Like the Dodge RAM. Hard to believe a company with the RAM and the Nitro (for a gas-powered vehicle!) couldn't make it work. "The Nitro. Made to crash and burn!"

Let's face it. Even the name Dodge means you'd better watch out.

I was holding out for the Dodge Genocide: "Be the last person on your block to own one!"

Oops. I meant to say "Good thing we don't see that happening today."

Lest someone think I'm purposefully ignorant and therefore morally superior.

The CEOs in Atlas Shrugged are the epitome of humanity...

Au contraire...

There were plenty of evil CEO's in her novels. They were the ones who decided they didn't want to compete honestly in the marketplace and so went to the government openly (for bailouts) and undercover (with bribes) to even the playing field "for the little guy".

Good thing we don't that happening today.

It's a phase you supposedly get over when you mature as an member of society and realize that it's okay to force people to do what's best for them, and you can still call it freedom because hey, free speech costs nothing and words have no meaning, so let's twist 'em.

Probably why she had no use for psycho-babble. It's true that psychology plays a role in our lives, but the fact that I'm completely fucked up doesn't give me a right to your money.

And by the way, I'm beyond poor. Right now my retirement plan is to die and leave my Amex bill to my ex before the divorce is final. But I won't take your money, unless you offer it.

Why work to better myself when, if I cure cancer, I'll be called evil for charging so much as a nickel when clearly so many people with cancer can't afford the nickel.

Oh yeah, I should charge a million to the billionaires, and a nickel to everyone else. That's fair, and won't impact the creation of goods and services.

In this scenario, the hero is called a murderer for "withholding the cure" that didn't exist prior to the callous murderer's hard work.

And the really funny part is, Ayn Rand was well aware of the smug, above-it-all, dismissive nature of many of her critics, who substitute education for wisdom, which is why you get this year's Ellsworth Toohey award. I guess I'm not getting the funny insightful nod in this group...

I don't want to live in a civilized country, because I want there to be services available when I actually have some money to purchase them.

Ayn Rand did an amazingly fine job of showing exactly how the dynamic of greed, manifested honestly, benefits society as a whole, but so few even among those who've read her are capable or willing to understand it.

By the way, she wasn't nearly as good at making her point in the Fountainhead, which I found disappointing after starting with Atlas Shrugged, which I tried to avoid understanding but simply couldn't. Her reasoning is simply too solid, so I'd have to shed every ounce of morality possible to me to diss it.

But hey, what's a little force if it's for someone else's own good?

Ayn Rand never wrote or implied that poor people are lazy. She wrote and implied that poor people simply haven't managed to trade their skills for a higher price, and that freedom means you have to trade in a free market and what you get is what you get.

And she deemed that scenario fairer than having one person or a committee decide. Of course, having the whole world decide how much your services are worth is really, really, unfair.

She opposed force, and differentiated between "economic force" and real force, and had a real disdain for people who I see every day equate the two.

The concept tossed about in her book and today's "hard-working middle class" says I am a prisoner of my low-paying job on the assembly line to those evil factory owners who better not think of moving their factory to another state or country because my need of / right to the job is greater than their right to shut down the factory.

All Ayn Rand did was illustrate what would happen if those evil exploiting owners simply stopped exploiting.

In life she was bitter and angry, and it showed in her work. She lived in the old Soviet Union and saw first-hand what it did to people. Her work still managed to illustrate the ridiculousness of what now passes for common sense. And she blamed the moral code more than the people who spouted it..

She even pointed out that many people who did not deserve to be hurt WILL be if the code is followed, because water doesn't flow uphill no matter how much you pray.

In the same breath today we have people slamming the irresponsible risk-takers and over-leveraging, while slamming the banks for not making loans.

Wait, I need an MRI, but I can't afford it since I just purchased a new TV. You don't expect me to live without a TV do you?

Don't judge Rand by her sometimes over-zealous one-sided advocates...just as one shouldn't judge that fictional character who walks on water by the Crusades.

Truly noxious indeed.

I wonder what would happen if I stood on a street corner and shrieked that fact like a banshee, and gave interviews telling everyone how awesome The Firm is while throwing feces. If I wasn't gainfully employed...