This blog has evolved from a compilation of my comments in continuing discourses elsewhere
- if you are serious about philosophy and its current affect on you and society at large, check it out.
filosofi@shea.org
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Do you support "Occupy Wall Street"?
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.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
What is atheism?
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?”
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Did Treasury Just Strategically (Intentionally) Default?
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 ...
"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)
Monday, April 25, 2011
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
Monday, April 18, 2011
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
And perhaps more importantly: How do they live - with each other?
不知彼,不知己,每戰必殆 (孫子)
(If you don't know yourself and if you don't know your enemy,
then you are in for a world of hurt!)
γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Δελφοί)
Hell is so big and dark and heaven is so small." HJM
and a little more manifest destiny over there..."
How About a Bill of Responsibilities Rather Than A Bill of Rights