John Galt and V.I Lenin: separated at the Finland Station?

27 April 2006

E.J. Dionne
The Washington Post

If I was king, I would call Peter Rosenberg and Daryl Frances, WJFK,
to me, sit them down and say: "Thank you for coming. Have you ever
read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Penn Jilette was babbling about
something, Brad Pitt and Anglina Jolie and David Copperfield and it
never seems to go anywhere and then he mentioned that the buzz is that
this couple are being cast in Atlas Shrugged. And he was thrilled. He
is obviously an admirer of Rand.

"It explains a lot. My Royal Entrepreneur in the French sense of the
word says that, if he were teaching Philosophy at West Point, he would
assign Atlas Shrugged as a sort of gestalt indicator. The emotional
maturity of the novel seems to be congruent with that of a young woman
after unicorns have been abandoned and menarche has kicked the libido
into high gear, but before she is old enough to drive. She's not
exactly writing for juveniles, because she intends to be writing for
those whom she considers her intellectual peers, but she her writing
seems to be most accessible to people whose moral context was formed
and solidified about 13. Anyway, if you read Atlas Shrugged and you
feel your consciousness soar into the stratosphere of possibilities,
you are probably a native Fascist. If you have to struggle to get
through her turgid prose and ponderous metaphysics and are irritated by
the fallacy of her various Romantic conceits, you probably aren't.
Like the Republican Study Committee, Ayn Rand had a lot of ideas and
they are all ***.

"And that's pretty much the quality of thought reflected in
Penn's "atheist" fetish. Like I say, I've known real atheists
working for AeroExport of the Soviet Union and they would agree with
the caller who called out Jilette for his empty oath of "God
Damned...". It's just a juvenile schtick. Children have a context
called "magical thinking" where they cannot separate their internal
ecology from events in their environment. We grow out of it about the
same time we come to terms with Santa Claus. Atheist like Ayn Rand and
Penn Jilette are still pissed at the truth and have turned it into a
lifetime commitment to pulling the fake whiskers off of department
store Santa Claus.

"One of my favorite stories about Rand concerns her and William F.
Buckley at a seminar and, in an aside, Rand says to Buckley:
"You're too intelligent to believe in God", to which Buckley
responds "Prove it!" Apparently, she was not amused.

"Who is John Galt? Penis envy as an extended metaphor.

"By the way, My Royal Entrepreneur in the French sense of the word
says that many Catholic women seem to prefer anal sex to diaphrams,
because it stimulates the cervix directly from the posterior, which
works almost as well as direct vaginal stimulation and a magnitude
superior to trying to beat down a fairly solid latex barrier to find
the g-spot. He says you have lived a very sheltered life.

"By the way, most Jewish women prefer the pill for birth control.

"Anyway, this proposal to give everyone a $100 rebate as a plan to
fix gas prices is a perfect example of the quality of "ideas" the
Republican Study Committee is running the country on. Thanks to Supply
Side economics and the Contract With America, we are 25 years behind
the curve Carter set into motion. Energy is not the only thing that
these people have fucked up, but it is the most disastrous.

"I know that you guys are busy, so let me cut to the chase. If
Bushie was to dump gold out of the treasury, the bubble supporting the
price of gold would burst and release all the liquidity required to
support it unnaturally. The numbers that Exxon and other Fortune 500
companies are phony because their accounting schemes are pegged to the
price of gold in order to maximize executive compensation. The Dow is
pegged to the price of gold. All the numbers we are working with are
an ideological house of mirrors and as long as gold is sustained
artifically, the internal economics of Exxon will seem to be consistent
with those of Wachovia Bank. Right now, the price of gold and the
price of crude are pegged together, which makes it a risk free bet for
speculators and hedge funds, because the game is fixed, the deck is
stacked and a mechanic is dealing, the dice are loaded and all the
house can roll are box cars and all the suckers can roll are 7's.

"Supply Side economics depends entirely on sucking unearned wealth
out of a host culture by manipulating the price of gold. Phil
Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm, was on the Board of the Commodities
Exchange at the same time Phil Gramm was installing Supply Side
economics as the legislative paradigm. At that time, the price of gold
was coming down from a $800/oz level that was the result of the
economic dysfunction from the Vietnam enterprise devaluing the
greenback. Inflation was a real problem during the Ford and Carter
years and persisted into Clinton's administration, when it was
finally expelled from the economy after the derivatives bubble burst in
1994. I don't know what Wendy Gramm did, but she is a dedicated
Supply Sider in the same way Trotsky was a dedicated Communist. It is
not a coincidence that Wendy Gramm was on the board of Enron when
Fastow was putting his special entities together for Lay and Skilling.
I mean, the conflict of interest arising from her role in Enron and
Senator Gramm's role in the Banking Committee should be obvious to
even the most obtuse Justice Department Trust Attorney.

'Multiplex theaters are talking about raising their "prime time"
ticket prices, because they are dealing with the same pressures from
the price of gold as the house hold budget. This is how the T. Boone
Picken's wing of the GOP is systematically liquidating the wealth of
the American middle class and transferring it as unearned wealth into
theirs. And it is inaccurate to say that the only people who benefit
from these arrangements are stockholders and executives. This is
exactly the point: the executive compensation schemes are stealing from
everyone, especially stock holders. And the ENRON model of executive
compensation dominant in the Fortune 500 organizations are all Supply
Side models.

"Well, I just thought you guys might enjoy dinner on gold plates.
Being ThomasW540, King of America, has its compensations and living
here at Anderson House is just one. My family has various properties
here and there, but this has always been a favorite crash pad of My
Father, ThomasW540, King of America and likewise, his dad. First of
all, its just handy to downtown DC, but the pantry is always well
provisioned and the staff perfectly capable of running a Cordon Bleu
joint anywhere in the world. Leave us repair to the buffet for lamb
and russet salad and perhaps some claret. You can tell me what you
have found about Dr. Judy Fader, Ph.D., in her run for Congress. And
if you have tasked Eric with inviting General John Batiste to expand
upon his comments in the Post recently. On the Bounce!

But I'm not king.

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