"You could have heard a pin drop"

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when
De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US
military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded,

"Does that include those who are buried here?"

De Gaulle did not respond.
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When in England , at a fairly large conference,
Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury
if our plans for Iraq were just an example of 'empire building' by George
Bush.

He answered by saying,
"Over the years, the United States has sent many of
its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom
beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for
in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a conference in France
where a number of international engineers
were taking part, including French and American. During a break,
one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you
heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft
carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he
intend to do, bomb them?"

A Boeing engineer
stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers have three
hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are
nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to
shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to
feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a
dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships;
how many does France have?"
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A U.S. Navy Admiral
was attending a naval conference that included
Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries.
Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a
French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, "Why is it that
we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?"

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, "Maybe it's because the Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."
You could have heard a pin drop.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane.
At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said,
"The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible..
Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !"

The American senior
gave the Frenchman a long hard look.
Then he quietly explained,
''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country,
I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

The Meaning of Life

Meaning is derived from purpose. If I create a watch I give it meaning based on its purpose. If you believe creation is random - essentially a multitude of random chances falling into place, then there is random meaning - ie: no meaning. If you believe in a Creator, then meaning comes from the creator. Thus, to understand the meaning of life, you need to understand the purpose for which it was created. If there is no purpose, then it follows that there is no meaning.

To say that "the meaning of life is to live life" has no meaning. Is life self determinant?Is life a state of existance or is it something more? If it is existance, then we are no different than any other form of existance. We just exist. If there is more, like happiness, or bliss or avoiding suffering, then what defines those qualities? Do I define my own happiness? If my happiness intrudes on your happiness what then? Is there a higher standard of happiness? Where did it come from? If there is no creator then that question of there being a higher standard is foolish.

Do you support "Occupy Wall Street"?

If you do, then do the following:
1. Take your money out of the big five banks and put it in small local banks
2. Take your investments out of the big investment companies and invest locally.
3. Get loans from your local bank or credit union - not the big banks.
4. Do not vote for representatives who receive money from outside your district - if they do, then they won't represent you - they will represent those who gave them money.
5. Only buy "Made in America" that supports jobs like nothing else.
6. Buy from your local shops before you buy from chain stores. That keeps your money in the community.
7. Keep your community clean, drug free and support neighborhood watch - look out for each other. That will bring your police and medical costs down.

What is atheism?

It depends on where you come from. Fundamentally it is the rejection of the existence of a deity.

On the surface, this sounds innocuous. While many might find it unpalatable and others a crazy idea, a very large number of people in the world are atheist.

Now here is the rub: It is not the belief that human life ends at the last breathe. It is not the belief that human spirit ends its existence after the physical body “dies.” Atheism is NOT the belief that science is the only proof of existence. It is simply the rejection of a creator.

So, why did I say “It depends on where you come from”?
In the western (American) culture, heavily influenced by materialism, atheism goes hand in hand and indistinguishable from the concept that human life ends with the death of the material human body, AND that nothing exists beyond the eventual ability of science to prove. Personally I find this to be an incredibly arrogant and closed minded approach to existence.

Then there is the Eastern metaphysical view of atheism exemplified by Buddhism. Buddhism is an “Atheistic” religion in that it does not hold that there is a “creator” God; but, it DOES teach that human life is more than the confines of the physical body.

Buddhism does acknowledge an ever evolving human spirit that continues to grow after the death of our present physical body through ever higher levels of existence and inter-action with the universe. Buddhism does not expound a creator God but does extort humans to become “god-like” through a journey of self-discovery encompassing ever broader universal ideals.

Even if I held to this belief, I would still have to ask, “with a universe as vast as ours, is there not room for life other than – and perhaps even much greater than, human?”

Did Treasury Just Strategically (Intentionally) Default?

The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2011-07-01 18:54
by Karl Denninger
in Federal Government
Ignore this thread
Did Treasury Just Strategically (Intentionally) Default?


It sure looks like they did.

Yesterday.

Here's the DTS (daily cash statement) for Treasury.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=189249

And here's the problem with it:

Note that the pink line did not move much. In fact, it went down.

It should have gone up - a lot - because the "Trust Funds" (you know, Social Security and Medicare?) that you folks on the left keep bleating about being "money good" and "actual debt" had a coupon payment from Treasury due yesterday.

IT WAS NOT MADE.

