WATCH WHAT THEY DO

Paul Ryan blathers on about Obamacare...we'll repeal it this year, blah, blah, blah...we'll have a plan, blah, blah, blah....  Maybe they will, and maybe they won't, but ask yourself if the continuing conversation about Obamacare is perhaps a distraction from what the members of the GOP are actually doing in the House.  Remember this from early December?

Donald Trump’s transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.

The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”  (My emphasis)

And then this from yesterday while Ryan was blathering about Obamacare.

House Republicans this week reinstated a procedural rule created in 1876 that allows lawmakers to cut the pay of individual federal workers down to $1, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The Holman Rule allows members of Congress to propose amendments to appropriations bills that target specific government employees or programs in an effort to cut spending.

One wonders if the Trump transition team wanted the present Energy Department to name names and then later Congress will use the old procedural rule from 1876 to cut the salaries of the employees to $1 per year, under cover of cutting spending.  That would be the same as firing them.  Of course, once Trump is inaugurated, he will have access to all the information on the employees and contractors.

Will all efforts to reduce carbon output and lessen effects on the climate from fossil fuels both domestically and internationally come to an end?  The mischief we will see from the present unrestrained GOP Congress will go far beyond repealing Obamacare, which seems to be making its way to the back burner, because there is no plan to replace the ACA, and some Republican members are getting jittery.

As you listen to what Trump and the GOP say, watch what they do, because what they make the most noise about is sometimes no more than a distraction from the mischief the Republican Congress is already making.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters this week that the Holman Rule gives Congress a chance to change how government works, something voters asked for when they voted for Trump.

"This is a big rule change inside there that allows people to get at places they hadn’t before,” he told reporters.

Indeed it is.  To paraphrase Dr Seuss, oh, the places they'll go.

PAUL RYAN'S FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE DAY

In his press conference, as he presents the GOP's radical new budget, Representative Paul Ryan says :

This to us is something that we're not going to give up on, because we're not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people.

Ryan's vaunted concern about the deficit is a cover for his true ambition, as Paul Krugman says:

Meanwhile, he was pursuing radical redistribution away from the needy to the wealthy.

Nothing has changed, except that the plan has gotten even crueler.

Thanks to "The Jed Report" at Daily Kos for the link to the video.

FOR YOU, ROMNEY AND RYAN

 

R&R (Romney & Ryan), I don't know whether you are country music fans or not, but the video below is for you. You may want to take a lesson from our man Johnny. Nevermind the black clothing. No one cares what you wear. We care that you don't care about the people in Johnny's song.

PAUL RYAN'S FELLOW ROMAN CATHOLICS ON RYAN'S BUDGET

Mitt Romney expects his running mate to help deliver the Catholic vote and smooth over any discomfort among Catholics about Mormonism. (This is the first major-party ticket to go Protestant-less.) Yet after Ryan claimed his budget was shaped by his faith, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops deemed it immoral.

“A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Congress.

The Jesuits were even more tart, with one group writing to Ryan that “Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” (My emphasis)

The nuns-on-the-bus also rapped the knuckles of the former altar boy who now takes his three kids to Mass. As Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice group Network, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s sad that a Catholic doesn’t understand that “we need to have each other’s backs. Only wealthy people can ever begin to pretend that they can live in a gated community all by themselves.”

Even Ryan’s former parish priest in Janesville weighed in. Father Stephen Umhoefer told the Center for Media and Democracy, “You can’t tell somebody that in 10 years your economic situation is going to be just wonderful because meanwhile your kids may starve to death.”

Ouch!  So much for Ryan's adherence to the social justice teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  Thanks to Maureen Dowd for putting it all together.  And do read the entire column.  There's other good stuff there like Ryan's votes in favor of Bush's break-the-bank budgets, including two off-budget wars.

Paul Ryan then:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said in a speech in 2005.

Paul Ryan now:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview."

Has the leopard changed his spots?  I report; you decide.  It's the budget, stupid.  Focus, focus, focus on the budget.

