A woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries, authorities said.
(but to me, here's the kicker.)
"The store remained open and those not affected by the pepper spray continued shopping."
Have we all gone mad?
Why, yes we have.
WSJ: WSJ.com: Economics Blog - two dozen black friday shopping posts by WSJ Staff
Atlantic: Big Box Brother: While You Shop the Mall, the Mall Shops You
FDR Once Moved Thanksgiving Up A Week For Retailers, And Other Interesting Facts About Black Friday - Black Friday is when stores set the tone for the holiday shopping season, making it one of the most important days of the year for retailers
CBSNews: Shooting outside Calif. Walmart, 1 wounded - A shooting victim is in critical but stable condition after being accosted by would-be thieves in the parking lot of a Walmart store early Friday morning, police said.
MSNBC: Black Friday violence: 2 shot in armed robberies, 15 others pepper-sprayed
thanks to RJ for the following link. Enjoy.
NakedCapitalism: Black Friday Antidote: George Carlin on Advertising and Consumerism
Make sure you go by and visit RJ's blog this afternoon, you can find him at..
Global Glass Onion.
Also, hello and thanks to our dear friend the Ozarker! Howdy Ozarker!
She usually posts essays on her blog on Saturday afternoon and you should make it a point to go visit her at Conflicted Doomer.
Also, I put up a link in the sidebar, to another great news site but I'm afraid you might miss it, it's 3Es news. A great site for collection of news links of interest to just about anyone, and it's run by a nice fellow trying to make a difference, give him your support!
Oh, and last but certainly not least, never forget the great and informative forums linked everyday at the bottom of the post!
Global Conflict
BlacklistedNews: Libyan Rebels Imprison 7,000 In “Reign of Terror”
IBTimes: Libya: Up to 7,000 People Illegally Detained - Militias groups that have emerged during the Libyan conflict are illegally detaining thousands of people, including women and children, who they say are "enemies of the state", according to a U.N. report.
CNN: Egypt's military vows elections will go ahead as scheduled
MSNBC: US urges civilian Egypt government as soon as possible
GlobeandMail: Triple bombings in Iraqi oil city kill 19
VancouverSun: Cairo clashes pause as military apologizes for deaths
WashingtonPost: NKorea steps up rhetoric, threatens to turn SKorea’s presidential office into ‘sea of fire’
TheTelegraph: Egypt: former Mubarak man appointed prime minister - A former prime minister of Hosni Mubarak’s has accepted a request from Egypt’s ruling generals to form a new government, reports claim.
FT: Hamas and Fatah hail new partnership
BlacklistedNews: Iran Arrests 12 CIA Agents ‘Planning Attacks’
SydneyMorningHerald: Russia takes Cold War tone with US on European missile defence
CNN: 3 American students freed in Egypt
Time: Is Turkey Using the Courts to Silence Critics? - As 13 defendants, including two well-known journalists, go on trial on charges of seeking to overthrow the government
CNN: What's behind the furor in Pakistan? - Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has set off a political firestorm in Pakistan with his claims that he was brokering an offer from Pakistan's civilian leaders to the Pentagon to unseat the leadership of the Pakistani military.
CNN: 26 bodies found in western Mexico
Atlantic: U.S. Plan for a 'New Silk Road' Faces a Big Speed Bump: Iran - The Obama administration wants to promote trade along the ancient route that once went through Iran
CNN: North Korea threatens 'a sea of fire'
WSJ: Turkey Threatens Syria with Sanctions
CNN: Yemen clashes rage on after president quits
VancouverSun: Arabs give Syria new ultimatum, call for UN support
Hosted: Arab League: Syria misses observer deadline
IBTimes: Half of Americans Would Bomb Iran if Sanctions Fail: Poll
OWS
Raw Video: NY Occupy Organizers Give Thanks
CNN: Occupy protesters celebrate Thanksgiving
AlJazeera: Pepper spray nation - The viral video of Lt John Pike casually pepper-spraying a line of peacefully seated student protesters has deep resonance for the Civil Rights generation. It's impossible to escape comparisons to Bull Connor ordering the use of fire hoses on the black youth of Birmingham on May 3, 1963. Pike sprays the students' faces as if they were cockroaches, many have said. The youth of Birmingham were sprayed with such force that some were knocked over like paper dolls. But it was segregation that was about to fall. The UC Davis students face a much more formidable foe, not least because it is harder to define. But their sacrificial courage holds the promise of helping to change that.
