GFDuke
06-07-2012, 01:53 PM
Subject: DEBT CEILING
* Democrats don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* Republicans don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* Liberals don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* NO ONE understands THE DEBT CEILING!
SO - Allow me to explain...
Let's say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood.
Your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do?
1. Raise the ceilings?
2. Or pump out the shit?
Your choice is coming in November. Don't miss the opportunity.
Got that answer yet?
J
MaadDaawg
06-07-2012, 04:46 PM
ummm... it's us voters that keep piling it full of shit dudes :P
Vote Nobama, and start the cleansing process in Nov :laughing:
Kal-EL
06-07-2012, 05:51 PM
Most of us are in the habit of voting once every few years and expecting our elected officials to take care of us. In this way we have ‘opted out’ of the process and while we are opted out abuse creeps in. It is clear that just voting once every few years is not working.
In a very real sense you and I are responsible for everything that is wrong with our system and our planet. When we consume our resources recklessly it is you and I that cause the pollution and the waste and destruction of our planet. Our consumer demand is the power that drives corporations to abuse other nations, stealing their resources to sell them to us, sending our waste to their countries for disposal, encouraging child labor and causing war.
The profits abusive companies make from the money we give them ‘empowers’ them. With the profits from ‘our’ money they have weakened ‘our’ democracy. They have the power to put ‘their men’ in a position to regulate them.
Our governments, in a very real sense, are now run by multinational businessmen. The businessmen now own all of the mainstream media so our information is tainted. This has all happened while we were all opted out.
Yes, each and every one of us shares the blame. However, because it is our behavior that has caused this mess, our behavior can fix it.
The most important message of this film is about you and I taking responsibility, learning the facts about what is happening in our world and then acting accordingly. Your consumer choices are the most easily available and powerful way for you to get active. Do not underestimate the power you have right in your hands. No company can continue a practice or a product that you will not buy! This is vitally important information and if you can understand this we are on our way to an incredible new future. But keep in mind, spending less is the primary objective. Having more money does not give you more power if the objective is to spend less.
We have to find alternative sources for news and information that can give us a clearer picture of our world. You will soon find many links on these pages. The terms ‘left and right wing’ are used to blind and divide us. We have to stop using divisive terms and find ways to unify around goals that can sustain us.
Listen to all of the information you can before you make a decision. Examine the things ‘you’ think and see if they can really move us all forward together and take full responsibility for the outcome of your actions.
Our bad consumer choices are killing everything that is good. Our wise consumer choices can reshape our system. Buying from socially responsible companies will empower those companies who are trying to act responsibly.
The minute you change your behavior everything else changes. Our consumer behavior is monitored very closely. As soon as you change the way you consume it will be noticed immediately. Once you have started taking responsibility, getting more than one side of a story instead of just listening to the mainstream media, it becomes very difficult to fool you. Everything will change.
THE REVOLUTION! (or Evolution) So many people write into the website asking what they can do now, today, to make a difference. They want a solution, something they can get active with this instant. I understand the frustration that drives that passion and it is wonderful how many people are waking up to the idea that there really is something wrong.
But, I also sense that they, like me when I was a little younger, want a revolution in the old sense of the term: demonstrations in the streets, heroic deeds that their children would sing songs about in years to come, etc. While it sounds like everyone could work out their frustrations, the problem is, that approach doesn’t work, and in fact it has never worked, ever.
Generally what happens is the powers that be send in the troops, round up and shoot the leaders and then slacken the chain a little to pacify the crowd and then everything goes on pretty much the way it was. Look at the history books. Change happens very slowly and painfully via this route and generally with much bloodshed. The ‘system’ knows all too well how to respond to protests, violent or peaceful. It is time we realized that any kind of protest has to be backed up by strategic action. It is time we realized that promoting the positive is much more effective than protesting the negative.
We also need the rich and powerful to wake up to the startling catastrophe that is happening to our planet and our societies. We do not need hate speech or the lunatic fringes of any persuasion causing further division. We need thoughtful creative solutions and open constructive hearts and minds. We are all in this together and the sooner we all realize that then the easier it will be to make change.
So, do you want a bloody revolution or do you want something that works? Something that brings long lasting sustainable change, something that can bring peace and justice to us all, permanently?
Sustainable change can only happen when ‘each individual’ changes their behavior. It is the only way. In this silent revolution there are no leaders that can be shot or sell out the movement and no system can wage war on the private law abiding behavior of every citizen.
