This is a guest post from Hunter Richards of Software Advice, which provides reviews of project accounting systems and other software.

...and wealth has shifted toward the highest earners.

The less-educated workers who manage to keep their jobs are falling further
and further behind in the national income distribution as the relative value of their services declines.

Alas, high-tech industries are growing...

So how can you avoid being replaced by a machine? You’ll need to be one of the people who work in an advanced field that still requires highly-skilled human capital. Take the IT field, for example. The Tech Pulse Index tracks the growth of national economic activity in technology by combining data on employment, investment, production, shipments, and consumption. The Tech Pulse Index has risen sharply (with the exception of the dot-com bust around the year 2000), reflecting continued demand for high-tech workers. The same is true in other engineering disciplines, healthcare and finance.

...but an advanced education is required.

The following list was compiled by "Major Carpenter", a great friend of the site. I think that you will really enjoy what he has put together. The truth is that the United States is in a serious state of decline, and in a desperate attempt to keep things together, the United States is rapidly being transformed into a totalitarian Big Brother police state. I don't want to make this introduction too long, so without any further yapping by me, here is the article that Major Carpenter sent over to us the other day.....

*********************

I've compiled this list of horrors (in no particular order) from two prior lists, one done by U.S. author Naomi Wolf and another by UK writer Dr. Lawrence Britt, as published in the Guardian newspaper.

Sadly, I count all seventeen as aspects of the Untied Status of Amerika today. AKA the "BRA" (Banana Republik of Amerika).

Again, what do WE the PEOPLE do about it?

How many of these do you see as part of a once great country?

1. Powerful And Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain For The Recognition Of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification Of Enemies/Scapegoats As A Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, (Christians, Constitutionalists, conservatives, 2nd Amendment supporters, 1st Amendment supporters, 4th Amendment supporters, Ron Paul supporters) etc.

4. Supremacy Of The Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

6. Obsession With National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

7. Corporate and Government Power Are Intertwined And Their Combined Power Is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. (This is the actual definition of fascism according to Gerald Celente's historical description of Mussolini's opinion on the matter).

8. Obsession With Crime And Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

9. Rampant Cronyism And Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. (Gee how about several TRILLION DOLLARS printed out of nothing and handed over to U.S. and foreign banks and companies - does that maybe count? How about hundreds of thousands of people's homes? How many politicians leave Washington D.C. millionaires or billionaires after arriving there with next to nothing?)

10. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

11. Dissent Equals Treason - Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage". Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech (see also #17) and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor".

12. Create A Gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law - where torture takes place. Gulags in history tend to become ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalized. Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

13. Deny Prisoners Due Process - Prisoners held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offenses, and subjected to show trials.

14. Militarize The Police - When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens: (the powers that be) need citizens to fear thug violence and need thugs who are free from prosecution.

15 . Set Up An Internal Surveillance System And Harass Citizens - In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbors. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched. In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state program to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

16. Harass Citizens' Groups - Next step is to infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents. The secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organizations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary U.S. citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

17. Rampant Sexual Harassment - The state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. (Sexual harassment by the state against the people takes place in order to demotivate opposition and destroy morale; the recent TSA activities are nothing more than a power play to ensure that the people know they are nothing more than slabs of meat to the powers that be – who are of course, exempted from being sexually harassed. Furthermore, the state decides what is sexually "appropriate" and enforces it's opinion over the objections of the moralities of the nation and a majority of people who believe in them (i.e. homosexuality, abortion, pre-marital sex, etc.) are promoted as "normal" and any - pardon me - 'deviation' from that opinion is made out to be "hateful" and nearly criminal, with consequences including the denial of rights, property and even children being removed from parents if the parents do not hold the "politically correct" ideologies.