IF IT HAD BEEN, IT WOULD HAVE BLOWN THE DEBT LIMIT.

That's a default, and it instantaneously destroys both the claim that such activity is not "selective" or, if you prefer, "strategic" and it also destroys the argument that Medicare and Social Security Trust fund "debt" - not just public debt - is subject to the 14th Amendment and thus is "protected" against the Treasury choosing to blow it off.

By the way if you're curious about how much this should amount to (~$90 billion, more or less) have a look at the June 30th, 2010 DTS statement.

Oh, and as for Geithner? He said that any default on any obligation would trigger an immediate market panic. Well, this did - straight up on the S&P and DOW. So much for Timmy's lies.

Have a nice day.

Hattip Publius on the forum who caught it before I did.

A free and independent press? Yeah, right ...

by Arthur Noren on Saturday, July 2, 2011

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

"I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for things, and if any of you would be so foolish as to write honest opinions, would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone.


"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.

"We are Jumping-Jacks -- they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes!" -- John Swinton, 1914, former Editor New York Times, (Un-biased Media?? and much worse since then!!)

Keep that in mind as you explore these News Page Links!!

Idaho Travel News
Montana Travel News
Coeur d'Alene Press
Spokane Spokesman-Review
Montana Standard
Missoulian
The Idaho Observer
LewRockwell.com
FOX News
NewsMax
World Net Daily
Electronic Telegraph
Drudge Report
Wall Street Journal
U.S.A. Today
Washington Post



And on the bottom of the list

ABC
CNN

"Mr. Swinton made the statement in 1914 in his speech at the New York Press Club during his retirement party from the New York Times.

"Swinton had been managing editor of the New York Sun until he started his own journal - John Swinton's Paper in 1883. It became one of the most influential and interesting journals in the country. It played a significant role in the upheaval of the American working class in the mid 1880's. Swinton was active in the free-state movement in Kansas and later worked for the New York Times.

"As a side note, John Swinton (1828 - 1921) was the author of the book, "STRIKING FOR LIFE, Labor's Side of the Labor

Question. The Right of the Workingman to a Fair Living (1894)", as the result of some experience, reflection and observation. This book contains a discussion of the rights of labor by some of their most important spokesmen.

The New York Times owns the Boston Globe. Look at who owns both:

Cede & Co., c/o The Depository Trust Co. (the FederalReserve)
United States Trust Company of New York
Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Company
Bank of New York
Bank One Ohio Trust Company
Bankers Trust Company
Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co.
Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A.
Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co.
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Mellon Bank, N.A.
Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith
Morgan Guaranty Trust Co.
Northern Trust Co.
Smith Barney, Inc.

"What do you think the chances are that you're ever going to hear a single story that the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel doesn't approve?

"And which other media sources are owned by the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel established in 1913-1914?? All of them???

"The bureaucratic objective is this: If you cannot suppress the news or control it, then for heaven's sake convert it into a meaningless mass of gobbledegook." (Roger Tarterian, Editor, United Press
International, March, 8, 1967)

""You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God,

an American journalist - But seeing what the man will do, unbribed, there's no
occasion to." (Humbert Wolfe)

""This is, in theory still a free country, but

our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally, as great truths." (Simon Heffer, Daily Mail, June 7th, 2000)

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016By Brett Arends, MarketWatch

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.
For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.
The Obama deficit tour:
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore critiques the president's speeches attacking Republican budget plans.
And it’s a lot closer than you may think.
According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.
Put that in your calendar.
It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.
According to the IMF forecast, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.
Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.
But they’re miscounting. They’re only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.
That’s a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China’s exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets. ... Read More

An American Family Portrait.

Awe, now isn't that the cutest Darwinian family portrait. So tell the young one to go out and play with his little friends, Geithner and Bernanke and steal some more bananas.

Oh, and watch out, you know those little guys like to piss on others guys ... and throw their shit around. Pretty much what they are doing today in everyone else's backyards.

Just keep this in mind the next time this chimp promises to take care of you:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” Pres. Gerald Ford

Takashi Uesugi: The Interview

http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/feature/2776/Takashi-Uesugi-The-Interview

Time Out meets the journalist who TEPCO love to hate

この記事を日本語で読む

Posted: Fri Apr 01 2011

In the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese media stayed remarkably calm. While overseas news outlets fretted about nuclear meltdown and terrified expats stranded in a 'City of Ghosts', their Japanese counterparts generally hewed closer to the official line: stay calm, go about your business as usual. And, yes, you can still drink the tap water.

