Something out of yesterdays The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110101704.html

http://www.goldalert.com/stories/Gold-Price-Approaches-Record-High-as-India-Buys-IMF-Gold

life is good.

If that isn’t pure evil (TV screens with adverts at the gas pumps is a close second), I don’t know what is!

“Since 2006, Ford Motor Co. has slashed 45% of its North American workforce — a move that has contributed to more than $4.6 billion in cost reductions at the once-ailing Dearborn auto company.

Ford ended September with 74,500 workers in North America. That includes 21,300 salaried workers and 50,200 hourly employees, most of whom are represented by the UAW and Canadian Auto Workers.

At the end of 2005, before the automaker launched its “Way Forward” turnaround plan, Ford had 135,700 employees in North America. That included 35,600 salaried workers and 100,100 hourly workers.”

-Half the company in 4 years. Amazing.

I too was floored by the stupidity and/or laziness of people who would watch commercials on a DVR recorded show. There’s no way I’ll watch commercials anymore. TIVO is the greatest thing since sliced bread, although my TV watching time is quite limited compared to the average citizen.

But at the same time I’m happy to hear it. If advertisers can continue to make money even with the DVR revolution because so many people are willing to watch commercials anyway, that’s a win for me too. It just means that they don’t have to find more intrusive and harder to avoid advertising strategies that would be detrimental to my quality of life and/or cost me something. So keep watching those commercials sheeple!

“The ability to pay taxes. Nothing else. The rest is all smoke and mirrors…”
“The dollar will have backing as long as people can be persuaded to pony up to pay for the assets listed above…”
–scepticus

“I’m glad you guys are finally coming around to the realization that “the full faith and credit of the United States Government” is morally equivalent to “at the point of a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile”.”
–Curmudgeon

“The War Machine will devour the State. That’s how it works.”
–MR

“@MRegan: “Will devour?” How about “IS devour-ING?””
–Jeff

We can see how it plays on the Finance side, and part– International– of the Geo-Political side, though, what happens when We look at those forces from the Domestic POV?

“On July 9, 2008, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation permitting government spying, including immunity to telecommunications companies involved in secret domestic surveillance programs. With the stroke of George W. Bush’s pen, the US is now a police state by definition.
The extent of the spying program, and its larger implications, have been revealed by Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on secret domestic spying program of Bush/Cheney’s National Security Agency (NSA) and AT&T:
AT&T whistleblower: spy bill creates infrastructure for police state
The update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, called the “FISA compromise”, or more appropriately, the “spy bill”, largely completes the triumph of the Bush/Cheney administration and a bipartisan criminal consensus. By convenient design, the FISA revision derails pending law suits filed against the Bush administration’s corporate spying partners (AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Verizon), silences (the largely empty-to-begin-with) congressional investigations into Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program. Presidential nominee Barack Obama and the Democrats have now moved to silence all discussion about the issue….”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9565
“Last week’s announcement that the terrorist threat warning level has been raised in parts of New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., has led to dramatic and unprecedented restrictions on the movements of citizens. Americans wishing to visit the U.S. Capitol must, for example, pass through several checkpoints and submit to police inspection of their cars and persons.
Many Americans support the new security measures because they claim to feel safer when the government issues terror alerts and fills the streets with militarized police forces. As one tourist interviewed this week said, “It makes me feel comfortable to know that everything is being checked.” It is ironic that tourists coming to Washington to celebrate the freedoms embodied in the Declaration of Independence are so eager to give up those freedoms with no questions asked.

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference…”
http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=3274
“…American citizens had assumed that the Patriot Act and the FBI Guidelines assured that only foreign aliens could be placed in military detention centers, unprotected by the U.S. constitution. But on June 10, 2002, an American citizen was declared by Bush, without due process, to be an “enemy combatant” and to have no constitutional protections. This American citizen was thrown into a naval brig in South Carolina….”
“..Of course, Abdullah al Muhajir, a U.S. citizen also known as Jose Padilla, has been branded a “known terrorist” with ties to al Qaeda, so almost no one is speaking out against this abrogation of constitutional procedures. A reputed “terrorist” who is said to have been building a “dirty bomb,” Padilla, a New York-born man of Puerto Rican descent, is assumed to be beyond the pale, not worthy of judicial prerogatives. But what happens when Bush or the FBI brands you as a “terrorist” because you appear to be a dissenter, denying you your constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen?
Attorney General Ashcroft explicitly stated that terrorists do not deserve constitutional protections…”
http://www.hermes-press.com/police_state.htm

When the ‘Money’ is Nothing, it ain’t about ‘the Money’..
–sorry, for the Long Post.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-economics-violate-th

dude- not going to read if you don’t participate in the TBP discussion