Agenda from the left?

Some times I wander, can this be the agenda, or is this just a reaction to the many fast moving changes in our culture. Many of the changes do seem akin to chucking out the baby with the bath water.
CULTURAL MARXISM FOR DUMMIES

by James Jaeger

http://www.jaegerresearchinstitute.org/articles/dummies.htm

When the Lenin Marxists could NOT get the workers of the world to unite, Marxism fell apart until a spinner group formed. That spinner group was initiated by Antonio Gramsci and his book, The Prison Notebooks.

In this book, Gramsci outlined the plan for destroying the capitalist society and bringing in first socialism, and later the communism Lenin dreamed of. Gramsci's "genius" was that he realized the reason the workers of the world wouldn't unite: they were held together by their respective CULTURES more firmly than their desire to unite as WORKERS. Thus Gramsci realized that, in order to destroy the capitalist society, it had to first be penetrated through its culture and then that culture corrupted and destroyed from within. This he called "the long march through the institutions." In the March, various social-engineering technologies were developed and used by Gramsci and his colleagues, later known as the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School developed the technologies known as "critical theory," "cultural pessimism" and "androgyny." "Critical theory" is a technology whereby "experts" question every single element and premise of a culture possible. But the goal of such inquiry is not deeper understanding, it's to throw unsubstantiated disrepute upon the subject culture.

Here's an example of "critical theory" in every-day use in the cultural Marxist-infested mainstream media.

What the media does is pose questions. You see this ALL the time. For instance, let's say I'm a Marxist executive at an MSNBC-type network and I want to destroy REDquist's reputation. I simply put out a "news" story with the following headline: IS REDQUIST A CLOSET GAY? Or IS REDQUIST AN ANTI-SEMITE? Note, I am NOT claiming REDquist is a gay or anti, I am simply asking an "innocent" question. Everyone can question, no? What's wrong with a few "innocent" questions: all of SCIENCE and HUMAN CIVILIZATION is built upon QUESTIONS, no? So I ask the simple "innocent" question BUT it puts a CRITICAL IDEA in everyone's mind. Even so, since there is no law against asking questions, I, as the executive at an MSNBC, doesn't get sued for slander or libel BUT even still REDquist's reputation is compromised. Now, every time his name comes up (in the media or anywhere) he's associated with that CRITICAL question implying the THEORY that he's gay or anti-Semitic. That's why it's called CRITICAL THEORY social-engineering technology: you wantonly launch endless THEORIES that are of a highly CRITICAL nature regardless of the damage they do to society. Welcome to the mainstream media in its daily activity.

And so implanted into our "politically correct," socially-engineered society are these technologies, someone at the MIND-X (the source of this post-inspired essay) used this very technology on REDquist earlier by asking an "innocent" question implying he is gay. THIS simple act thus deflected the entire conversation OFF of REDquist's sound and reasonable argument and ON TO a frivolous and pointless diatribe. If you go to the FIRM site (at (www.FilmReform.org) and look through the hundreds of hours of argument there, you will see this happening all the time, engineered by the Hollywood apologists.

But as a CNN- or FOX-type executive -- or a Hollywood movie mogul -- I could just as easily have asked the question: ARE MOTHERS AND FATHERS REALLY NECESSARY? Or the question, IS THE NUCLEAR FAMILY ARCHAIC? Or the question, IS GOD DEAD? -- an actual critical theory question posed on the very cover of the Marxist-inclined magazine, TIME, in the 1960s. See CULTURAL MARXISM -- The Corruption of America at www.CulturalMarxism.org

So, the prime social-engineering technology developed by the Frankfurt School, right on the campus of Columbia University in Marxist-leaning New York City -- CRITICAL THEORY -- is diabolical "genius."

So, what the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School did was publish endless books throughout the 1960s and 1970s aimed at the impressionable, drugged-out BabyBoom Generation. And "critical theory" was not just used in books, it was used in ALL the cultural institutions: music, painting, photography, literature, TV shows, commercials, magazines, feature films, theater, rock concerts and even the clergy and institutions of higher learning. This is why the colleges are so liberal and why schools were able to be invaded by Engle v. Vitale which removed religious ethics from the school system.