But that was only part of the picture. While the mainstream media presented a reasonably united front, a group of freelance and internet journalists were openly dissatisfied with the explanations being given at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s seemingly endless stream of press conferences. Why wasn't the company mentioning levels of plutonium around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power plant? What had happened to TEPCO's president, Masataka Shimizu – last seen on March 13?

One of the most influential members of this group of dissenters is Takashi Uesugi, a former New York Times journalist and, in an earlier incarnation, aide to Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Kunio Hatoyama. The author of books including The Collapse of Journalism, Uesugi is a vociferous critic of Japan's 'Kisha Club' system – a network of exclusive press clubs that, he says, nurtures excessively close relationships between reporters and the organisations they are supposed to cover.

Gadfly to some, hero to others, Uesugi is a much-sought commentator. He makes weekly appearances on Tokyo FM and Asahi Newstar, and is a regular contributor to the Diamond Weekly business website, along with various weekly tabloids. However, he's most prolific on his own website and via Twitter, where he commands a following of 177,000 and counting. One place place he won't be appearing any more is TBS Radio, who booted Uesugi from his regular weekly guest slot this month (more on that later).

Time Out caught up with Uesugi last Monday, during a brief lull between press conferences at the TEPCO head office in Shimbashi. We'd gone expecting to have a nice chat about tweets and microsieverts, but smalltalk apparently wasn't an option. What followed was a eye-opening, if occasionally paranoid tirade against TEPCO, the government and the mass media, delivered in rapid-fire Japanese.

Obviously a lot has happened over the past couple of weeks, but what are the main things you've learned?

Basically, something that I knew from the beginning, but has become more blatant yesterday and today [March 27-28], is this terrible situation where the government and TEPCO are suppressing information. To be more specific, I thought it was strange that there was nothing written about plutonium when the data about reactor 3 was given out at the TEPCO press conference on the 27th, so I asked them if it was true that no plutonium had been detected in reactor 3, and for how long it had not been detected. TEPCO answered: 'Plutonium hasn’t been detected.' To confirm what they were saying I asked if perhaps it wasn't that none had been detected, but that they hadn't actually taken any measurements. They were alarmed, and it turned out that it wasn't even that they hadn't taken any measurements, but that they didn't have the instruments to do so in the first place.

That's one example. Another is the question of where exactly has the TEPCO company president gone? There was a rumour doing the rounds a while ago that he had been hospitalised, when actually he had been away because of fatigue. This time they're using the pretence of hospitalisation for the same situation. All of it's lies. It's emblematic, isn’t it? [Note: TEPCO president Masataka Shimizu was hospitalised on March 29, and subsequently resigned.]

Two weeks ago I told someone in the government that TEPCO was lying. I called a friend from back when I was a governmental aide directly on their mobile phone and said that the government was being deceived, but I didn't get any response at all. On top of that, even though I was able to attend the Chief Cabinet Secretary’s press conferences before the earthquake, after the quake, all the freelance journalists, foreign media and Internet reporters were kicked out. So I took on the role of representative for those media outlets, and tried to negotiate by constantly badgering the official residence – like a stalker – saying, ‘If you don’t let in the foreign media too, there won’t be any way for information to be conveyed abroad, will there?’

Ever since the [nuclear] trouble started, I’ve been saying again and again via the different media and radio programs that I appear on that TEPCO are concealing things about the accident, that they're lying, and that the government is being fooled. I’ve been saying that TEPCO is a client of the media and the press clubs, being one of their biggest advertisers – so the press won’t be able to say certain things, and will be holding back, won't they? But then, at the end of one of the programs, the producer came to me and asked me to stop doing the show at the end of the month, and I was dropped. When I criticized TEPCO on a different program, they also wanted to get rid of me. But the producer of that particular program is a strong person, and actually went ahead and did it without a sponsor.

TEPCO are such an important advertiser that the television and newspapers are completely silent. Even now, they're running TEPCO commercials on the television, aren’t they? This week, there are also full-page advertisements in the newspaper. Despite the fact that they've caused such a scandal, TEPCO are still putting ads in the newspaper. If they have such enormous sums of money, they should send it to the areas hit by the disaster.