If you decide to purchase from a sustainable manufacturer you cannot be arrested. If you decide to ride a bicycle instead of driving the car to work you are free to do so. If you expand your knowledge by seeking out alternative news sources no one notices. But what does happen is that you become an engaged responsible individual and when our society is made up of engaged responsible individuals everything changes.
Engaged responsible individuals do not just believe what they are told ‘by anyone’. They seek out information from every source and base their opinions and decisions on that. They do not follow the crowd like sheep, they examine their own thoughts and ideas very closely and they take full responsibility for their actions. No ‘system’ can abuse a nation of such people.
Below are some very simple guidelines placed here as examples, but you must think these things through for yourself and find your own ways. Though they may seem quite simplistic, the cumulative effects of just these simple actions will have a massive and far reaching effect on our society and our planet.
If you start acting on them today the world will have changed by tomorrow. If we all start making these changes then we are headed toward an incredible future, but each of us must start individually, that is what it takes.
We will add to and update these pages regularly and we always welcome your questions or suggestions. There are links (coming) to some great resources at the bottom of this page but keep in mind as long as you can read and you have Google you can always find out anything you need.
STOP BUYING STUFF! You already have enough stuff. The advertising man will try and tempt you to buy more, that is his job and he is very good at it. They use the very latest psychology and they know exactly which of our buttons to press to make us buy an idea or a product. Stop it, do not listen. The manufacturing involved in making ‘stuff’ causes ‘all’ of the pollution on our planet. If you buy stuff you don’t need then you are the cause of ‘all’ of the pollution. Do not point the finger at companies who pollute if you are buying their stuff. Stuff only makes you happy for a short period of time and then you want more stuff.
Only buy things you really need and plan on making the things you buy last a long time. When you do make purchases only buy from companies that do business in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Patagonia, for example do their very best to make their clothes without doing damage to the planet. It is easy to find good companies and when you buy from them you are supporting good practices. Bad companies will have to change to meet the new demand, they will have no choice.
STOP USING CHEMICALS There are so many products that are safe for the environment. Some cleaning jobs will require a little scrubbing. Do it. They have found trace elements of bleach at the top of Mount Everest. Fish from the sea are contaminated with it. Everything you flush away comes back to haunt you. You can change our world today just by not flushing poison down the toilet. How simple is that. We are working on an e-book to help you find better products but you can Google to find green products, it is easy.
THE MEDIA (getting information) Question: Do you have an opinion about a woman’s right to choose? Do you have an opinion about gay rights to marry? The chances are that you do have an opinion about these issues, because the media, left and right wing media, have brought these issues to your attention. Now, one more question: Do you have an opinion about multinational arms companies laundering money through Columbia? No? Not many people have an opinion about this issue because the media, left and right wing media, have not brought it up. This is how the media frames the debate.
They tell us what to think about the issues they bring up. If you are honest you will agree that you get most of your information from the media. You use this information to form your opinions. Too often ‘our’ opinions really came from ’someone else.’ So, you must find alternative sources for your information. There are some very important things going on in the world and so much of what we think of as left and right wing media isn’t bringing everything you need to know to your attention. One last point. The media is not a public service. The media is almost all owned by massive international corporations. There is no such thing as a liberal media corporation. They are business conglomerates that have agendas and vested interests. They are not legally bound to give you unbiased information. There are channels that seem to spout liberal ideas; however this is about pandering to a market. These ‘liberal’ channels too fail to report important issues that the establishment would prefer you did not think about. They failed to properly question the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, because they are a part of the same companies that profited from these wars. This is all public record and you will find an example below on this page. That said, you must stop thinking in terms of left and right wing politics. These terms are used to divide us. What we need is original thinking that can unify us as we move forward.
POLITICS Every politician takes money from big companies to get elected. In fact, most politicians are big business. That means they have an inherent ‘conflict of interests’. They will not legislate against a bad company that pollutes, for example, if they have taken their money to get elected and they will not legislate against a company that they sit on the board of. They will, however, award contracts to companies that they have an interest in. Dick Cheney, for example awarded ‘no bid’ contracts to Haliburton, a company he owned stock in at the same time as he was advocating for a war in Iraq that would generate billions of dollars in profits for Haliburton! Strangely, as politics have become something that people take strong sides in, like sports teams, good people who call themselves ‘Republican’ will try to defend Dick Cheney. This is how the foolish idea of left and right wing and these nonsense divisions blind us. This situation becomes an argument between the left and the right instead of what is wrong. Why? Because they are all doing it.