But I mentioned there were other technologies than "critical theory," that of "cultural pessimism" and "androgyny." Due to time, I will skip over "cultural pessimism" and go to "androgyny." You can watch the film and it will go into "cultural pessimism" as well as the other technologies.

"Androgyny" is basically the social-engineering technology of turning men into women, and women into men.

Remember, the goal of the Marxist is to destroy the capitalist society and free-enterprise. The Middle Class is the engine of the capitalist society and the Family Unit is the basic building block of the Middle Class. Thus, if the Family Unit can be destroyed, this will undermine the Middle Class. The capitalist society would thus fall into the Marxist's laps "like ripened fruit," as one of the Frankfurt School leaders, Max Horkheimer, actually put it in writing. So, "androgyny" is the technology of essentially confusing the youth about sexuality and family values.

For instance, if ostensibly, no single model can be presented or agreed upon -- such as the male-female nuclear family -- the youth are easily confused because they have little or no idea what has been established and viable for thousands of years. This is because the "norm" is diluted and biased by models that were largely rejected by civilization thousands of years ago. Again, the youth has little or no idea of this, being young and not-yet-educated. The cultural Marxist thus prays on this by representing every type of "family unit" as being "normal," equal and/or workable -- when in fact this has not been found to be empirically true. Again, only one configuration has actual long-term viability and this is the model that has sustained and grown civilization for millennia. This model must be re-instated if we are to become a space-faring, Type II Kardashevian Civilization because we can not populate a new branch of Humanity using the one-world-centric, limited view of reality that the cultural Marxist offers. So the idea that a population going gay is nature's way of slowing down the birth rate on an over-populated planet is ridiculous. Nature never intended for the Human race to live on just one planet. Only people with limited intelligence think this way.

Thus, the REASON the toilet-humor-obsessed Hollywood studios -- and other "cultural" institutions -- push the "gay agenda" is NOT because they give a darn about gays or gay rights: all they really care about is USING innocent gays to toss confusion into the family structure, hence the very fabric of Middle Class society.

People of any sexual orientation should be able to go about their business without being used, harmed or preferred by either government OR movie studios.

But, for the Cultural Marxists, the exploitation of homosexuals dovetails perfectly with their agenda of destroying other people's sexual and traditional values through the social-engineering technology of "androgyny." I am sure gays and lesbians, left to their own peaceful existence, NEVER planned to do this or ever had anything to do with the attempt to weaken or destroy the basic one-man, one-woman nuclear family. But this is an unwanted consequence, for the youth are presented not with one model, but many conflicting models and the skyrocketed divorce rate has made society so complex -- well IT'S COMPLICATED -- as one of the studio pictures goes on to incestuously exploit even Hollywood's own demented creations.

Again, Hollywood seeks to make men into women and women into men, thus men, being "women" can "marry" men; and women, being "men" can "marry" women and all this is "normal." It's just "complicated." This is why every Hollywood movie is tacitly REQUIRED to have at least one (1) woman beating the hell out of a man (as this is supposed to be manly), and a man who wishes he had a vagina (as this is supposed to be all that defines a woman). It's probably even in the studio, writer-for-hire contracts as every major Hollywood motion picture is green-lit by the same 21 politically liberal, not-very-religious, Jewish males of European heritage who police the screenplays to make sure "androgyny" and "critical theory" are properly implanted in the writing. All the research on the demographics of the studio control group is done (and never challenged) and is at www.FilmReform.org/bginfo.htm and all the research on how the Frankfurt School is operating is embodied in the movie CULTURAL MARXISM at http://youtu.be/gIdBuK7_g3M

Either you get it or you don't . . . or you'll confront it or you won't.

05 August 2012

The Myths of the Great Depression

http://www.fee.org/articles/great-myths-of-the-great-depression/

GREAT MYTHS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Introduction

Many volumes have been written about the Great Depression of 1929-1941 and its impact on the lives of millions of Americans. Historians, economists and politicians have all combed the wreckage searching for the “black box” that will reveal the cause of the calamity. Sadly, all too many of them decide to abandon their search, finding it easier perhaps to circulate a host of false and harmful conclusions about the events of seven decades ago. Consequently, many people today continue to accept critiques of free-market capitalism that are unjustified and support government policies that are economically destructive.

