: So you would say that this whole thing — the tanning salon, the tax on George Hamilton conversation, the tax on the Olympic medals, totally out of control, right? MILLER: There is a point, Billy, where I wouldn't work anymore. Really. I'm 56 now. At some point I have to start balancing — I want to see some things in the world. If it got to a point where it was just silly, where I felt they were jobbing me, using me as a sucker and like treating me in the same breath as the bad guy, I'd just say, "Hey, you know, I don't know if it's 'Atlas Shrugged,' but it's 'Atlas Shirked.'" At some point I'd travel the world a little.     Share on Facebook

• What’s all the hoo-ha over socialism? 
Bruce Teeple, Center Daily Times (PA) “Remember when Chrysler boo-hooed to the government just like General Motors and Wall Street? Now we have radio and television ‘entertainers’ quoting canned Randian clichés like they were scripture. They’re no different than any religious fundamentalist waving his one-way ticket to Doomsday.” “But some people don’t appreciate government intrusion.” “Uh-huh! The ones whining most about government are the same ones who do their best to avoid paying taxes. But, by jeez, they’ll run to the government when they’re up agin ’er.”     Share on Facebook

• A different recipe 
H.C. Klingman, Naples Daily News (FL) Capitalism  The Daily News treated us with a guest commentary from Jack Tymann on Feb. 17 — another repast of “Tymannomics.” This dense polemic pudding has as main ingredients the road kill of Ayn Rand and archaic laissez-faire economics. Neither of these nourished us very well under former presidents Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. History has shown this recipe produces indigestion because markets are not self-regulating. Tax cuts don’t work. Trickle down is really trickle up.     Share on Facebook

• • Apology philosophically 
Jim Smith, Naples Daily News (FL) The Virtue of Selfishness  Egoism  Objectivist author  To act selfishly means to act in your own self-interest, which includes both the short term and the long term. If [Tiger] Woods is truly “dedicated to making sure” that he helps “young people achieve their dreams through education,” then he should start by recognizing the “Virtue of Selfishness” as first identified by author philosopher Ayn Rand and available in her book of the same name.     Share on Facebook

• • Robbing the bankers 
Neil Winton, The Telegraph (London) Atlas Shrugged  When I read about Bill Nighy supporting the Robin Hood plan to rob the bankers and give to the poor (Letters, February 13), I delved into my well-thumbed copy of Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, because of her memorable put‑down of this truly daft idea. I wasn’t disappointed. The book’s hero, Ragnar Danneskjöld, says that Robin Hood “is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practising charity with wealth which he did not own ... making others pay for the luxury of his pity ... Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth.”     Share on Facebook

• • • “A despicable hatchet job, by a clueless non entity, pretentiously posing as a degenerate scum 
Roger Kimball, Pajamas Media Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  I never made it through either of Rand’s two big novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. To enjoy either, I suspect, you had to have encountered Rand in adolescence, when so many of life’s lasting enthusiasms are forged. In recent years, a few friends have urged Rand on me, and I dutifully tried both novels more than once. Each time, I found myself oscillating between fits of the giggles, at the awful prose, and irritation, at the jejune philosophy. Among the many reasons I am thankful to Whittaker Chambers, his having rescued me from making further attempts to scale the Everest of Atlas Shrugged comes high on my list. His review of the book in an early issue of National Review is a masterpiece of literary demolition and moral interment.     Share on Facebook

• • Panderer to Power 
Jim Puplava, Financial Sense News Capitalism  Audio  Interview with Frederick J. Sheehan, author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession.[Sheehan:] [Greenspan] really didn’t even know too much about what Rand was talking about.     Share on Facebook

• • Student group LOGIC to hold Philosophic Foundations of Freedom conference 
Jillian Ames, Daily Bruin (UCLA) Capitalism  LOGIC, a self-proclaimed objectivist student group on campus, is holding The Philosophic Foundations of Freedom: A Conference on the Principle of Individual Rights. According to club founder and director Arthur Lechtholz-Zey, the conference’s main objective is to define liberty, investigate why it is desirable and inform listeners on how to achieve it.     Share on Facebook

• • Financial reform remains unlikely; same conditions that caused the recession ... 
Bruce Maiman, The Examiner Capitalism  Inaccurate  The philosophy of deregulation launched during the Reagan presidency ("government is the problem") had become the mantra and was part and parcel of the Clinton presidency. Communism was dead. Capitalism was invincible. You had a fed chairman, Alan Greenspan --a disciple of Ayn Rand, the libertarian idol who felt no regulation should exist in the free market and that government is a destructive force that just gets in the way. (In fact, pure Randians think there shouldn't be any government, that everything ought to be self-regulated.)     Share on Facebook

• Wall Street lobbyists, bankers own Congress 
Bill J. Paschal, Herald Bulletin (Anderson, IN) Capitalism  Wall Street and its backers in Congress convinced us that deregulating finance was not only safe, but self-evidently good for the entire economy, Wall Street and Main Street alike. Wall Street is back to business as usual. That is, there is no need for re-regulating. Thanks to Congress, derivatives are still unregulated. But who sold us this crock? Phil Gramm, Alan Greenspan, Christ Cox, Hank Paulson, the inane stunts of John McCain, devotees of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, among others.     Share on Facebook