It's like the false announcements made by the Imperial General Headquarters 70 years ago [during World War II] are happening all over again. I’m shocked that something I've seen in history textbooks, and had thought was completely implausible, is happening right before my eyes. I never thought that I'd become a party to anything like this. [Laughs]

Have you been following reports in the foreign media, then?

Yes, all the time.

Would you say that they've been overdoing it?

No, I wouldn’t, because the foreign media was just reporting what was possible. I think the correct way to report about the events at the nuclear power plant is to assume the worst case and write about it, and then also add what the current situation is in relation to that. Newspapers and television shouldn't say, 'Don't worry, it's safe. You don't need to run away,' like Japan's have. There's absolutely no problem with the way the foreign media has covered this news. It's not fanning people's fears if we report by saying it's possible for things to reach such and such a point, but at the moment the situation is like this, so you don't need to worry. There's also nothing wrong with the foreign media referring to the examples of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. After clarifying the source, I have also talked about those kinds of things in my email newsletter and in my regular reports for websites, as well as on radio shows and satellite TV programs where I'm a regular guest. Except recently, the more I talk about those topics, the more complaints I get after the program has finished – in incredible numbers. People say things like, 'Don't lie!' or 'It's safe!' But they've got no grounds to say that. Japanese people want to believe that it's safe, don't they? They just don't want to look at how things really are. It's like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.

We've read a lot of opinions from scientists recently, and the majority of them seem to fall in line with what the government's saying: that this isn't another Chernobyl, and Tokyo isn't at risk from radiation…

That’s because at the moment, any scientists who say that the current situation is dangerous are being removed from the mass media. Ultimately, the most dangerous situation is one where the only information available is what suits the government and TEPCO. From the outset, the mass media haven’t been using the people who are reporting that the worst possible outcome could happen. And yet the evacuation area was changed from 2km to 3km, and then to 10km, and to 20km, and finally to 30km. America has specified a 50 mile (80km) evacuation zone, but Japanese people still say that things are OK as they are...

Then the next week I said [to Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano], ‘You were wrong, weren’t you? Radioactive material has been found in the area outside the 30km line, and even though you said radioactive material would never reach Tokyo, it has, hasn’t it? The government is responsible for the consequences of what it says so you should make a proper apology. Correct your mistakes.’ He replied, ‘That is not the case.’ When I said that, far from being within the 30km radius, radioactive material was found 40km away, and that he should correct the mistake, he told me to ‘Submit that properly in writing.’ I asked a question in the middle of a press conference, and he actually told me to put it on paper. [Laughs] At that point I just couldn’t believe it any more. It’s the first time that has ever happened to me – to be asked to submit a question in writing in the middle of actually asking it. Basically, it’s hopeless, isn’t it? Something in the minds of the government has burst.

When The New Yorker interviewed you recently, you talked about how the Japanese public were 'brainwashed' by the media. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

From a young age Japanese people become convinced that newspapers and the television are correct, and that magazines and the Internet are full of lies. But the information in the newspapers and on the television is just what the government is giving out through the press clubs. Even if it's different from the information and data that reporters have gathered themselves, they just accept what the government announces. So the people here who think that the newspapers and television are right always believe the information given to them, and it’s why the same kind of brainwashing is happening now too. But one thing that's a little different from how things have been up until now is that people, mostly the younger generation, are starting to realise what's going on, and using the Internet to say, ‘Hang on, there’s something that’s not right, isn’t there?’ Even my Twitter timeline has been incredible since this morning, with messages like, ‘What the newspapers and television are saying is not the truth!’ It’s just like Egypt and Tunisia. That’s where we can clearly see changes happening.

Interview by James Hadfield

Translated by Virginia Okno

Argument For A Strong Korea:

Strong Korea (CBG 11.02.27)

View more presentations from Timothy Elder

Insecure UN

GOP axes funds to secure the U.N. in NYC - Can we help them pack their bags? I hear the rent is better in Serbia.

America's Hope

As you can imagine, as the name of this blog implies, it is my view that regardless of the reckless actions, deep financial issues, staggeringly wishy washy Beta President and multitude of resentful enemies within and without created everyday, this nation can be saved through the intervention of God and the Holy Spirit.

America and those within who love themselves to excess, would do well to remember:

"if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14

Can America Be Saved?

Video: The End of America