FDL: Live Blog for #Occupy Movement: Thanksgiving Day
FDL: Occupy Gives Hope to Struggling Americans This Thanksgiving
BusinessInsider: UBS Still Hasn't Managed To Evict The Protesters Squatting In Its Unused Building
It looks like the members of Occupy London, a movement inspired by Occupy Wall Street, will remain in their recently "re-possessed" UBS bank...
Financial News
Reuters: Worried US shoppers greet 'Black Friday' sales
TheGuardian: In today's debt crisis, Germany is the US of 1931 - Germany's own history shows that dictating economic decline to other nations only stores up trouble for the future
Libya's new oil chief Abdulrahman Ben Yazza is a long-time oil industry insider, with experience working for Italy's Eni. (He's such a nobody there aren't any pictures of him on the internet.)
Guardian: It is not inevitable that the EU – or democracy – will survive this messEurope may well muddle through with technocrats and tighter straitjackets, but the rule of the people must be guarded
Are we all doomed? America's fiscal democracy this week collapsed in disarray. The Arab spring ran out of steam. Emergency regimes have taken power in Greece and Italy, while Germany could not sell a third of its bonds. Salvation, according to Europe's desperate "leader", José Manuel Barroso, can only lie in "stronger governance in the euro area, both in discipline and in convergence". He wants nation states to submit draft budgets of their taxing and spending to him for oversight, to be subject to Brussels' "enhanced surveillance".
NakedCapitalism: We Speak on PBS Newshour About Why No Bank Executives Have Gone to Jail
BusinessInsider: If You Own At Least 5 Ferraris, This New Elite Club Is For You
Guardian: Fear sweeps markets as Merkel rules out ECB intervention
Zerohedge: Spanish Treasury Cancels New 3Y Auction
CNBC: Some States Are Facing Revenue Shortfall—Again
Reuters: "Awful" Italy debt sale heightens euro zone stress
BusinessInsider: European Banks Frantically Trying To Dump $7 Trillion Of Crap Assets -- But No One Will Buy Them
WSJ: A Bit of Cheer Turns Sour
Zerohedge: Deutsche Bank Exercises In MADness: "Crisis Likely To Get Worse Before It Can Get Better... If Indeed It Ever Does"
TheBurningPlatform: Defense Cuts - Another Big Lie - If you follow the headlines, and believe them, you would probably think that defense spending is about to be slashed to the bone following the collapse of the “super committee”. Defense secretary Leon Panetta is warning of a “doomsday” scenario for national security spending. Congressman Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, warns that automatic cuts will end up “crippling our military.” There’s just one problem. It’s total nonsense. What Washington calls a “cut” is really just a more modest increase than you were expecting.
Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, says that under these alleged post-committee “cuts” defense spending is actually forecast to rise from 2012 to 2021 by 16%, from $695 billion to $818 billion. Boy, that’s some cut! The Pentagon had been expecting a 23% rise, and in Washington a slow increase is called a “cut.” But even if we get some inflation ahead, she says, the worst case scenario under the current plans is to a see “a freeze in real terms.” Yes, Congress in the future may decide to cut defense spending. Credit Suisse analysts are penciling in reductions down the road. But nobody knows. And I think they are giving our political system too much credit.
EconomistsView: Europe Can't Move Fast Enough to Halt Crisis
Bloomberg: The People vs. Private Equity - Pension funds have always had all the money. So why did it take them so long to take control?
BusinessInsider: 5 Easy Ways To Give Back—Even When You're Flat Broke - The holiday season often inspires a warm feeling of wanting to give back, however the 9 percent unemployment rate might kill the mood altogether.
ExtinctionProtocol: Rise of Economic Absolutism: EU demands right to dictate national budgets
Zerohedge: Pictures From A Latvian Bank Run As MF Global Commingling Comes To Town
Krugman: The Apocalypse Trade - I really wasn’t planning on blogging on Thanksgiving Day. But what’s going on in Europe deserves a mention. So, the big story: German bonds are now being priced as a risky asset — what the FT calls the “apocalypse trade“. The interest rate on bunds, at 2.21% as I write this, is still very low by historical standards. But it’s above the rate on UK bonds (2.17%) and way above the rate on US bonds (1.88%). The way to see this is that the market is in effect pricing in a real possibility of eurozone collapse. In particular, market expectations seem to assume that the ECB will remain utterly indifferent to its responsibilities. The German breakeven rate, an implicit forecast of inflation over the next 5 years, is just 1 percent. That’s a disaster level, implying severe deflation in the debtor nations — or, more likely, a euro breakup. Awesome all around.