If you want to get on an airplane in America today, you either have to allow TSA security officials to gawk at your exposed body using the new full body scanners that literally show "everything", or you must submit to the new "enhanced pat-downs".  These pat-downs are so intrusive that many of those who have experienced them are using the term "sexual assault".  The truth is that TSA officials have been instructed to start using the fronts of their hands to feel the outlines of male and female genitalia during these pat-downs.  Not only that, but instead of going over the clothing, in many instances it is being reported that TSA officials are actually reaching down the pants and up the skirts of air travelers.  Some TSA officials are doing this hundreds of times a day, and they do not put on clean gloves each time they perform an examination.

This is what America has sunk to.  Today, in the "land of the free and the home of the brave", Americans are groped like farm animals by tyrannical thugs who get to do pretty much whatever they want with us.  Things have gotten so bizarre that now even a columnist for Forbes magazine is calling for the TSA to be abolished.

The following are 7 TSA horror stories that are almost too shocking to believe.  But all of them are actually true....

#1 Blogger Erin Chase is a regular air traveler, but she was completely unprepared for what she was about to experience as she went through airport security recently with your young baby....

She patted my left arm, my right arm, my upper back and my lower back. She then said, “I need to reach in and feel along the inside of your waistband.”

She felt along my waistline, moved behind me, then proceeded to feel both of my buttocks. She reached from behind in the middle of my buttocks towards my vagina area.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my buttocks, or reach forward to my vagina area.

She then moved in front of my and touched the top and underneath portions of both of my breasts.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my breasts.

She then felt around my waist. She then moved to the bottoms of my legs.

She then felt my inner thighs and my vagina area, touching both of my labia.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my vagina area or my labia.

So how did Erin feel after going through this horrifying experience?  The following is how she described her very physical reaction....

I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.

Here is why I was sexually assaulted. She never told me the new body search policy. She never told me that she was going to touch my private parts. She never told me when or where she was going to touch me. She did not inform me that a private screening was available. She did not inform me of my rights that were a part of these new enhanced patdown procedures.

#2 It is being reported that TSA officials are now reaching down the pants of travelers as part of the new "enhanced pat-downs".

Yes, you read that correctly.

They are actually reaching down the pants of air travelers and touching their genitals. Radio host Owen JJ Stone recently described to Alex Jones the horrifying things that a TSA official did to him the last time he went through airport security....

#3 A 43-year-old mother was completely shocked when she was recently picked at random for an "enhanced pat-down" at Sacramento International Airport.

The following is how Wendy James Gigliotti described her experience....

"She said 'spread your legs.' And then she took her full palms and started at my neck and ran all the way down my body, full palms, constant contact. And when she got down to my feet, she was in constant contact from my ankles all the way up to my groin, across my groin, and down the other leg. And she did that twice."

#4 Even members of the mainstream media are expressing horror about these new procedures.  CNN employee Rosemary Fitzpatrick didn't know how to respond when a TSA official ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, across her buttocks and over her genitals when she recently went through airport security. The following is how Fitzpatrick described how she felt about the experience to CNN....

"As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!"

#5 One of the most horrifying TSA horror stories to come out in recent years is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.  The incident involved a 21-year-old college student from Amarillo Texas.  According to the lawsuit, as she went through airport security at Corpus Christi airport on May 29th, 2008 a TSA agent pulled her blouse down and exposed her breasts....

"As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area."

The suit also alleges that TSA workers continued to joke about the incident afterwards....

“One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that ‘he would just have to watch the video.’”

#6 Also back in 2008, the TSA actually forced a 37-year-old Texas woman to remove her nipple ring with a pair of pliers before they would allow her to get on an airplane.  The following is what Mandi Tamlin had to say about her harrowing experience with the TSA....

"My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way."

#7 These new procedures are catching many travelers completely by surprise.  One flight attendant named Megan recently posted her airport security horror story on the We Won't Fly Facebook page....

I am a Flight Attendant for a major airline. I am currently out on disability because of a hip replacement. My husband (who is a pilot) and I flew out of Portland, Maine on November 9th, to New York for my 6 week follow up appointment. I had… my other hip replaced back in 2008 and totally know the entire procedure going through security. So I THOUGHT!

