Etc.

Obituary: Actress Phyllix Thaxter, 92, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

She was one of the performers who made numerous television appearances in the fifties and sixties. Her first husband was disgraced CBS executive James T. Aubrey. For the record, they were divorced before he became disgraced.
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I haven't played the Powerball lottery for several weeks, so I wasn't in the running for the $377 million jackpot. Somebody in Michigan has the winning ticket.
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The media have gone out of their way to legitimize an extremist.
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Speaking of Ryan's extremist philosophy, in this piece from the distant past, the late writer Gore Vidal thought very little of Ayn Rand:

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the “freedom is slavery” sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her “philosophy,” but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the “welfare” state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.


He saw through her just like Mike Wallace did.

She was actually on the Tonight Show in 1967.

Her "philosophy" was fatally flawed because she regarded altruism as "evil." Well, humans have to have the capacity for altruism because it is in their "self-interest." Without regard to other people's feelings or lives, humans could not exist. Those without altruism or empathy generally need to be locked up or get extensive psychiatric help. They are dangerous to themselves and to society.

People who are without any kind of altruism or empathy are regarded as sociopaths.

The tragedy here is this abortion of a philosophy has run rampant in political and economic circles.

It's been said Rand may have had Asperger syndrome, which was largely unknown in her lifetime, and its limitations had a lot to do with such a warped outlook.

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