WSJ: Portugal Hit by Downgrade and Strike
Bloomberg: Germany Buys Itself First-Class Ticket on Titanic
NYT: Economic Trouble in the West Shows Signs of Catching Up With Asia - Asia’s ability to stay resilient amid the West’s economic troubles is slowly waning.
DealBook: Wall St. Layoffs Take Heavy Toll on Younger Workers - Being young on Wall Street once meant having it all: style, smarts and too much money to spend wisely. Now, twenty-somethings in the finance industry are losing both cash and cachet.
BusinessInsider: The Clearest Sign Yet That Europe Has Entered A Dangerous New Phase
Zerohedge: Behold The New Anschluss: ECB's Paramo - "Prepare To Give Up Significant Sovereignty"
BusinessInsider: Using Groupon Isn't Saving You Any Money
BusinessInsider: Using Groupon Isn't Saving You Any Money
Zerohedge: "This Is The Problem" - Charting The Cash Supply-Demand Crunch In Europe
NationofChange: How We Can Succeed Through Supercommittee’s ‘Failure’ - Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing. That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away. Knowing this, are you still sure that a “failure” by the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal would be such a disaster? I
NationofChange: How We Can Succeed Through Supercommittee’s ‘Failure’ - Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing. That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away. Knowing this, are you still sure that a “failure” by the congressional supercommittee to reach a deal would be such a disaster? I
MarketWatch: Fitch cuts Portugal credit rating to junk status - Fitch Ratings on Thursday cut Portugal's sovereign credit rating to BB-plus from BBB-minus, putting the country's rating in junk status. The rating carries a negative outlook, which means a further cut is possible.
Zerohedge: Hungary 'Junked' By Moody's
FT: US banks scale back mortgage collection - Many large US banks are scaling back their mortgage-collection operations, once-lucrative businesses that face heightened scrutiny as the new consumer finance regulator vows to step up its oversight of the industry.
Reuters: Moody's cuts Hungary to "junk," government sees attack - Credit rating agency Moody's cut Hungary's debt to "junk" grade late on Thursday, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban's unorthodox economic policies and prompting his government to denounce the move as a "financial attack."
Krugman: Death By Accounting Identity - Martin Wolf has a somewhat despairing-sounding column this morning, in effect pleading with the Cameron government to admit that the laws of arithmetic must apply. Good luck with that.
AsiaSentinel: The Rich Get Richer Off the Backs of the Poor - The boys in the suspenders figure out a new way to manufacture money
CNNMoney: Hey, America! It's Black Friday - Larger - and younger - crowds jam the nation's malls and big box stores on Black Friday. Larger - and younger - crowds jam the nation's malls and big box stores on Black Friday.
FT: US banks scale back mortgage collection - Many large US banks are scaling back their mortgage-collection operations, once-lucrative businesses that face heightened scrutiny as the new consumer finance regulator vows to step up its oversight of the industry.
Reuters: Moody's cuts Hungary to "junk," government sees attack - Credit rating agency Moody's cut Hungary's debt to "junk" grade late on Thursday, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban's unorthodox economic policies and prompting his government to denounce the move as a "financial attack."
Krugman: Death By Accounting Identity - Martin Wolf has a somewhat despairing-sounding column this morning, in effect pleading with the Cameron government to admit that the laws of arithmetic must apply. Good luck with that.
AsiaSentinel: The Rich Get Richer Off the Backs of the Poor - The boys in the suspenders figure out a new way to manufacture money
CNNMoney: Hey, America! It's Black Friday - Larger - and younger - crowds jam the nation's malls and big box stores on Black Friday. Larger - and younger - crowds jam the nation's malls and big box stores on Black Friday.
Peak oil and Energy News
Reuters: Google Quits Plans to Make Cheap Renewable Energy - Says other institutions better placed to carry on effort
EnergyBulletin: Bringing It Down To Earth
TheBarrel: Keystone XL's demise wouldn't be the end of the world, according to this view
Bloomberg: For Big Oil, a Cautionary Kazakh Tale - Exxon, Shell, Total, and others are over budget on a megaproject in the Caspian Sea off Kazakhstan's coast
MSNBC: Who pays most for electricity? - Good Graph Friday: To save on your electric bill, move to Utah
TheBulletinofAtomicScientists: The myth of renewable energy
Reuters: Brazil suspends Chevron's drilling rights - Brazil's government suspended Chevron Corp's drilling rights until Chevron clarifies the causes of an offshore oil spill, the latest twist in a political firestorm threatening the U.S. company's role in Brazil's oil bonanza.