My husband waited for me on the opposite side through security with all of my belongings while I endured the “new” pat down procedure. I was asked by the female TSA agent if I wanted a private screening and I said no because I had did not expect what was about to happen.

The agent went up my right leg first and then met my vagina with full force….the same on the other leg with the same result. She then used both of her hands to feel my breasts and squeezing them. At this point I was in shock.

When I came out of security my husband asked me. “What the hell was that?”. I have never felt so humiliated and violated. I have gone through the stages of being a sexual assault victim…Shock,Denial,Blame,Pain,Anger…I have yet to come with the Acceptance stage.

The bottom line here: We are ALL American citizens and should not be forced to succumb to a government agency that is clearly violating our Fourth Amendment!

Are we still living in America?  Did we suddenly wake up and find ourselves in an episode of the Twilight Zone?

Every single month the United States seems to slip a little bit more down the road toward becoming a tyrannical Big Brother police state.

The truth is that the TSA is completely and totally out of control.  If you doubt this, just watch the following short video....

Things have gotten so bizarre that now other countries are even making fun of our new airport security procedures.  Just check out the following new animated video from Taiwan....

With so much outrage pouring in from the public over these new procedures, certainly changes are on the way, right?

Wrong.

TSA Administrator John Pistole told Congress on Tuesday that there is simply no way that he is going to change "his" policies.....

"If you are asking me, am I going to change my policies? No."

So aren't our politicians doing anything about this?

Unfortunately, most of them are so incompetent that they wouldn't be able to find their feet if they weren't attached to their legs.

However, there is one glimmer of hope.  U.S. Representative Ron Paul has introduced H.R. 6416 (The American Traveler Dignity Act) in Congress.

So what would this law do?

Well, Paul recently had the following to say about his proposed law....

"My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us."

So is there any hope that this thing will pass?

You never know.

What all of us can do is that we can start making as much noise as possible until changes are made.

If things remain as they are, one thing is for certain - a whole lot less people are going to be flying from now on.

It turns out that a lot of pro-Obama organizations ended up receiving a lot of "economic stimulus" money.  For example, it is being reported that the Obama administration gave General Electric $24.9 million in grants under the stimulus law.  Keep in mind that General Electric was the corporate owner of NBC, MSNBC and CNBC during the 2008 election.  These various news outlets were absolutely shameless when it came to promoting Barack Obama during the 2008 election.  In fact, MSNBC was more radically pro-Obama than even CNN was (and that is saying a lot).  Apparently Barack Obama was quite grateful for all the help.  25 million dollars is one heck of a tremendous thank you gift.  General Electric was the primary recipient of 14 separate economic stimulus grants.  In addition, the recipients of four other economic stimulus grants hired GE as a contractor.  So is this the way that the game of politics is played in 2010?  Sadly, the truth is that this is how the game of politics has been played for decades in this country. 

It isn't as if GE isn't doing well.  According to Standard & Poor's, GE had $156 billion in revenue during 2009.  But we all knew that the "economic stimulus" money wasn't really about stimulating the economy, didn't we?

A big percentage of the economic stimulus money went for the pet projects of individual members of Congress and for "payback" to those who helped Obama and other Democrats get elected.

In fact, if you want to get a really good idea of just how much money was horribly wasted by the stimulus law, just check out this great article.

So we shouldn't be surprised that GE was handed 25 million dollars.  This is the way the world works now.

The truth is that MSNBC could be aptly renamed "The Obama News Network".  They are perhaps the most clearly partisan news channel that the U.S. has ever seen....

Here you see Chris Matthews openly admit that his job is to help make Barack Obama's presidency successful....

Even Bill Maher (who hates George W. Bush and the Republicans) admits that the pro-Obama coverage by MSNBC has been way over the top....