>>Listen to Audio Book version of Great Myths of the Great Depression<<
>>Download PDF Version of Great Myths of the Great Depression.<<

How bad was the Great Depression? Over the four years from 1929 to 1933, production at the nation’s factories, mines and utilities fell by more than half. People’s real disposable incomes dropped 28 percent. Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their pre-crash height. The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933. One of every four workers was out of a job at the Depression’s nadir, and ugly rumors of revolt simmered for the first time since the Civil War.

“The terror of the Great Crash has been the failure to explain it,” writes economist Alan Reynolds. “People were left with the feeling that massive economic contractions could occur at any moment, without warning, without cause. That fear has been exploited ever since as the major justification for virtually unlimited federal intervention in economic affairs.”[1]

Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the 20th century’s greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America’s economic recovery.

A Modern Fairy Tale

According to this simplistic perspective, an important pillar of capitalism, the stock market, crashed and dragged America into depression. President Herbert Hoover, an advocate of “hands-off,” or laissez-faire, economic policy, refused to use the power of government and conditions worsened as a result. It was up to Hoover’s successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to ride in on the white horse of government intervention and steer the nation toward recovery. The apparent lesson to be drawn is that capitalism cannot be trusted; government needs to take an active role in the economy to save us from inevitable decline.

But those who propagate this version of history might just as well top off their remarks by saying, “And Goldilocks found her way out of the forest, Dorothy made it from Oz back to Kansas, and Little Red Riding Hood won the New York State Lottery.” The popular account of the Depression as outlined above belongs in a book of fairy tales and not in a serious discussion of economic history.

I have just put the below in as a teaser, and you can find it in context below the "jump break"

With good reason, critics often referred to the WPA as “We Piddle Around.” In Kentucky, WPA workers catalogued 350 different ways to cook spinach. The agency employed 6,000 “actors” though the nation’s actors’ union claimed only 4,500 members. Hundreds of WPA workers were used to collect campaign contributions for Democratic Party candidates. In Tennessee, WPA workers were fired if they refused to donate 2 percent of their wages to the incumbent governor. By 1941, only 59 percent of the WPA budget went to paying workers anything at all; the rest was sucked up in administration and overhead. The editors of The New Republic asked, “Has [Roosevelt] the moral stature to admit now that the WPA was a hasty and grandiose political gesture, that it is a wretched failure and should be abolished?”[32] The last of the WPA’s projects was not eliminated until July of 1943.

and again another titbit

Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Federal agents oversaw the ugly spectacle of perfectly good fields of cotton, wheat and corn being plowed under (the mules had to be convinced to trample the crops; they had been trained, of course, to walk between the rows). Healthy cattle, sheep and pigs were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace personally gave the order to slaughter 6 million baby pigs before they grew to full size. The administration also paid farmers for the first time for not working at all. Even if the AAA had helped farmers by curtailing supplies and raising prices, it could have done so only by hurting millions of others who had to pay those prices or make do with less to eat.

and another titbit

Tariffs on linseed oil, tungsten, and casein hammered the U.S. paint, steel and paper industries, respectively. More than 800 items used in automobile production were taxed by Smoot-Hawley. Most of the 60,000 people employed in U.S. plants making cheap clothing out of imported wool rags went home jobless after the tariff on wool rags rose by 140 percent.[10]

IF by Rudyard Kipling

IF.....

IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

A little bit pregnant Free Speech

The Cost of Purity

http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2012/09/the-cost-of-purity.html

Or, Less Information is a Good Thing in an Argument, Yes?

From Theodore Dalrymple’s latest collection of essays, Farewell Fear. On dictatorial urges:

It is difficult now to imagine a modern university intellectual saying something as simple and unequivocal as “I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it.” He would be more likely to think, if not actually to say out loud or in public, “I disagree with what you say and therefore rationalise to the death my right to suppress it.” In public, he would be more circumspect, presenting a suppression of freedom as an actual increase in freedom; that is to say of real freedom, not the kind the leaves everyone free to sleep under a bridge. But he would know perfectly well in his heart that what he was after was power: the greatest power of all, that to shape, mould and colour indelibly the thought of others, a power to which he believes that he has a right by virtue of his superior intellect, training and zeal for the public good. 

Actually, some of our budding intellectuals do declare their censorious urges out loud and in public, as if such urges confirmed their own unassailable righteousness: “We no longer need to listen,” say these mighty radical thinkers. Nor will they permit others to listen to ideas and arguments they, our betters, deem improper - on our behalf, of course. 

