DavidMcK

If Bernacke can bail out AIG he could probably bail out Time if he really wanted to. TARP came from Paulson/Bush, not Geithner/Obama.

Welcome Value Chaser, I would look forward to a brief review from you after you read Camus since I've never read him (or Satre) and am curious whether I would have to plow through it as though doing a chore, or whether I wqould be fascinated with those books. I've found some books that objectivist types aren't suppose to like but I do anyway...John Cheever, Dickens. I like this website because people are less concerned with orthodoxy than clarity.

I'm most thankful for being born an American, and I'm most grateful to those people who have learned something and are willing to share it through the books they write. Every time a writer condenses what they have learned into a book it enables readers like me to traverse a little bit on the learning curve...I'm thinking of Ayn Rand of course, but also N.B. and too many people to be mentioned. Thank God for good books.

After a while, he asked me what if the teacher who taught him this false history really didn't know the truth. I replied that if a teacher doesn't know something, he or she should not be teaching it. Michael That's a wonderful standard Michael, but if applied across the board in the U.S. today how many teachers would be left? Edit: Oops, I see greybird beat me to this thought!

I am assuming neither of your statements are true or false. I have no evidence as to whether they were guilty, in which case they would have been summarily executed in the country they were captured in and if they were innocent, then they would be released in the country of their origin, if they bitch about it, I return them from about 5,000 feet with an umbrella. They are not American citizens. Being caught in a war zone because you are a combatant or just plain unlucky is not a path to citizenship under either Bush or O'biwan. However, I am sure that you actually wanted to ask a non question begging question my dear questioner. Adam I don't know what a non question begging question is, but I wanted to know if you knew something about these two guys and if they were a real threat (they aren't btw; one has been cleared by a military panel), so I wanted to know if you had special information or just a touching faith in the judgments of the Bush administration about what is good for America (like taking over the banking system, Guantanamo, etc.).

Although I do agree with the sentiment on corporations compromising themselves, I'm curious as to whether or not they knew this was coming as a result...i.e., in the fine print? They mentioned a few corporations already having paid the government back in full, so they are off the chopping list. Anyone have details? ~ Shane Companies that have paid back TARP money: JPMorgan Chase - Borrowed $25 billion Morgan Stanley - Borrowed $10 billion American Express - Borrowed $3.4 billion Capital One - Borrowed $3.6 Billion Goldman Sachs - Borrowed $10 billion US Bancorp - Borrowed $6.6 billion Bank of New York Mellon Corp - Borrowed $3 billion State Street Corp - Borrowed $3 billion BBT Companies that still owe TARP money: Citigroup - $50 billion Bank of America - $45 billion AIG - $40 billion Wells Fargo - $25 billion General Motors - $13.4 billion PNC Financial - $7.6 billion GMAC Financial Services - $5 billion Chrystler - $4 billion Regions Financial - $3.5 billion Discover Financial - $1.2 billion The above is from Web answers, an answer provided by Hadamard. Most of the companies that paid the money back didn't need it in the first place, but were forced because the Axis powers (Paulson, Bernanke and the executive branch (Obama/Bush) thought that some taking the money and others not showed off the weakness of the banking/financial system. As soon as some companies saw what was involved in taking gov't money they paid it back.

You are assuming the Bush administration got it right with each person they put in Guatanomo? Do you have evidence that these two guys are real threats rather than imagined or assumed threats?

The science of Philosophy has as its subject matter the relation of the mind to reality, its method is epistemology in general and logic in particular; since everyone has the same reality as their frame of reference and the same method they should (if everyone was equally objective and honest) come to the same conclusion. Like Aristotle she thought every branch of learning had its own axioms, for Philosophy there are 3: Identity, Existence and Consciousness ("There is an existent I am conscious of which I must identify).

I'm still worried about all the dead kittens.

Me! How about something different than an essay contest, like a really hard crossword puzzle, with Objecivist type questions and answers?

Anyone been to any meetings or functions with primarily Objectivist oriented people in the NYC area? My work schedule is kind of odd, but I was thinking of maybe a Starbuck's meeting place or something like that. I tried to stick 'Objectivist meeting NYC' in my browser but didn't seem to get much that interested me..any ideas?