Commodities/Metals
Mineweb: Physical buying propping up gold prices
Mineweb: Rio Tinto, Chinalco JV to hunt for copper in China
Environmental News
M 4.8, Near North Coast of Irian Jaya
ExtinctionProtocol: White smoke billows from summit of Anak Krakatau - Indonesia’s Mount Anak Krakatau volcano has been puffing white smoke the last few days, and scientists are warning locals and tourists to keep away.
SOLAR ECLIPSE: This morning, the new Moon passed in front of the sun producing a partial solar eclipse over Earth's southern hemisphere. Sky watchers in Antarctica and parts of New Zealand and South Africa witnessed the solar disk turning into a crescent as slender as 9%. Images and more information are highlighted on today's edition of Spaceweather.com.
e360.Yale: China’s Appetite for Wood Takes a Heavy Toll on Forests
MSNBC: Snowless Scandinavians wonder 'where's winter?' - Weather experts say this fall is on track to become one of the warmest on record
EnergyBulletin: Fracking Gas = Climate Crash
DesdemonaDespair: New Zealand crews pump all oil from stranded ship – Clean-up to take months
LegitGov: Massive swathes of rainforest threatened by Brazilian bill
Time: Life in the Time of the Great Dying: What Earth's Last Mass Extinction...
ActivistPost: Suffolk Co. NY to hear proposal to ban chemtrails
NewScientist: Zoologger: 'Werewolf birds' hook up by the full moon
Spiegel: UN Extreme Weather Report Triggers Storm of Protest - In mid-November, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report on extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods and heat waves. But its emphasis on the uncertainty of its predictions has enraged scientists and activists alike, just days before the UN Climage Change Conference in Durban.
VancouverSun: Arctic losing ice on unprecedented scale: study
AlJazeera: In Pictures: Murderous monsoon - Months of heavy rains have killed hundreds of people and left millions of others homeless and helpless.
America in Decline
SOTT: US: Parents Sue D.A. for Charging Their 6-Year-Old Son With a Felony After He Played Doctor With a 5-Year-Old Girl
CommonDreams: Our F— You System of Government - Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn’t pretend to try. Sick? Too bad. Can’t find a job? Tough. Broke? Can’t afford rent? We don’t give a crap. Forget “e pluribus unum.” We need a more accurate motto. We live under a f— you system. Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f— you.
MSNBC: 45 percent in US struggle to make ends meet
'This is a wake-up call for Congress, for our state policy-makers, really for all of us'
HeraldTribune: Editorial: An even greater need for sharing
Slate: Welcome To Austerityville - To get to city hall, you drive up I-75, past the empty Silverdome where the Detroit Lions used to play, and into a nondescript concrete municipal building. The city clerk was laid off a few days ago, but the door to her office hangs open. The mayor, Leon Jukowski, gives me a brief tour of the desks where people no longer work. Cubicles sit empty, little tchotkes and calendars left behind when their owners were laid off. The unemployment rate in Pontiac is pegged at 25 percent. In 2009, as GM restructured under a government bailout, it shuttered its plant in Pontiac and ceased production on the line of cars named after the city, calling it a “damaged brand.” So what happens to the people that the city lays off? “Some of them go on unemployment,” says Jukowski. “Some of them, like the police, keep their jobs because they merge with the county. Most of them are out on the street.
Food and Water
Reuters: Is U.S. farm boom sitting on an ethanol bubble? - Grain farmers in the Midwest may want to pinch themselves. In recent years they have been buoyed by a dream scenario. Record high prices. Record high profits. Record high farmland values. Near record production. Farm debts paid off. "Historically agriculture has been asset rich, cash flow poor, profit poor. This time we are asset rich and profit rich. That makes for a very combustible brew," said David Kohl, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech. "It's a super cycle. It's only happened four times in the past 100 years," Kohl told U.S. agricultural bankers at their annual meeting this month. But can it last? Analysts often cite the rise of China and India as the main driver of the boom, with their hundreds of millions of hungry and wealthier consumers lining up at the table for grain from the United States, the largest food exporter in the world. But the single biggest consumer which has changed the game in farm country in recent years is closer to home: ethanol.