AYN RAND'S "THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS"

Because a reader suggested I read at least the title essay in Ayn Rand's book, The Virtue of Selfishness, I did so.  What follows is my unedited, brief commentary as I picked out selected quotes.  Toward the end of the essay, I may have stopped my notes.  I'm not saying that my responses are in any way worthwhile, but they are mine.  The beginning of the essay was tedious, nearly beyond what I could bear, and, although it became more interesting further along, I was not at all taken with the ideas nor with the style of writing, and I remain perplexed about the appeal of Rand's philosophy, except to those who wish to justify their own egotism and selfishness.  The text of the book may be found here in pdf format.
    
Rand: "The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value."

Me: Bullshit.  Just because you say so does not mean that my rational selfishness will not conflict with your rational selfishness?

Rand: "The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public, spiritual and material.  It is the principle of justice.  A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others."

Me: What of inherited wealth?

Rand: "Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him—by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind."

Me: What about education in childhood and youth?

Rand: "In spiritual issues—(by “spiritual” I mean: “pertaining to man’s consciousness”)—the currency or medium of exchange is different, but the principle is the same. Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues."

Me: Love as conditional; love as long as the beloved gives you pleasure; love as a commodity to be traded.  Not love at all.

Rand: "But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society.  Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being—nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism."

Me: Is illness a vice?

-------------

As I've already said, I read The Fountainhead when I was in college, but I thought it weird and boring, and, in hindsight, I believe I didn't "get" it. I'm not the only one who "missed the point".

Journalist Nora Ephron wrote that she had loved the novel when she was 18 but admitted that she "missed the point," which she suggested is largely subliminal sexual metaphor. Ephron wrote that she decided upon re-reading that "it is better read when one is young enough to miss the point. Otherwise, one cannot help thinking it is a very silly book."

As I read the information about the book at Wikipedia, I remembered that I saw the 1949 movie with Gary Cooper, and I have a vague sense that I thought it dull and dreary and found Cooper's Roark to be a lackluster character.  Thus, I saw no reason to follow up and read Atlas Shrugged, Rand's pièce de résistance.

Ayn Rand's given name is pronounced to rhyme with "mine ".

Paul Ryan then:

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said in a speech in 2005.

Paul Ryan now:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview." 

ROMNEY AND RYAN - "THE ICEMEN COMETH"

"Think of all the folks we'll leave in the dust."  "Oh yes!  Ha, ha, ha."

What a perfect headline and what a splendid opinion piece by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite.

We are falling prey, in the United States, to the temptation to equate “freedom” with selfishness.

This is ultimately a counsel of despair and the direct antithesis of the biblical values of love and compassion.
....

Jesus of Nazareth was absolutely clear that we have a responsibility to care for one another. Jesus instructed us to “love one another” (John 13:34). Cultivating the virtues of empathy, compassion, and support for other people is the way we love one another in an individual and in a social sense.
....

Yes, Ryan’s attachment to the works of Ayn Rand is revealing of his own views and it’s deeply problematic. But the problem of selfishness as a virtue is far more widespread and corrosive in American society than the views of any one person.

Through decades of conservative ideology, the concept of freedom itself has been narrowed to mean simply ‘it’s okay to be selfish.’ In fact, caring for our fellow citizens is regarded as the antithesis of our own individual freedom.

The blood running through the veins of the individualistic, freedom-loving conservatives seems to have turned to ice water.  Ayn Rand's philosophy, or "morality" as she chose to call it, of the negation of self-sacrifice is the antithesis of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The wonder to me is how those amongst the selfish freedom lovers who call themselves Christians reconcile the Randian morality and the teachings in the Gospel.

Thistlethwaite is correct when she says the equation of freedom to selfishness has leached into the consciousness of many in the country who may know little of Rand, while the ardent Rand disciples seem soulless in their lack of empathy.  To run a country putting Rand's philosophy into practice would result in life in a dystopia, the likes of which it would be difficult to imagine. Some brave and gifted soul should imagine and write a fictional account. 

H/T to IT at The Friends of Jake for the link.

MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEW WITH AYN RAND

Well!  So this is the "morality" that the Republican Party embraces.  This is the writer whose books Paul Ryan insists that his staff read when they come to work for him.  The video is a 7-minute excerpt from an interview of Rand by Mike Wallace in 1957 which runs to nearly 30 minutes.  I watched it all and found Rand's words and manner to be chilling.  First of all, Rand's darting eyes and body language are strange, indeed.  She is unable to look at Wallace for any length of time, and she seems to be shrinking back from him during the interview.

Rand's "morality" favors the rational self-interest of the thinkers who never allow emotion to influence their conclusions.  Selfishness rules, and altruism has no place in Rand's "morality".  If the policies of  laissez-faire are in force, then the common good will result.  Greed, which is as evident today as ever it was throughout history, the desire to accumulate more and more money and goods at the expense of those less fortunate, seems not to be noted at all.  By simply leaving rational achievers to their own devices, without constraints, Rand and her disciples believe that all deserving people will benefit...somehow.  By magic?  As for the undeserving, who knows what becomes of them in Rand's morality?

This one interview sheds much light on where the far right, who have now become middle-of-the roaders in the Republican Party, get their ideas.  What I don't understand is how a person who subscribes to Rand's "morality" can claim, at the same time, to be an observant Christian, Jew, or Mormon.  Objectivism is in direct opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the teachings in the Hebrew Testament on mercy and justice.

Paul Ryan is Roman Catholic, and I have to wonder if he reads the church's teachings on social justice as assiduously as he reads Ayn Rand.

In an unusually pointed correspondence, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged lawmakers to consider the moral implications of their actions as they prepared to vote on the Ryan budget.

"We join with other Christian leaders in calling for a 'circle of protection' around our brothers and sisters at home and abroad who are poor and vulnerable," the bishops wrote in the spring. They said the "moral measure" of the debate "is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated." 
.... 

And he [Ryan] pushed back at those who criticized him for abandoning the Catholic principle of "preferential option for the poor and vulnerable." 

"Simply put, I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government," he said.

There you have it from Ryan, the Pericles of Janesville.  (H/T to Charles Pierce.)

The entire 30 minute interview is here at YouTube.

DON'T WORRY...I'M HAPPY

Gov. Bobby Jindal praised Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s running mate choice Saturday and dismissed speculation that he is angling for a cabinet post.

Jindal frequently joined Romney on the campaign trail and had emerged as a possible vice presidential candidate. The governor made appearances for Romney in Louisiana, Ohio, Utah, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Colorado.
....

“Don’t mistake my motives here. I have been traveling all over the country and been campaigning for and with Gov. Romney because it is crucial that he wins, and that we make Barack Obama a one-term president. As for me — why would a guy with the best job in the world be looking for another one?” he said.

Why, indeed, Governor?  I have a question for you.  Why, if you have the best job in the world, do you spend so little time, you know, actually doing it?  Why are you absent from the state so often?  The governor's advisor, Timmy Teepell, says Jindal will be campaigning for Romney next week, because he believes Romney's election is vital to the interests of Louisiana.

“He loves being governor. He’s going to be governor until the very last day of his second term. None of that’s changed,” Teepell said.

Hmm.  What about the days in between?  Do they protest too much?

IT'S PAUL RYAN FOR VEEP

Rep. Paul Ryan will be named Mitt Romney's running mate on Saturday, ending weeks of speculation about the No. 2 slot on the GOP ticket.
....

Ryan, 42, is best known as the chairman of the House Budget Committee and author of a dramatic plan to overhaul Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for senior citizens.
....

Ryan, a House member since 1999, has proposed to overhaul both Medicare and Medicaid, the programs that have been a hallmark of the nation's compact to provide health care to senior citizens and the poor. Under his plan, Medicare would be run by private insurers while Medicaid would be turned over to the states.
....

Ryan's budget plan has been widely criticized by President Obama and his fellow Democrats, who contend it would "end Medicare as we know it." Obama has called Ryan's plan "thinly veiled social Darwinism."

Romney has been described as the candidate without policies.  With his choice of Ryan, may we assume that Ryan's policies will be Romney's policies?  Ryan's plans for the country are specific, and detailed.  With prescience, The New Yorker recently published a lengthy profile of Ryan. What stands out in my memory from reading the profile is that Ryan wants to avoid any movement in the direction of a European type of government.