What about Wil E. Coyote? I think he has a right to at least one roadrunner after trying so hard. Maybe not the one he usually chased but another, stupid ugly one.

"Additionally, God created morality." This is a statement that places one on the horns of a well known dilemma: If god creates morality arbitrarily then anything could be good or bad, e.g. holocausts (which must not be too bad since 'God' allows them to happen); if not...if God creates morality according to an objective standard God isn't necessary.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by the Christian Socialist Bellamy; it shows the altruistic/collectivist/faith axis more than anything else, especially after the words 'under God' were added.

You have extraordinary difficulty comprehending what you read, don't you? I recommend you work on that problem before attempting to participate in a forum like this one. JR You recommendation is rejected as unnecessary.

Singing is really a matter of great importance to you, isn't it, Michael? If the kids are taught to believe crooks and nonentities like Nixon and Reagan are great men who are "leading" us to a better tomorrow through the miracle of government, that's just fine and dandy. On the other hand, if they're taught to literally sing the praises of a fatuous fraud like Obama, this is beyond the pale. Have I properly understood you? JR Of course you haven't properly understood what he is saying, or you being deliberately obtuse? He is arguing that something has changed, and asking if there were songs about JFK, Reagan, et. al, or if his sense that this is something new is valid. He isn't saying that it would be all right if there were also songs about the other asshole Presidents.

I was in 4th grade when JFK was shot, and I would distinctly remember being made to sing songs celebrating JFK. This wasn't done back then.

You could also suppose that this man wanted to commit suicide but wanted his family to collect the insurance: He could have scrawled (not 'carved' as someone else stated) the word 'Fed' to his chest to divert suspicion away from an apparent suicide.

Just because they are subjectively created doesn't mean they aren't objective. It would be strange if morality was created as a kind of intellectual exercise or a chess game without being heavily invested in the outcome of the philosophical debate. There is such a thing as subjective/objective...a morality that was generated internally based on a concept of the requirements of maintaining and enhancing life. Just because human beings are complicated enough to have different codes of values doesn't annihilate the concept of a standard that is good for a human being qua human being. All your so called philosophizing consists of is saying no every time suggest that A is A , that concepts have meaning, that there are objective standards of values, that there is a superior political system; i.e. every time someone smacks of having a philosophy you just deny. You haven't offered a theory of concepts, of morality or anything else as an alternative to what we are discussing here.

The choice of health, life and well-being vs. illness, death and ill-being is a personal preference? Ridiculous, you just say the same thing over and over without trying to understand that Ayn Rand has discovered the basis for an objective standard of ethics.

The difference between objective and subjective could be made by an analogy with diet: Having a subjective taste for or an aversion against vegetables might help you decide how to get a sufficient supply of vitamin A in your diet, but the need for vitamin A is objective, it transcends personal preferences and can be demonstrated that everyone shares this need. If the need is frustrated then there will be a deleterious effect on your health. No one would claim that being healthy is a personal preference to being painfully ill. (Good sources of vitamin A are: mango, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, tomato juice, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, beef liver). So it is with moral values, some are personal preferences (my choice for a wife e.g.) and some can be demonstrated to have deleterious effects on your overall well being (not being in love e.g.).

Martin, very concise summing up of everything that the Bush administration did. The only thing I would add is that they delegated the capture of Taliban/bin Laden to the Northern Alliance (who weren't particularly interested in capturing them), and allowed the Al Qaeda to escape into a 95% Moslem country. If you watched a recent re-run of a 60 minutes program, the CIA guy in charge of capturing bin Laden was mystified when he was told not to cut them off at the pass. Not only that but many of the same members of the Bush team were with Reagan, and allowed Pakistan to acquire nukes, which fit their anti-soviet agenda (and they trained our future enemies in Afghanistan also). The Reagan/Bush/Bush administrations were like a tsunami whose effects keep rolling over (and we ain't through yet).

"Racism claims that the content of a man's mind...is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas--or of inherited knowledge--which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men." Ayn Rand I would say that claiming 'that's why god gave them camels' fits into this statement very well.

Allah willed the commentator and galtgulch to be racist? Or allah willed the aircraft incident?