Liberals whine and moan constantly about the supposed "conservative bias" on Fox News, and yet they have no problem with the extreme liberal bias on MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News. 

If George W. Bush had tried to hand Rupert Murdoch 25 million dollars the liberals would have yelled and screamed about it for years.

But when Barack Obama hands his friends at General Electric 25 million dollars hardly anyone notices.

The truth is that both political parties are deeply corrupt and the way that the game of politics is played in this country needs to be seriously reformed.

Is Donald Trump going to run for president in 2012?  Don't laugh.  It just might happen.  Up until now the truth is that very few people would have conceived that Donald Trump could possibly be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2012, but now Trump says that he is "absolutely thinking about it".

Yes, you read that correctly.

Regarding a potential run for president, on Tuesday Trump told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the following....

"I can tell you this - for the first time in my life, I am absolutely thinking about it."

In other words, fire up the engines because Trump is ready to rumble.

Of course he is not fully committing himself yet, as he added the following caveat during the same interview....

"I don't know that I'll do it. It's probable that I won't do it. But I can tell you, I'm thinking about it."

Now Trump will probably run a bunch of polls in states with early primaries to see if his candidacy would be viable.

In fact, all of this recent speculation has been brought on by a New Hampshire poll in which voters were asked 30 questions regarding their thoughts on Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2012.

Trump is denying that he was involved in the poll, but he says that he is very interested in seeing what the results were.

Apparently they were quite favorable for Trump.

So would he definitely run as a Republican?

Yes.

"If I were interested, I'd be a Republican," Trump told Time during a recent interview.

So is this actually going to happen?

Well, we will see.

But for now, Trump is at least talking like a candidate....

"We are losing this country. This country will not be great if something isn't done rapidly."

Apparently there have been some people that have been urging Donald Trump to run for president for years....

"I am being serious about it. I've been asked for years to do it. And I had no interest. This is the first time I am -- at least I'm considering it."

So would Trump position himself as a mainstream Republican or a Tea Party Republican?

The answer might not be as clear cut as many would think....

"I am a Republican but have great respect for what the Tea Party has done because they have brought to light what's going on. I mean, we have trillion-dollar deficits. ... The country is going bankrupt, let's face it."

In the end, Trump is going to do what is right for Trump.  Anyone with the kind of monolithic ego and the massive resources that Donald Trump possesses is going to be tempted to make a run for the White House at some point.  There seems little doubt that Donald Trump actually believes that he is fully capable of being the president of the United States.

So really, only one question remains.

Is Donald Trump going to run for president in 2012?

We won't get that answer for a while, but it sure would be entertaining.

Today, many among America's liberal ruling class have openly declared war on the U.S. Constitution. It turns out that the U.S. Constitution just does not fit well with the radical green agenda and European-style socialism that they are trying to impose on all of us. In particular, many in America's ruling class are deeply alarmed about the rise of the Patriot and Tea Party movements in recent years. Both of these movements stress fidelity to the U.S. Constitution and to the values that our founding fathers founded this nation on. Unfortunately for America's liberal ruling class, the values of our founding fathers were completely contrary to the direction that they are trying to take us in. They tend to portray our founding fathers as racist, sexist, homophobic neanderthals who did the best they could at the time. They insist on referring to our Constitution as a "living, breathing document", which is code for saying that they feel free to alter the meaning of it any time they wish, because after all, they know better. The truth is that the U.S. Constitution stands in the way of what America's ruling class is trying to accomplish, and so now many of them have actually resorted to openly trashing it.

These days you will rarely hear any liberal speak of the founding fathers with any kind of veneration whatsoever. At best, they will make excuses for them, and at worst they will openly mock and attack them.

The most recent round of Constitution bashing began with a Constitution Day lecture by Michael Klarman of Harvard University Law School at Johns Hopkins University on September 16th. His address was entitled "A Skeptical View of Constitution Worship", and it was a scathing attack on the U.S. Constitution.

