Saturday, August 27, 2011

Texas Perry Is Taking The Lead!

The news media is excited about Governor Perry of Texas. The news media implies Perry is the front runner for 2012. However before you get excited let's think about what the Bush's gave us. Will the Texas front runner give us another war and lower taxes and not tax the rich or corporations so our children can pay for the wars we allowed to happen?

I really do not have an answer. I've seen a lot in my day and I am beginning to believe they all cheat and lie to the American Public in an effort to get richer & richer! Do you know anybody in office for the United States that is poor? LOL!

Just a light-hearted look at today!

How about them Cowboys!



Monday, August 15, 2011

Tom's New Workstation!

Times have changed since my first personal computer. My last PC was a HP Compaq Evo W6OOO with 2 Intel Xeon processor's 2.0 GHZ, 512-KB cache and 1 gigabyte of ram and a 16 gigabyte SCSI disk drive. I purchase this workstation off Ebay in 2004 with 2 years of HP warranty left for $500.00. I was in heaven.

My new unit is home assembled because the Workstation I was wanting was a HP Z8OO but was over $3,000.00. Well I am close to retirement and wanted a new workstation. Here is what I settled for and saved almost half the cost.

Antec Case & Antec Power Supply $289.97
Disk Drive 2 TB $149.99
Disk Drives 2 500 GB SATA III $119.98
CPU Intel i7 6 core $569.99
Motherboard Intel DX58SO2 $254.99
Memory Kingston DDR3 24 GB $189.91
Video Card GeForce GTX 460 $153.55
Windows 7 Ultimate Full Version $123.99
Total $1,852.37

What is amazing to me is the changes in 7 years. This workstation has 24 times the memory and 6 times the processors. I have 24 gigabytes of ram and 6 processors but with Hyper-Threading I have 12 processors. My video card has 1 gigabyte of ram and processor runs close to 1 gigahertz. WOW!

Antec P193 V3



Antec HCG-750
Intel Core i7-970 Processor 3.20 GHz 12 MB Cache Socket LGA1366


Intel LGA1366/Intel X58/DDR3/CrossFireX&SLI/SATA3&USB3.0/A&2GbE/ATX Motherboard, Retail BOXDX58SO2


Sony Blue-Ray 5300s


Qty 2 Western Digital Caviar Black 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Internal Desktop Hard Drive Bulk/OEM - WD5002AALX I will setup Raid 0 and for my data drive Qty 1 Western Digital WD2002FAEX Caviar Black 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive



EVGA 01G-P3-1366-TR GeForce GTX 460 SE PCI Express 2.0 1GB Graphics Card. I am starting with only 1 card but could add 3 if I was a gamer.
I am patiently waiting for all of the package to arrive. I let you know If I have problems. I plan to name this workstation "Tom's little Ferrari"




Thursday, August 11, 2011

United States Of America According To Time!


The following photos are from Time and show where we are in trouble in this country. The reoccurring message I see that worries me the most is our elected officials are in bed with corporations and them selves.

Click on Photo twice to enlarge for viewing!

This photos is very clear who spends the most! I like to make a special thanks to Mr. Nixon for removing us from the gold standard.



Where we are compared to the others.


Radical groups, wither it is religion or any kind of extremist are dangerous in a free society.




I think to photos tell a story, do you?

Here is a documentary you need to watch!
Casino Jack and the United States of Money
2010 R 118 minutes Documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) turns his acute focus on convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abram
off, reproaching him and other legislators for their negative impact on U.S. politics. Gibney's film plays less like a dry treatise and more like a high-stakes political thriller, fearlessly examining the ways American policies and political processes are undermined by an endless quest for power.

Cast:
Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, William Branner, Donn Dunlop, Michael Scanlon, Bob Ney, Neil Volz, Stanley Tucci, Paul Rudd, Kevin Henderson, Hal Kreitman, Kelly Brian Kuhn
Director:
Alex Gibney

Hollywood also made a movie of this documentary called:

Casino Jack
2010 R 124 minutes

Kevin Spacey stars in this drama as disgraced political lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who defrauded Native American tribes out of tens of millions of dollars in his efforts to peddle influence in Washington's corridors of power. As justice closes in on Abramoff and his associates, the audacious scope of his scams comes to light. Based on true events, this film from director George Hickenlooper co-stars Kelly Preston and Barry Pepper.

Cast:
Kevin Spacey, Ruth Marshall, Graham Greene, Hannah Endicott-Douglas, Barry Pepper, Kelly Preston, John Robinson, Jon Lovitz, Jason Weinberg, Spencer Garrett, Rachelle Lefevre, Christian Campbell, Eric Schweig, Yannick Bisson
Director:
George Hickenlooper

The continued recurrence of dishonest government employees needs to be voted out!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

United States Of America

Yesterday with the market sliding again! My retirement nest-egg has dropped $67,000.00 since the start of 2011. So with all that in mind remember what is happening is because our elected public officials do not care about us, just rich people & corporations.

Below is just 1 example of our loss. You need to educate your self and view a few documentaries to understand what has happened. Did you know it was Nixon who removed us from the gold standard? Yes he fixed it so we can borrow and pay our tax dollars to other rich people with interest! Another example is our wonderful governor of Texas Rick Perry who sold our own State Highway 121 to Spain. That's right for the next 100 years our toll dollars are going to Spanish company!

America Wake UP!

Documentaries you need to watch!

911 In Plane Site
Capitalism: A Love Story
Food inc
Freakonomics
Inside Job
Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup
The U.S VS. JOHN LENNON

http://www.michaelmoore.com/blogger/mmflint


Michael Moore

Michael Moore is an Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author

August 5th, 2011 3:00 PM

30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they've succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:

* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.

* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.

* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.

* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.

* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!

* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!

And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:

The AFL-CIO.

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.

And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.

I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had its beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).

It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?

P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:

Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

A Blast From The Past

My TV is now 10 years old, or should I say my home theater is 10 years old!

It has been a bumpy road but it still works (knock on wood)! This was when hardly anyone heard of HD wide screen. If you purchase media you had to check to see if it was 4X3 or 16X9 (letter boxed). The media was a 12 inch laser disc or the new 4 3/4 inch DVD media.

On 03/27/01 from a web site in SEATTLE WA the purchase price was $8,529.00 for the following:

(1) wide screen 70 inch TV
(1) DVD player
(1) 5 channel receiver for surround sound audio



Yes it did take a long time to understand the back of this receiver!

Remote

DVD Player
History in the making "LOL" anyway just a little harmless blast from the past!