Whatever your politics you cannot wait for the government to fix things for you. We will get politicians that serve the people’s interests when the people take responsibility and then act. Once you start taking responsibility, finding out the facts and then acting accordingly, once you are a properly engaged member of our society, it will be much more difficult for any politician to pull the wool over your eyes or make false promises.
Watch what they do-not what they say. Barack Obama was elected on the ideas of hope and change. He says some really great sounding things and plenty of people believe he means to do them. But don’t listen to what he says, look at what he does. Barack Obama appointed Tom Vilsac, a Monsanto mouthpiece, as head of Agriculture. Monsanto have possibly the worst record for pollution and crimes against the environment. He appointed Timothy Guithner, former head of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel that holds the people of the USA hostage though its system of debt, to head up the Treasury Department. He appointed Jeff Immelt, former head of GE, an arms manufacturer and one of the biggest corporations in the world to lead the ‘Economic Recovery Commission’. In short, Barack Obama panders to big business interests in exactly the way George Bush and every other President before him has done. Politicians are big business, all of them. Once you start paying attention then you might like to lend your support to reform groups who seek to take big business donations out of election campaigns. You will start asking awkward questions of your representatives and demand answers under threat of withdrawing your support.
The media treats the political debates in much the same way as they do sports highlights. It has become a meaningless game that continues to take the public eye off the ball. The mainstream media rely on advertising revenue. While they are selling us twisted role models, war and plastic gadgets, making money along the way, they are helping to maintain the interests of big business by failing to report their sins. The media tells us democracy is working and that using your vote is a sacred right while presenting us with interchangeable politicians who have never changed anything for the public good, ever. Only the people have ever created change and we have to maintain our involvement.
FOOD Often this conversation begins with a discussion about Organic foods, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of this vitally important subject.
This is the stuff we put into our bodies, it is where we spend most of our money, and it drives the chemical and agricultural industries that have a massive effect not only on our environment, but our economies and our politics.
Poisonous colorings and preservatives have long been cause for discussion and now newly developed genetically modified products are giving cause for alarm. GMOs are not only a subject of serious environmental concern; we do not know the effects of these products in our environment. GMOs are of great political concern as patent holders force local and third world farmers, as a condition of IMF loans, to accept their products and are bringing massive law suits for patent infringements that are driving small family owned farmers out of business in order to corner the markets.
Food is a serious issue. The first concern should be for health. The food we eat has less and less actual ‘food’, sustenance, vitamins, protein etc., and more and more chemicals used both in the food and its manufacture. This is more than alarming in health and environmental terms. The prices of common foods are kept artificially low because of these practices and organic foods naturally seem more expensive by comparison. However, it is important to note that one organic banana, for example, has more actual ‘food’ in it than a Big Mac Meal and costs a fraction of the price.
We have to start paying close attention to what we eat, reading labels and making healthier choices, but this is a very important point: manufacturers monitor your purchases meticulously. They spend billions of dollars studying consumer behavior. When we change our buying habits they will notice that trend in the market instantly and they will follow our demand. They have no choice. If you stop buying products that have chemicals in them they will have no choice but to take them out. This is where we spend most of our money. If we change the way we spend that money the effect will be massive. There are two great food documentaries, FOOD INC and FORKS OVER KNIVES you have to see them.
ENDING THE WARS I am going to give you a simple example. General Electric is an arms manufacturer. They make weapons for war. They make light bulbs too! They have their hands in so many things. They also own NBC news channel. But let’s stay with weapons for a minute.
If you are a weapons manufacturer you make billions, BILLIONS, of dollars whenever there is a war. In fact if there is no war you make no money. So, what we have here is a company that is in a position to support a war, Iraq or Afghanistan for example, on its news channel and then make BILLIONS of dollars if that war happens.
Let’s not get into a discussion about the morality of this for a moment, or even question whether any war can be justified, let’s just keep our eye on the ball. Should any company who makes weapons be in a position to sway public opinion in a way that benefits their bottom line? There is an obvious conflict of interests here and a dangerous one and this kind of conflict exists throughout most of our industries, politics and media.