Recently, I was reading for review a book by a woman, a “resident scholar in the Women’s Studies Research Centre at Brandeis University,” about the problem of ‘ageism’ in America… What is so striking to me about the author’s proposals for dealing with the problem is that she does not recognise that they conflict with freedom, and pose problems for the rule of law... If I wish to employ someone but cannot hire whomever I choose, for whatever reason that I choose, whether good or bad, I am not free: I must hire according to criteria that are not my own. The author might certainly argue that her goals are more important than that of freedom, and that fairness in one sense or another, in one field or another, is now more precious than freedom; but it is at the very least necessary torecognise that one is subordinating freedom to some other desideratum, or one will end with tyranny by default, as each enthusiast or monomaniac seeks to curtail freedom in his pursuit of his favoured goal. 

Very rarely do we find someone who is a university intellectual saying that “X is indeed a desirable goal, even a highly desirable goal, but the cost to freedom of achieving it is simply too great.” It would be an excellent thing in the abstract if no-one ever drank to excess (much less violence, cirrhosis, etc.), but a system of surveillance in homes to ensure that no-one did so would be odiously tyrannous. The author of the book to which I have referred would like to have all ‘ageist’ language expunged from films, radio, books, daily speech and even minds, on the grounds that many people have felt humiliated by it, that it reinforces stereotypes, and that stereotypes lead to bad treatment of the old. Even if this were empirically true (which might be doubted), what is being demanded as a principle here is language so anodyne that it could offend no-one, lead to no stereotyping, etc., for there is no reason to limit the cleansing of language to ageism. The attempt to rid the world of stereotyping is as totalitarian as it is in theory incoherent: for of course it relies upon the stereotyping of stereotypers, namely all of us. Show me a man without stereotypes and I will show you a man in a coma. But mere impossibility has never stopped intellectuals from proposing their schemes. 

The eliminationist zeal of much leftist rhetoric has been noted here more than once. Some of you will have seen this recent pantomime of activism – invoking “free speech” as a right to silence others - and its censorious consequences. Apparently, when the subways “belong to the 99%” no-one will be offended. Because controversy will not be allowed and then, hey, we’ll be happy. Some readers may remember the experiments in thought correction at Delaware University, where an acclaimed and coercive programme of “social justice education” was described by its proponents as a “treatment” – one intended to “leave a mental footprint on [students’] consciousness.” Others may recall Tufts University’s perversely named Islamic Awareness Week, which led to institutional censorship and denial of reality, with factual statements – none of which were challenged - being outlawed as “harassment.” 

And let’s not forget the equally progressive efforts to shape young minds at Queen’s University, which decided that students’ private lunchtime discussions were in need of monitoring by hired eavesdroppers called “dialogue facilitators.” Eavesdroppers whose uninvited “interventions” would “encourage discussion of social justice issues” and “issues of social identity, power and privilege,” as defined by them and whether welcome or not. “Positive spaces and mindsets” would of course be created. If that doesn’t sound sufficiently creepy and absurd, take five minutes to read how this “facilitation” was supposed to happen. Then ask yourself how you might respond to such monitoring and linguistic intervention. And note that, when challenged on their intentions, these champions of “social justice” were all too willing to lie. For the greater good, no doubt. 

Are they logical and Facts

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012

Can It All Be a Coincidence?

Warning Signs features my daily commentaries, but I will break with that and share one that is well worth your consideration:

CAN IT ALL BE COINCIDENCE?
by Don Fredrick, ©2012, blogging at The Obama Timeline
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/can-it-all-be-coincidence.html

(Oct. 1, 2012) — As I noted in the introduction to my book, The Obama Timeline, a jury at a murder trial will often find the accumulated circumstantial evidence so overwhelming that a guilty verdict is obvious—even though there may be no witness to the crime. “The jurors in the Scott Peterson trial believed the collection of evidence more than they believed Scott Peterson. Among other things, the jury thought that being arrested with $15,000 in cash, recently-dyed hair, a newly-grown goatee, four cell phones, camping equipment, a map to a new girlfriend’s house, a gun, and his brother’s driver’s license certainly did not paint a picture of a grieving husband who had nothing to do with his pregnant wife’s disappearance and murder.”

