Happily Clinging

After fretting about Akin all day, this put a smile on my face. The “Catholic deerhunter” should go over very well in Michigan.

And hey, the Obama adminstration is going to send BIDEN to the GOP convention. While he is there, perhaps he’ll ask Jindal if he runs a 7-11, tell Ryan that he, Biden “has a much higher IQ,” and inform Alan West that West will be “put back in chains” by Romney.
Who knows what will come out of Joe’s mouth next? And what in the world is the WH thinking of? I am sure Reince Pribuses’ otherwise gloomy day was lightened by that bit of information – he stated that the Dem convention might just have a surprise visitor of its’ own. Pass the popcorn!

Ivan, you miss the point. He is not trying to be the new Bob Hope. (If you want comedy, watch the Biden videos.)

Ryan might very well be the new Ronald Reagan.

Donna V, that Ryan is considered an intellectual heavyweight is more a commentary on the state of US politics than his ability. The US has not had a president with intellectual heft since Richard Nixon. A votary of Ayn Rand cannot be taken seriously as a conservative intellectual if only because the case for liberty and its connection to small government have been made with far greater insight into human nature and society by men such as Burke, de Tocqueville and Hayek; the Rand fans are basically right-wing pseudo intellectuals, the prime example being Alan Greenspan.

Seems to me you guys ought to get off your high horse re/Rand. She wrote some pretty good fiction and made a lot of sense in support of an economic system she believed in. And lets face it it can’t be much worse than the one we live with here. Economics is/was known at the “dismal science” and in pure form is amoral (as is all science), so it is a perfect fit for an atheist. There is nothing that says that after the science is done you can’t add a “variable constant” called the fudge factor, or even better call it compassion or Christian Charity. Market forces work. The amazing thing is that they work as well as they do here when we interfere every step of the way.
There is always something to learn, no matter how despicable your source. If you don’t think so go reread “Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis. I think it paints a pretty good picture of the devil. Yes, I know it is fiction, but so are “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” – of course it’ts been 30 years since I read any of them so . . .

Ivan: Ryan is a smart man. He is one of the precious few (this does not include 18,669 academic econ PhD’s; Federal Reserve System analysts, and all but two on Wall Street) that saw the massing housing bubble and tried to cut it off.

I guess I still have a shot at being a “good” Catholic. I never read any of Rand’s stuff.

Donna V.,
Interesting. In that young 20′s age bracket, I think it was the individualism more than any other idea that came out of the “Fountainhead” – the time when life is sort of the open road. I had been reading lists of classics, and decided to look at something more ‘modern’ during some weekend or other and, at that age, as a girl, for the romance aspect so touted around the alternative-to-classics conversations by professors. Unreal. Just reading a novel doesn’t deter furthering experience and development. A life has its ages and seasons.

Have to wonder what novels so defined the radical left that are freaking out over this. Have to wonder how their budget looks – but they don’t have one, do they?

Mainly, I want to say that I’m sure that Paul Ryan has read other books, and that I agree with you on his budgeting brilliance based on reality and math skill.

Hi Donald, by intellectual I had meant someone capable enough to drive arguments to the logical conclusions and possibly write their own books. Karl Marx is certainly an intellectual but a malign one, I do not necessarily hold them in high esteem. According to Wiki the wage and price controls were imposed under the extraordinary circumstance that the US was going off the Gold Standard. It would seem a prudent decision to head off a price wage spiral as the value of the US dollar comes to a new equilibrium against a basket of necessities and currencies, and lasted for all of 90 days. Pres Nixon had too many enemies for one lifetime. The Republican Yachting Club never considered this ambitious son of a poor man one of its own, and the Democrats had their knives at the ready since the HUAC hearings. Then too the Vietnam War was raging, and all too many intellectuals and politicians had a vested interest in seeing Nixon fail in South East Asia. Pres Nixon did have a plan for Vietnam, which was simplicity itself. Arm and train the South and in the meantime punish the Commies with devastating air raids for ceasefire violations. For a while the US succeeded, but the green-eyed Congress cut him off at his knees by embargoing supplies to the South, by spreading defeatism, and by tying his hands when it came to bombing the North.