BigPictureAgriculture: Lester Brown on Global Meat Consumption Trends
Science and Technology
PsyOrg: Pluto's hidden ocean - When NASA's New Horizons cruises by Pluto in 2015, the images it captures could help astronomers determine if an ocean is hiding under the frigid surface, opening the door to new possibilities for liquid water to exist on other bodies in the solar system. New research has not only concluded such an ocean is likely, but also has highlighted features the spacecraft could identify that could help confirm an ocean’s existence.
PsyOrg: Scientists are developing a computer that can read vast amounts of scientific literature, make connections between facts and develop hypotheses.
ArchaeologyNewsNetwork: Romulus and Remus symbol of Rome a medieval fake?
Cryptogon: The Surveillance Catalog
ScientificAmerican: Amping Up Brain Function: Transcranial Stimulation Shows Promise in Speeding Up Learning
Medical and Health
ScientificAmerican: Eating Turkey Does Not Really Make You Sleepy
NakedCapitalism: Peak Life Expectancy? - Yves Smith - This post from MacroBusiness points to a development that has (predictably) gone largely unreported in America, namely, that life expectancy is declining.
LegitGov: CDC confirms cases of new swine flu virus
Vitals: New flu virus in three Iowa kids raises concern about wider spread
Wired: Antibiotics: Connected to Obesity, Diabetes and Stroke?
KurzweilAI: Lab-grown implanted neurons fuse with brain circuitry
Economix: The Supreme Court and Health Care - For decades Americans have been served, in the print media and on television, with sorry vignettes of fellow Americans who have seen their health-insurance premiums increased or lost their insurance coverage altogether because illness struck or were denied coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions. As a result, these Americans may find themselves hounded by bill collectors on behalf of the doctors and hospitals who treated them. One major illness can wipe out their lifetime savings, house included. Sometime in 2012, probably just before its current term ends at the end of June, the Supreme Court will decide whether Americans will just have to live with that problem, or, alternatively, like citizens in virtually any other industrialized country, they will have the right to have this problem lifted off their shoulders.
WikiHow: How to Make a Sling for Your Arm
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
SHTFPlan: Survival Sales Jump Amid Worries of “Possible Collapse”
Wired: Three Smart Things About Gun Silencers
Inhabitat: Food Demand to Double by 2050, Urban Agriculture to Become Increasingly Important
Other News
Dispatch: 7 Amish now face federal hate-crime charges
BusinessInsider: Guys Change Tires While Driving
NYDailyNews: Latest accusation says former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky may have sexually abused one of his grandchildren: lawyer. One victim asks court to bar The Second Mile charity from moving assets
SOTT: US: Mystery in Bridgewater, NJ: What Caused Strange Glowing Lights in the Sky?
LegitGov: School lockdown: Facebook post causes scare at Bristol Central
ExtinctionProtocol: Report of seizures linked with Breaking Dawn movie
BusinessInsider: The British Prime Minister Is Clearly Pretending To Care About Gay Rights For The Votes
LegitGov: Bradley Manning's defence plans to call 50 witnesses
Time: Why Russian Cinemas Shun the Khodorkovsky Documentary - Jailed oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky isn't going to be released anytime soon. And in Russia, neither is the film about his arrest
SaltLakeTribune: Survival student rescued from quicksand in rural UtahGood: Instead of Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day, make something today! Six quick DIY ideas.
StraitsTimes: Vietnam police 'fish' for dangerous riders - It gives a whole new meaning to the term 'police drag-net' - authorities in Vietnam have been using giant fishing nets to stop reckless bikers in their tracks, an officer said on Friday.
Politics
SHTFPlan: Paul Vs. Gingrich on Patriot Act, Liberty, and Security
Politico: Under Perry Texas gets plenty of federal money
The Forums
TinfoilPalace: What would You do?
TinfoilPalace: Happy Thanksgiving- Rush Limbaugh: Socialism Nearly Killed the Pilgrims
TheOilAge: Russia Threatens to Pull Out of START/COMBAT ALERT!
TheOilAge: The Thick Dark Fog
HubbertsArms: Beijing considers response to US diplomatic offensive
HubbertsArms: GEAB N°59 is available! 30,000 billion USD in ghost assets will vanish by 2013
SilentCountry: Apology Not Accepted
SilentCountry: 'World fears US as a war-hungry drunk' - ex-Senator
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