In the four years I have been gathering information about—and evidence against—Barack Hussein Obama, I have encountered hundreds of coincidences that strike me as amazing. None of those coincidences, by themselves, may mean much. 

(another site which has studied the background of many different people and associations, can all this be true and what does it all mean? ? Please note that I do often think the other side is NOT much better. When will we find men of principle that can lead for the good of all ? ? )

(  http://www.trevorloudon.com/  )

But taken as a whole it is almost impossible to believe they were all the result of chance. Consider the Obama-related coincidences:

Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionaryWilliam Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.

University Priorities ,Wasted Degrees, Students Costs and Duped

HEATHER MAC DONALD

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/cjc0714hm.html

Less Academics, More Narcissism

The University of California is cutting back on many things, but not useless diversity programs.

14 July 2011

California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.

Just unbelievable, fine university brains becoming a mafia, as the costs follow on after the jump

Obama care in one sentence

Art Telles 09/06/2012 11:28 PM

1 min. 42 secs for the history books...

Dr. Barbara Bellar candidate for Illinois State Senate -

"So, let me get this straight. This is a long sentence.

"We're going to gifted with a health care plan
we are forced to purchase,
and fined if we don't,
which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people
without adding a single new doctor
but provides for 16 thousand new IRS agents,
written by a committee
whose chairman says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that didn't read it
but exempted themselves from it
and signed by a President who smokes

(much applause and laughter),
same sentence,

with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes

(applause and laughter),

for which we will be taxed for 4 years
before any benefits take effect
by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese

(applause and laughter),

and financed by a country that's broke

(very much applause and laughter).

"So, what the blank could possibly go wrong?"

Art

Green before or after

my 2 cents (1,005) Says: 
September 8th, 2012 at 9:14 pm
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/09/sceptics_close_niwa_lawsuit.html#comments

At the cash register of the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations. You didn’t have the green thing.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycling. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wrapped up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank water from a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect that to be trucked in or flown thousands of air miles. We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, city people took the tram or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.
Remember:

Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to p… us off.

Trillion

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Taxes/million.htm

How much is a Million?

How much is a Billion?

How much is a Trillion?

What's the difference between a million, a billion, a trillion?A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years. A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ. A million hours ago was in 1885. A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth. A million dollars ago was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury. A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury. [Note: this was pre-Obama] A trillion dollars is so large a number that only politicians can use the term in conversation... probably because they seldom think about what they are really saying. I've read that mathematicians do not even use the term trillion! Here is some perspective on TRILLION:  Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000. The country has not existed for a trillion seconds. Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds. One trillion seconds ago – 31,688 years – Neanderthals stalked the plains of Europe. Million: 1,000,000 Billion: 1,000,000,000 Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000 Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Sextillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Nonillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Centillion: 1 followed by 303 zeros

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

ttp://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

Bankers contrary lending

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-16/tea-party-picks-losing-fight-over-u-s-export-import-bank.html

Tea Party Picks Losing Fight Over U.S. Export-Import Bank

By Brian Wingfield and Kathleen Hunter - May 17, 2012 4:01 PM GMT+1200

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It was business as usual at the U.S. Export-Import Bank Sept. 30, though its charter was set to expire at midnight. The board approved $1.2 billion in loan guarantees to help Air India Ltd. buy jetliners from Boeing Co. (BA), part of $3.4 billion in financing it handled that day.

Why worry? The bank had been around since the New Deal, helping U.S. businesses compete in the international marketplace. Its periodic reauthorization had been a matter of routine. Committees in both chambers of Congress had stamped their overwhelming approval on bills to renew the charter.

Enlarge image

The Export-Import Bank has been around since the New Deal, helping U.S. businesses compete in the international marketplace. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Chart: Countdown to Export-Import Reauthorization

Chart: Key Players in the Ex-Im Bank Dispute

All of that was about to change. The loan guarantee to Air India angered Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) and other U.S. carriers just as resentment of the bank as a government meddler in business exploded into opposition by anti-tax Tea Party-aligned Republicans.

For months, the bank’s survival was in doubt while supporters such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, caught off guard, warred against Delta, the Club for Growth and the libertarianCato Institute. A bipartisan compromise saved the institution when the Senate voted 78-20 May 15 to adopt a deal negotiated in the House to extend the lender’s charter for three years and increase its lending limit to $140 billion.

