President Obama recently blamed today’s high unemployment on… automation. Yes, you heard at right. He singled out automatic teller machines (ATMs), which he said have eliminated many human bank teller jobs. Blaming an invention for job losses is a display of economic ignorance worthy of the Luddites. Not only are Obama’s comments wrong at a factual level, they display a complete lack of basic knowledge about the means of human progress. For a self-styled “progressive” to make this mistake displays how bankrupt that ideology is.

For a start, President Obama is wrong as a matter of fact. From 1985 to 2002, U.S. banks added some 300,000 ATMs around the country, but also added 42,000 bank teller jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted in 2010 that a further 40,000 or so teller jobs would be added by 2018 — presumably not as the result of mass removal of ATMs. ATMs allow banks to employ tellers in more useful services than simply counting and distributing money, as well as serve customers during late night hours when it is not feasible to keep branches open.

Automation doesn’t destroy jobs. It frees us from mundane tasks so that we can do other, more complex — and more rewarding — tasks. The washing machine didn’t put housewives out of work; — it enabled them to have careers. The industrial revolution allowed people to leave the fields and enter factories, where, despite popular conceptions of “satanic mills,” they could earn far better livelihoods. As the great economist Joseph Schumpeter noted, the genius of the free market and the automation is that it “does not typically consist of providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort.”

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Ron Paul Announces Presidential Candidacy on ABC Good Morning 

Ron Paul is set to officially launch his presidential campaign Friday morning, a Paul source told POLITICO.

The Texas congressman will make his announcement from New Hampshire during the 7:00 a.m. hour of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Paul is then scheduled to speak at 10:00 a.m. in Exeter, part of a two-day swing through New Hampshire following a stop in Iowa. Paul will also be keynoting the Grafton County Republican Memorial dinner on Friday night.

Paul has already taken several incremental steps toward a full-fledged campaign, most recently opening an Iowa campaign office north of Des Moines earlier this week. He also recently raked in more than $1 million during a one-day online "money bomb" ahead of the first GOP presidential debate, demonstrating the continued strength of the grassroots fundraising machine that turned heads during his 2008 campaign.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/n...

UPDATE: Confirmed via Ron Paul's facebook page:

"Tomorrow I'll be on Good Morning America around 7AM. I'll also be making an important announcement at the historic Exeter town hall in New Hampshire at 10AM. If you are in the area, please stop by, or tune into the live stream of the announcement at http://www.ronpaul2012.com"

Don't Touch My Junk - the cartoon (comic)

Most Americans still do not understand just how bad the economic horror we are facing really is.  Today, millions of Americans are living as paupers in the land that their foreathers built even as America’s infrastructure is literally being sold out from under their feet by corrupt politicians.  The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months, and today it takes the average unemployed American about 35 weeks to find a job.  However, the “official” unemployment rate is misleading, because it does not include workers that have quit looking for work or that have had their hours cut back to part-time.  According to 60 Minutes, when you add those “discouraged workers” and “underemployed workers” into the equation the actual rate is about 17 percent, and in the state of California the actual rate is about 22 percent.  Meanwhile, foreign nations are using sovereign wealth funds to buy up staggering amounts of U.S. infrastructure.  America is quite literally for sale in 2010.  All across the United States, highways, ports, toll roads and even parking meters are being gobbled up by foreign powers.  We have shipped massive amounts of wealth and jobs to other nations, and now those very same countries are turning around and buying huge amounts of U.S. infrastructure with the gigantic piles of dollars that they have accumulated...

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Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you. It champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and the entrepreneurial spirit of daring to dream and to build big. The other believes that the federal government, using taxpayers’ money, should play a major role in leveling out the nation’s wealth to guarantee outcomes to all, regardless of effort. How America chooses between these two views of the role of government, at this crucial juncture, will have everything to do with the future we and our children and our children’s children will enjoy.

President Barack Obama clearly believes in the larger government view. In his Inaugural Address, he said, “Now there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest our system cannot tolerate big plans…The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works—whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” With a federal deficit of nearly one and a half trillion dollars for 2009 and deficit projections of not less than a half a trillion dollars over the next ten years, the question of whether government is too big or too small is very relevant, even vital to the future of the nation.

