Friends,   There is nothing political about this email. It is a very sobering commentary on our future.  Most changes are already happening. It is a long read, but worth the time.

 

CHANGES ARE COMING ----

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check.  Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

 

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music fromiTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

 

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.

In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.

 

19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind

The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.  It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.  

But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America .  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.  Do you know what our biggest export is today?  Waste paper.  Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now  just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?

Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America   goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when the debt bubble pops?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.  But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.

For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.    

The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....

#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.  About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.

#2 Dell Inc., one of America ’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.

#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem , North Carolina in November.  Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.

#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ?  Zero.

#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.

#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.

#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output.  In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.

#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul , Minnesota . Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.

#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing.  The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.

#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use.  Today it ranks 15th.

#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products.   Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .

#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.

So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.  It needs to be treated like one.

If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you.  

If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.

America is in deep, deep trouble folks.  It is time to wake up

I'm Sick of  "Inherited!"
Boy is that true...and "HIS EMINENCE" hardly ever gives one of his "readings' without mentioning the ill concieved fact that he

"inherited" the deficit and unemployment or saying "it was at his doorstep when he took office"...signs of a weak, insecure, and dishonest person. Read and pass on, please...

Here's the scoop on what Obama INHERITED!
The Washington Post babbled again  about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah.  Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.

So once more, I'll present a short civics lesson, so pay attention !

Budgets don't come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled budget processes for (Fiscal Year = FY)

 FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY2011.  In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.  For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office.  At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time?  He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.
Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.  After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.  If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell,  what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

 
     WAKE UP AMERICA,

           BEFORE

   ITS TO LATE !

Barack Hussein Obama was looking for a call girl.   

He found three such girls in a local pub, a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. 

To the blonde he said,  'I am the President of the United States.  Now how much would it cost me to spend some time with you?' 

 She replied, $200. 

 To the brunette he asked the same question. 
 
 Her reply was $100. 


 He then asked the redhead... 

 Her reply was, 'Mr. President, if you can get my skirt up as high as my taxes,  My pants as low as my wages,  Get that thing of yours as hard as the times we are living in, 
And keep it rising like the price of gas, Keep me warmer than it is in my apartment and  Screw me the way you have retirees, and our Veterans Then it isn't going to cost you a friggin' damn cent!

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, 
but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". 
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. 
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. 
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. 
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. 
The second test average was a D! 
No one was happy. 
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. 
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. 
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 

Could not be any simpler than that. 


Remember, there is a mid-term election in 2010!

           This 4th grade teacher has said it all, and she was 
brave enough to attach her name to it.

                     April 17, 2009

                     The White House
                     1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
                     Washington ,  DC  20500

                     Mr. Obama:
                     I have had it with you and your 
administration, sir.  Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has 
convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the 
United States of America collectively or of me personally.

                     You are so obsessed with appeasing the 
Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the 
responsibilities of the President of the United States of America . 
You are responsible to the citizens of the United States ...  You 
are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.

                     I personally resent that you go around the 
world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we 
are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world.  Sir, 
what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were 
all about if not the consideration of the peoples of  Europe ?  Are 
you brain dead?  What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? 
Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century?

                     Where do you get off telling a Muslim country 
that the  United States does not consider itself a Christian 
country?  Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the 
Constitution of the  United States ?  This country was founded on 
Judeo-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at 
least until you came along, come directly from this heritage.  Do 
you not understand this?

                     Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an 
affront to all Americans.  Our President does not bow down to 
anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia .  You didn't show Great 
Britain , our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they 
deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia ...  How dare 
you, sir!  How dare you!

                     You cant find the time to visit the graves of 
our greatest generation because you don't want to offend the Germans 
but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey ....  You offended our 
dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than 
the people who saved the German people from themselves.  What's the 
matter with you? I am convinced that you and the members of your 
administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud 
puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you..

                     You are so self-righteously offended by the 
big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing 
about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, 
Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the 
Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? 
Anything?  I seriously doubt it.

                     What about the U.S. House members passing out 
$9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members on top of the $2.5 
million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves?  I 
understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus.  I took a 5% cut 
in my pay to save jobs with my employer.  You haven't said anything 
about that.  Who authorized that?  I surely didn't!

                     Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will 
be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, 
that's $45 million more than the AIG bonuses.  In fact, Fannie and 
Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million not a bad 
take.  Who authorized that and why haven't you expressed your 
outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic 
mess we have right now?

                     I resent that you take me and my fellow 
citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do.  We 
are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed 
up with all of you.

                     I also want you to know that I personally find 
just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of 
my sensibilities.  I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see 
that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my 
beautiful country.

                     Sincerely,
                     Every real American

                     P.S.  I rarely ask that emails be 'passed 
around'.............PLEASE SEND THIS TO YOUR EMAIL LIST......it's 
past time for all Americans to wake up!

                     Ms Kathleen Lyday
                     Fourth Grade Teacher
                     Grandview Elementary School
                     11470 Hwy . C
                     Hillsboro , MO 63050
                     (636) 944-3291 Phone
                     (636) 944-3870 Fax