If you take a look at history you will find that ALL WARS are fought because one country wants the resources that another country has. Of course the reasons given are always about spreading democracy or defeating a terrible cruel regime, but you will notice that kind of war seldom happens in places that have no valuable assets, like oil. You might also notice that there are terrible regimes, with dictators that could shame Adolf Hitler, that are actively supported by our politicians and media, though their sins go unreported in the mainstream media. You have to look elsewhere to get this kind of information.
Regardless, it is very important that YOU UNDERSTAND THE PART YOU PLAY IN CAUSING WARS. When you buy stuff, oil for example, you are often buying the stuff that was taken from another country so it could be sold to YOU.
YOUR CONSUMER DEMAND DRIVES WAR! AND CAUSES POLLUTION! CAN YOU SEE THE RESPONSIBILITY YOU HAVE? Yes, there are many systemic issues and mechanisms that work against us and we can, if we wish, point the finger at arms dealers but unless we all start to recognize the part WE play than nothing will change.
On a brighter note, you probably won’t find any companies that do business in socially responsible ways that are connected to the arms industry. If you decide to buy your light bulbs from a company that is socially responsible, instead of General Electric, you are turning the tide just by making a conscious choice.
Your active engagement, learning the facts and then acting accordingly, will end the wars. Once you understand that the information the news media gives you has to be vetted thoroughly, and that there are conflicts of interest that you have to be aware of, then you will be wiser. Once you start to understand why wars happen, you will not, nor will you allow anyone you know, to join the armed forces or work for an arms dealer.
If you support the troops-bring them home.
A NOTE ON BOYCOTTS AND THE ECONOMY To boycott a company is to decide not to buy their stuff because you don’t like their practices. This is not something that should be taken lightly and you should always be fully aware of all of the facts before you engage this tactic.
So many companies deserve it, but even bad companies provide much needed jobs. We should concentrate as much as we can on buying from companies who do business in a socially and environmentally responsible way. In this way we will grow those good companies, promoting the positive instead of protesting the negative and creating a transition period while demand creates change.
If there are any products you can’t get from a good company the chances are you don’t really need that product. And for those products you have to buy, like gasoline, you have to drastically reduce your use of them. Again, you can get plenty of advice and opinions if you click around. The point is to get engaged and start seriously changing our habits.
The overall object is to consume far less. Yes, this will affect our consumer/capitalist economy. We have to find ways to change our monetary system and this is something we all have to explore together. I think we will look back in years to come and wonder how we ever set up such a brutal system. There are many new paths we can take. The path we are currently on defeats the public good in so many ways and is killing our environment. We need to change what we can, now.
FROM PETE MCGRAIN, writer/director of ETHOS :keeporder:
ny_driver
06-07-2012, 08:11 PM
Subject: DEBT CEILING
* Democrats don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* Republicans don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* Liberals don't understand THE DEBT CEILING;
* NO ONE understands THE DEBT CEILING!
SO - Allow me to explain...
Let's say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood.
Your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do?
1. Raise the ceilings?
2. Or pump out the shit?
Your choice is coming in November. Don't miss the opportunity.
Got that answer yet?
J
I like your analogy. Haven't read the 12 page response from Kal the cop yet. :Dizzy:
GFDuke
06-08-2012, 01:05 AM
STOP BUYING STUFF! You already have enough stuff. The advertising man will try and tempt you to buy more, that is his job and he is very good at it. They use the very latest psychology and they know exactly which of our buttons to press to make us buy an idea or a product. Stop it, do not listen. The manufacturing involved in making ‘stuff’ causes ‘all’ of the pollution on our planet. If you buy stuff you don’t need then you are the cause of ‘all’ of the pollution. Do not point the finger at companies who pollute if you are buying their stuff. Stuff only makes you happy for a short period of time and then you want more stuff.
Sounds familiar.
Splave
06-08-2012, 07:40 AM
Guys how about some benching results instead? Leave the doomsday shit to every other news outlet....OCing should be a happy place. Thanks
ny_driver
06-08-2012, 05:26 PM
I like stuff!
And here ya go Splave........my most recent happy submission using the FX-60 I got from Jerry. I benched it 6 months ago and I've been too busy or forgetful to submit. :blush:
#4 - http://hwbot.org/submission/2288707_
Don't think it'll go any higher, but I've yet to run any 2D benches besides CPU frequency. :taunt:
#1 FX-60 in the USA/North America!!!
Thanks again Jerry!