Business groups that supported reauthorization “made their voices heard on Capitol Hill,” Ex-Im Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg said in an interview after the Senate vote.

That there was a fight at all amazed the bank’s backers.

Agency Creates Jobs

“We’ve got an agency that creates jobs, does it at no cost to the taxpayer, generates and has delivered $1.9 billion to the Treasury over the last five years,” according to Hochberg, who counts President Barack Obama and some of the country’s most influential industry groups among his allies.

“It’s hard for me to fully understand what the debate is,” Hochberg said in an April interview from his office overlooking the White House across leafy Lafayette Square.

The story of how the Ex-Im Bank, for decades a fairly invisible cog in the bureaucratic machinery, was almost put out of business is a case study in the politics of Washington, where Congress has been paralyzed over fundamental issues about the scope and role of government.

Since it was founded in 1934, the bank has been reauthorized every few years with little or no debate, most recently in 2006 without so much as a request for a roll call vote in either chamber.

Sign of Trouble

A sign of trouble in Congress came in December, when some Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee objected to a plan to reauthorize the bank for four years and raise its lending cap by 35 percent to $135 billion. House leaders considered making the Ex-Im measure part of an omnibus year-end spending bill.

Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey said he and other Republicans argued successfully to drop the measure from the spending bill.

That left the bank vulnerable to a stand-alone vote and the onslaught that ensued. Garrett said in an interview that that was just what the insurgents, their numbers swelled by Tea Party freshmen, wanted.

“We’ve never actively been fighting the Ex-Im Bank like we did this time,” said Andrew Roth, vice president of government affairs for the Club for Growth, a Washington-based organization that favors smaller government.

Opposition to federal intervention in the economy by the Tea Party movement in 2010 had given the club’s limited- government mantra more attention in Congress. The group alerted lawmakers on Jan. 31 that it would watch how they voted on the bank’s reauthorization.

‘Pumping Out E-Mails’

“Thereafter, we were pumping out e-mails to the hill -- two, three, four times a week,” asserting that the bank’s lending had supported a rogue’s gallery of beneficiaries including Solyndra LLC, Roth said.

While the bank provided a loan guarantee to a Belgian bank that supported the purchase of Solyndra’s solar panels, the U.S. lender wasn’t exposed to Solyndra directly, according to an Ex- Im fact sheet published in April.

Obama, who has set a goal of doubling U.S. exports by the end of 2014, weighed in. He endorsed the bank in a Feb. 17 speech at a Boeing plant in Everett, Washington. Ex-Im will give “American companies a fair shot by matching the unfair export financing that their competitors receive from other countries,” Obama said.

Heritage Foundation

Groups long opposed to the bank, including the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, joined the fray. Their message resonated with some members of Congress, such as Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican and founder of the Senate Tea Party caucus.

“It’s not like it was 10 years ago: We are actually guaranteeing loans to companies that are part of governments that are being downgraded,” said DeMint, who led much of the opposition.

In mid-March, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor circulated a plan to reauthorize the bank for a year, with a 13 percent increase in its lending limit. The rank and file balked.

“I remember that being the moment when leadership realized that conservatives would actively fight against this,” Roth said.

U.S. carriers led by Delta had filed a legal challenge to the bank, alleging in a Nov. 16 lawsuit that its support for airlines outside the U.S., including Air India, may provide an unfair boost to competitors.

‘Negative Impact’

The Ex-Im Bank “routinely fails to evaluate the negative impact that its commitments have on domestic industries,” an industry group, Airlines for America, said in the lawsuit. The bank disputes the claims in the case, pending in a federal court in Washington, D.C.

Sensing an opportunity in Congress, the airlines opened a fresh front. They had just the guy to lead the charge.

Richard Anderson, 57-year-old chief executive officer of Delta, had a reputation as a maverick and the platform to make a case. He is chairman of Airlines for America, which spent $1.13 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group.

Along with other airlines that depend on profitable overseas routes, Delta had reason to worry about competitors such as Air India and Dubai’s Emirates Airline buying Boeing wide-body jets with Ex-Im financing to expand their trans- Atlantic business.

