Political Ruminations

VIDEO and Full Text Transcript: Thom Hartman on the Republican War Against Working People

A must see video, wherein Thom Hartmann completely destroys the Fox Business meme on entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), and the Republican war against working people.

Watch (full text transcript after the jump):

Via Chez Pazienza

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Thom Hartmann on the Republican War Against Working People FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT [transcribed by moi]

Any good war effort needs an effective PR strategy. A campaign to specify just who the enemy is, and why they should be defeated. How else do you rally support?

So when it comes to the Republican War on the working class, who do you think they turn to for help with messaging? Fox News..well, Fox Business Channel, actually, but close enough.

All this week, Fox is running segments named "Entitlement Nation: Makers vs Takers" . Take a look [Fox clips play].

Morning Quote: Alan Greenspan on Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Alan Greenspan is among the most well known of Ayn Rand's supporters, and in fact, he became a member of the Collective upon marrying another Rand¹ disciple.

Mr. Greenspan made the following comment in defense of Rand's book, 'Atlas Shrugged', in a letter to The New York Times in 1957:

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.

In other words, only the most successful/richest among us, deserves to survive.

Worthy of noting, sales of 'Atlas Shrugged' have soared in recent years. One poll ranked it as the second most influential book of the 20th century.....second only to the Bible.

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¹ Mark Ames on Ayn Rand's worship of an American serial killer:

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.