Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the show here

• State of the Union
  • Education (repeal No Child Left Behind, implement Race to the Top – success in Denver school)
  • Freeze on discretionary spending, veto of bills with earmarks
  • Use of technology to take questions (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, “director of online engagement”)
  • Energy policy (80% clean energy by 2035, 1 million electric vehicles by 2015)
  • Next-gen wireless to 98% of Americans in 5 years
  • Elimination of millionaire tax breaks
• Florida teacher wants to grade parents http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/26/florida.grading.parents/index.html
• Color-coded threat level system to be replaced in April http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/26/threat.level.system.change/index.html
• Jesse Ventura files lawsuit against TSA http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/01/25/jesse.ventura.tsa.lawsuit/index.html
• Facebook implements new security measures after Mark Zuckerberg and French President Nicolas Sarkozy hacked http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/01/26/facebook.security/index.html
• Facebook to turn posts into sponsored ads http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/26/technology/facebook_sponsored_stories/index.htm
• Amber alerts to be posted on Facebook by state http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/01/12/facebook.amber.alerts/
• Daughter downloads 10 billionth app; mom hangs up on Apple http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/01/24/app.store.10billion/index.html
• Toyota recalls 1.7 million vehicles for fuel leaks http://www.wsbtv.com/news/26621378/detail.html
• Atlanta train jumper was attempting suicide http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/marta-train-jumper-was-814979.html
• “Jersey Shore” cast headed to Italy http://newsroom.mtv.com/2011/01/26/jersey-shore-cast-italy-photos/
• Will Ferrell to fill in for departing Steve Carell on “The Office” http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/01/26/will-ferrell-the-office/
• Medical marijuana…soda? http://www.yumsugar.com/Medical-Marijuana-Soft-Drink-Canna-Cola-Hopes-Become-Hit-13454092

Also, friend of the show WhiteWolf is an up-and-coming artist and has posted some of her stuff online for sale… you can find it here if you’re interested!

On our January 19th show, we had a lengthy discussion about the state of the world today, from the perspective of one of my favorite books (written over 50 years ago), “Atlas Shrugged”.  And of course, discussed a bunch of other random stuff too.

Discussion of quotes from “Atlas Shrugged”:

• “It’s my absolute opinion that in our complex industrial society, no business enterprise can succeed without sharing the burden of the problems of other enterprises.” — Socialism in the business world?
• Orren Boyle had appeared from nowhere, five years ago, and had since made the cover of every national news magazine.  He had started out with a hundred thousand dollars of his own and a two-hundred-million-dollar loan from the government.  Now he headed an enormous concern which had swallowed many smaller companies.  This proved, he liked to say, that individual ability still had a chance to succeed in the world.
• “…private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole.”
• “What’s the most depraved type of human being?” “The man without a purpose.” — Welfare, entitlement in general
• “…I believe I made clear that I am in favor of (the Equalization of Opportunity Bill), because I am in favor of a free economy.  A free economy cannot exist without competition.  Therefore, men must be forced to compete.  Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free.” “But, look… isn’t that sort of a contradiction?” “Not in the higher philosophical sense.  You must learn to see beyond the static definitions of old-fashioned thinking.  Nothing is static in the universe.  Everything is fluid.” “But it stands to reason that if–” “Reason, my dear fellow, is the most naive of all superstitions.  That, at least, has generally been conceded in our age.”
• “Need is the only consideration.  If people are in need, we’ve got to seize things first and talk about it afterwards.”
• “How can one deal in truth when one deals with the public?” — Government lies
• It was rumored that one had to observe a certain unwritten rule when dealing with Midas Mulligan: if an applicant for a loan ever mentioned his personal need or any personal feeling whatever, the interview ended and he was never given another chance to speak to Mr. Mulligan.  ”Why yes, I can,” said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a  person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity.  ”The man who uses another’s pity for him as a weapon.”
• “So you think you’re sure of your opinions?  You cannot be sure of anything.  Are you going to endanger the harmony of your community, your fellowship with your neighbors, your standing, reputation, good name, and financial security — for the sake of an illusion?  For the sake of the mirage of thinking that you think?  Are you going to run risks and court disasters — at a precarious time like ours — by opposing the social order in the name of those imaginary notions of yours which you call your convictions?  You say that you’re sure you’re right?  Nobody is right, or ever can be.  You feel that the world around you is wrong?  You have no means to know it.  Everything is wrong in human eyes — so why fight it?  Don’t argue.  Accept.  Adjust yourself.  Obey.”
• “If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose — because it contains all the others — the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money’.  No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity — to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor.  Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.  The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.”
• “I want you to observe (…), that those who cry the loudest about their disillusionment, about the failure of virtue, the futility of reason, the impotence of logic — are those who have achieved the full, exact logical result of the ideas they preached, so mercilessly logical that they dare not identify it.” — Entitlement
• “You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island — it is on a desert island that he would need it most.  Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today — and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”
• “If you hold the irrational as your standard or value and the impossible as your concept of the good, if you long for rewards you have not earned, for a fortune or a love you don’t deserve, for a loophole in the law of causality, for an A that becomes non-A at your whim, if you desire the opposite of existence — you will reach it.  Do not cry, when you reach it, that life is frustration and that happiness is impossible to man; check your fuel: it brought you where you wanted to go.” — Entitlement
• “You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder.  You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded.  The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration.  You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others — you struggle to evade, as ‘theory’, the knowledge that by the moral standard you’ve accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth — and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfection is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it.”
• “As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion.  An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards.  To love is to value.  The man who tells you that it is possible to value without values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold.”
• “The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.  Withdraw your sanction.  Withdraw your support.  Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules.”  – Stop electing complete jerkoffs
• “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Stuff in the news:

• House votes to repeal health care bill: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/19/health.care/
• OpenGovernment.org – a version of OpenCongress for state/local governments: http://opengovernment.org/
• Killer mobile apps: quick payment http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/technology/1101/gallery.mobile_payments/index.html
• Facebook wants your phone number: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/01/18/facebook.phone.privacy/index.html
• Self-clearing roads could solve snow problem: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/01/19/smart.roads/index.html
• States given ultimatum over using stimulus funds for high-speed rail: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/09/lahood.transportation.stimulus/index.html
• Shaming drunk drivers on Facebook: http://www.11alive.com/11at7/article.aspx?storyid=173730&catid=357
• Mom on Facebook instead of taking care of kid: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/18/colorado.mother.charged/index.html

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the show here