Chamber of Commerce

In April, Anderson said in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce, an ally of the bank, that Ex-Im financing let overseas rivals pay $1 million a year in interest payments per plane, compared with the $4 million annually Delta pays.

“We wouldn’t be raising the Ex-Im Bank issue if it didn’t really hurt us, and it does,” he said.

Delta spent $667,604 in lobbying during the first three months of 2012, on top of $2.5 million last year, federal records show. Its lobbying efforts are led by Andrea Newman, a campaign donor to Cantor, a Virginia Republican.

Also working on behalf of the airline are Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, a lobbying firm that employs several former aides to Republican Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Elmendorf Ryan LLC, a Democratic lobbying firm, disclosure records show. By early 2012 the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, another firm on Delta’s payroll, focused on Ex-Im.

‘Much More Vocal’

The bank and its supporters were surprised by the aggressive efforts. Opponents of the lender “were much more vocal than we expected them to be,” said Christopher Wenk, senior director for international policy at the Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business group.

The chamber last year spent $66.4 million on lobbying, more than any other industry group in Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In recent years, it has focused on other battles including TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline.

With members including Ex-Im beneficiaries Boeing, General Electric Co. (GE) and other companies doing business overseas, the Chamber of Commerce turned its attention to keeping the lender alive.

“We really upped our game on Ex-Im” after the first of the year, Wenk said.

Other lobbying organizations put their machines into overdrive. The focus: jobs, the same argument airlines were using on the other side.

Boeing Hires Firms

The National Association of Manufacturers, based in Washington, and the Aerospace Industries Association, based in Arlington, Virginia, set up meetings between lawmakers and manufacturers who rely on Ex-Im financing.

Lobbyists for Boeing, the largest recipient of Ex-Im support, took to Capitol Hill armed with statistics of the jobs that depend on Ex-Im financing. The airplane and defense giant, which spent $4.1 million on advocacy during the first three months of 2012, paid nine firms to help make the case, Senate lobbying records show.

Some Republicans were unswayed.

“I realized that we had an entity that was handing out huge subsidies that benefit only about 10 major companies,” said Justin Amash, a Michigan freshman, who proposed legislation to abolish the bank. He campaigned on a pledge to “end corporate welfare.”

The bank used its annual meeting on April 12, held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on the edge of Washington’s Rock Creek Park, to push back.

President Clinton

Hundreds of business people -- from as far away as India an Nigeria, many interested in buying U.S. goods -- crammed into the hotel’s cavernous basement ballroom. Ex-Im Bank’s Hochberg led what resembled a pep rally for reauthorization. The crowd rose and applauded as former President Bill Clinton took the stage.

“Whether you are Republicans, Democrats or independents, I urge you to ask the Congress to reauthorize” the bank, Clinton said.

Supporters were soon using military-style language in their appeal. “To unilaterally surrender and do away with the bank because of an ideological position, and the whole world has their own version of the Ex-Im bank, is not smart to me,” Graham said. The senator is from South Carolina, where Boeing has a manufacturing plant for its 787 aircraft.

Deal Struck

With business leaders expressing shock at the opposition from generally pro-business Republicans, Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House and an aide to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, met privately with Cantor to negotiate a solution. The lawmakers worked through their recess in early May and, at 7 p.m. Friday, May 4, Hoyer of Maryland announced a compromise. It passed the House five days later by 330-93, with all the “nays” coming from Republicans.

The legislation is a “first step” to increase transparency in bank transactions and phase out government subsidies for wide-body aircraft, Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter said in a statement.

While the bank survived, its days of routinely winning reauthorization may be over.

Republicans missed an opportunity to eliminate a government entity and make their case that the president’s policies promote “crony capitalism,” said Dan Holler, Heritage Action’s communications director. Still, he said, they laid the groundwork for more scrutiny of the bank when its charter is next due for renewal.

“What you’re seeing is a fundamental change where members of Congress, especially conservatives, aren’t afraid to debate these issues anymore,” Holler said. “The supporters of the bank are going to have a lot harder time justifying its existence, given all the pressure that was put on reauthorization this time around.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Wingfield in Washington atbwingfield3@bloomberg.net; Kathleen Hunter in Washington at khunter9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider atjschneider50@bloomberg.net; Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net; Clark Hoyt atchoyt2@bloomberg.net