Join filmmaker Ray Griggs in this documentary film I Want Your Money as he contrasts the two paths the United States can take using the words and actions of Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. The film uses interviews from well-known public figures, experts, movie clips, dramatic portrayals, music, graphics and even comedic animation to tell the story in the plainest terms of the choice between the Obama and the Reagan views of the role of the federal government in our society. It also examines how these big government programs have been tried in the past at great moral and financial cost to the nation. California is offered as a case-in-point in understanding what economic challenges might face the nation, if we choose the larger government path. Finally, I Want Your Money is a call to action for those who care about the future of the United States.

The vast majority of the talking heads on television are still speaking of the current economic collapse as if it is a temporary “recession” that will soon be over.  So far, the vast majority of the American people seem to believe this as well, although for many Americans there is a very deep gnawing in the pit of their stomachs that is telling them that there is something very, very wrong this time around.  The truth is that the foundations of the U.S. economy have been destroyed by an orgy of government, corporate and individual debt that has gone on for decades.  It was the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the party is over.  The following are 11 signs from just this past month that show that the U.S. economy is headed into the toilet and will not be recovering…. » Read More

Some warn expansion of military involvement in domestic security could lead to “end of United States as a Republic”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, January 12, 2010

An Obama executive order that creates a council of state governors who will work with the feds to expand military involvement in domestic security has stoked fears that the administration is stepping up preparations for martial law.

The order, which is entitled Establishment of the Council of Governors (PDF), creates a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama who will work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

The governors will liaise with officials from Northcom, Homeland Security, the National Guard as well as DoD officials from the Pentagon “in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments,” according to the executive order.

In October 2008, Northcom, a Unified Combatant Command of the United States military based out of Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, was assigned the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team returning from Iraq. An alarming September 8 Army Times report which was later denied after it sparked controversy stated that the troops would be used by Northcom to deal with “civil unrest and crowd control” in the aftermath of a national emergency.

The Obama executive order states that governors will help advise the feds on National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.

The fact that the order further blurs the lines between state and federal power, as well as greasing the skids for more military involvement in domestic affairs has stoked fears that Obama may be laying the groundwork for his promised “national civilian security force”.

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Almost three times the amount given to McCain

While some sunlight has been shed on the hefty sums shoveled into congressional campaign coffers in an effort to influence the Democrats’ massive healthcare bill, little attention has been focused on the far larger sums received by President Barack Obama while he was a candidate in 2008....

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Airport tyranny comes to your door, as predicted

Naked body scanners are being readied to go mobile and scan you on the street, at football games and any other event where masses of people are congregated, according to a leaked paper written by Dutch authorities.

As we have been warning all along, the tyranny now being metered out at airports was always intended to be rolled out onto the streets, with mobile metal detectors already being stationed at various transport hubs in the UK in the name of stopping knife crime.

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After reading the article released by Cracked.com, I decided to update and revise their sloppy work.  Their article had only 7.  I can name 33 and I am planning on releasing a revised list soon with up to 50.  The article I was insulted to read by the lack of information can be viewed here, but don’t waste your time, all of that is in this article and more.

Most people can’t resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue … and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous.   Lets not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy.  USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair.  When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive?  What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”?  When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?  “I own a small business and am in town for a short while.  Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”...

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Loss of basic freedoms has spurred a mass awakening, next decade will be defined by restoration of liberties

Alex Jones, Steve Watson and Paul Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Dec 29, 2009

During the first nine years of the new millennium we have been witness to a rapid erosion of freedom. Our basic liberties have been systematically denigrated and diluted by a vast expansion of coordinated global tyranny.

The decade is not over yet, there is still another year to go, however, given that the mainstream media is obsessively compiling it’s own decade lists, we felt it necessary to draw up our own to highlight the major events that have shaped the world we now live in and the future we face.

It is important to stress the fact that while we have indeed experienced a decade of tyranny, we have also seen a mass awakening, an expansion of knowledge and an exponential increase in opposition to the agenda we have come to know as the new world order.

Here in chronological order, follow’s Prisonplanet.com’s defining moments of the decade...

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On Saturday, Obama said the Christmas day non-attack over Detroit was the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the latest incarnation of the perennial boogieman used by government to frighten people into accepting foreign invasions and occupations and an ever-growing police state grid at home. » Read More

The pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit — the same flight involved in Friday’s terrorism attempt — requested emergency assistance Sunday upon landing in Detroit, an airport spokesman said...

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