Now keep in mind that this is someone from Harvard University Law School that is making these remarks.  At Harvard University Law School many of the future Obamas, Bushes and Supreme Court Justices of the world are being educated.  In many ways, Harvard University Law School is one of the pinnacles of the U.S. education system.

So the remarks you are about to read were not made by some radical professor at some obscure university.  These remarks were made by someone deeply embedded in the establishment.

In another day and age remarks like the ones you are about to read would have caused national outrage.  Klarman would have immediately lost his job and would never be put in a position to teach others ever again.  But today the world is a much different place.

The following excerpt from Klarman's speech summarizes his four key points about "constitutional idolatry"....

I have four points I want to make today against constitutional idolatry, which is my label for our misguided tendency to blindly worship the Constitution, giving it credit for all the things we love and honor about our country.

(4) The rights protections we do enjoy today, the importance of which I do not minimize, are mostly a function of political and social mores, which have dramatically evolved over time and owe relatively little to courts using the Constitution to protect them.

As you read through the rest of Klarman's speech, you can almost feel the hate that he has for the U.S. Constitution rising off the page.  You can find a full transcript of the speech right here.

A columnist writing for The Economist picked up on Klarman's remarks and published an article with this disturbing headline: "The Perils Of Constitution-Worship".  It is an open secret that The Economist has deep ties to America's liberal ruling elite and the big money interests behind them, and so it was only natural for them to jump on the bandwagon.

Right away the article in The Economist made it abundantly clear who the real targets of the article were....

At almost any tea-party meeting you can expect to see some patriot brandishing a copy of the hallowed texts and calling, with trembling voice, for a prodigal America to redeem itself by returning to its “founding principles”.

Yes, the liberal elite love to bash Tea Partiers.  They represent everything that the liberal elite believe is wrong with America.  In the article, those who support the Tea Party and believe in the U.S. Constitution are portrayed as "infantile"....

Indeed, there is something infantile in the belief of the constitution-worshippers that the complex political arguments of today can be settled by simple fidelity to a document written in the 18th century.

According to the article, when we revere the Constitution and the values that this nation was founded upon, apparently "truth is the victim"....

When history is turned into scripture and men into deities, truth is the victim. The framers were giants, visionaries and polymaths. But they were also aristocrats, creatures of their time fearful of what they considered the excessive democracy taking hold in the states in the 1780s. They did not believe that poor men, or any women, let alone slaves, should have the vote. Many of their decisions, such as giving every state two senators regardless of population, were the product not of Olympian sagacity but of grubby power-struggles and compromises—exactly the sort of backroom dealmaking, in fact, in which today’s Congress excels and which is now so much out of favour with the tea-partiers.

But the Constitution bashing was not done yet.  Just a few days ago Joshua Keating had an article entitled "Are Americans Too Constitution Obsessed?" published on the website of Foreign Policy - the official magazine of The Council on Foreign Relations.  Considering the fact that every single U.S. Secretary of State since the 1950s has been a member of the CFR, it is very disturbing that they feel free to bash the U.S. Constitution as well.  In fact, those who know the history of the CFR know that it has an absolutely enormous amount of influence over the U.S. government.

In the article, Keating makes the following statement....     

I also suspect most Americans don't realize quite how old the Constitution is by world standards.

And that is what liberals want us to think - that the U.S. Constitution is archaic, that it is outdated and that it simply does not work in the modern society that we are now living in.

But they are wrong. 

A republic can still work in 2010.

Individual freedom and liberty can still work in 2010.

Limited government can still work in 2010.

The Bill of Rights can still work in 2010.

But liberals are becoming increasingly open about the fact that they want to take all of those things away from us.  They are no longer afraid to publicly bash the U.S. Constitution. 

In fact, many of them are willing to do just about anything to impose their version of a politically correct socialist paradise on all of us.

A war on the U.S. Constitution has been declared.

Will the American people rise to defend it, or are we about to lose the Republic that our founding fathers fought and died for permanently?