U Not Gonna Like This

This story linked from Men's News Daily:

A Woman's Place Is In The Boardroom
Chris Noon, 09.25.06, 6:00 AM ET

If you’re a woman, rising the corporate ranks is never easy. Unless you live in Norway.

Within the next year, the 510 Norwegian companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange must have 40% of their respective board seats occupied by women. Any company failing to comply will be booted off the OSE. For now, the law passed in 2002 only applies to publicly traded companies. But the government is considering extending the law’s reach to cover family-owned companies as well.

Since the Norwegian government first issued its mandate, things have improved. The number of companies in compliance has risen from 17.5% to 29.6%. Still, the country’s companies need to get cracking. Nearly 33% of public companies don’t have a single woman board member. And as of July 1, only 151 of 510 firms on the OSE meet the 40% representation rule. The number of women in top jobs isn’t good. Out of 562 women who are board members in the country, only 11 are chairmen of the board, and 15 are deputy chairmen.

More on the New World Order from the August Review:

Toward a North American Union
Volume 6, Issue 5
By: Patrick Wood
Editor, The August Review

Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad?
Lou Dobbs on Lou Dobbs Tonight, June 9, 2005

Introduction

The global elite, through the direct operations of President George Bush and his Administration, are creating a North American Union that will combine Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a superstate called the North American Union (NAU). The NAU is roughly patterned after the European Union (EU). There is no political or economic mandate for creating the NAU, and unofficial polls of a cross-section of Americans indicate that they are overwhelmingly against this end-run around national sovereignty.

To answer Lou Dobbs, "No, the political elites have not gone mad", they just want you to think that they have.

The reality over appearance is easily cleared up with a proper historical perspective of the last 35 years of political and economic manipulation by the same elite who now bring us the NAU.

This paper will explore this history in order to give the reader a complete picture of the NAU, how it is made possible, who are the instigators of it, and where it is headed.

It is important to first understand that the impending birth of the NAU is a gestation of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, not the Congress. This is the topic of the first discussion below.

The next topic will examine the global elite's strategy of subverting the power to negotiate trade treaties and international law with foreign countries from the Congress to the President. Without this power, NAFTA and the NAU would never have been possible.

After this, we will show that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the immediate genetic and necessary ancestor of the NAU.

Lastly, throughout this report the NAU perpetrators and their tactics will be brought into the limelight so as to affix blame where it properly belongs. The reader will be struck with the fact that the same people are at the center of each of these subjects.

The Best Government that Money Can Buy

Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from north America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was to foster a "New International Economic Order" that would supplant the historical economic order.

In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission nonetheless established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S. government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently, when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third of the U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral Commission's domination of the Executive Branch that continues to the present day.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Trilateral Commission member George H.W. Bush was introduced to the White House as vice-president. Through Bush's influence, Reagan continued to select key appointments from the ranks of the Trilateral Commission.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as President. He was followed by fellow Trilateral Commission member William Jefferson Clinton, who served for 8 years as President and appointed fourteen fellow Trilateral members to his Administration.

The election of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no surprise. Although Bush was not a member of the Trilateral Commission, his vice-president Dick Cheney is. In addition, Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, is also a member of the Commission in her own right.

The hegemony of the Trilateral Commission over the Executive Branch of the U.S. government is unmistakable. Critics argue that this scenario is merely circumstantial, that the most qualified political "talent" quite naturally tends to belong to groups like the Trilateral Commission in the first place. Under examination, such explanations are quite hollow.

Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch? Quite simply - Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully platform to modify political behavior throughout the world.

Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated.

Modern Day "World Order" Strategy

After its founding in 1973, Trilateral Commission members wasted no time in launching their globalist strategy. But, what was that strategy?

Richard Gardner was an original member of the Trilateral Commission, and one of the prominent architects of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, his article "The Hard Road to World Order" appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. With obvious disdain for anyone holding nationalistic political views, Gardner proclaimed,

"In short, the 'house of world order' would have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion,' to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."1 [emphasis added]

In Gardner's view, using treaties and trade agreements (such as General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or GATT) would bind and supercede constitutional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has happened. In addition, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national sovereignty of individual nations.

Gardner concluded that "the case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of 'sovereignty' that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis"

Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would eventually capitulate its sovereignty to the newly proposed world order. It is not specifically mentioned who would control this new order, but it is quite obvious that the only 'players' around are Gardner and his Trilateral cronies.

And this story from Lou Dobbs:

DOBBS: Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country's fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico.

Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada.

Christine Romans has the report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country.

ROBERT PASTOR, IND. TASK FORCE ON NORTH AMERICA: The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada, but at the borders of North America as a whole.

ROMANS: That's the view in a report called "Building a North American Community." It envisions a common border around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three countries, and a freer flow of goods and people.
Task force member Robert Pastor.

PASTOR: What we hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America, so as to ease the travel of people within North America.

ROMANS: Buried in 49 pages of recommendations from the task force, the brief mention, "We must maintain respect for each other's sovereignty." But security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that sovereignty.

FRANK GAFFNEY, CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: That's what would happen if anybody serious were to embrace this strategy for homogenizing the United States and its sovereignty with the very different systems existing today in Canada and Mexico.

ROMANS: Especially considering Mexico's problems with drug trafficking, human smuggling and poverty. Critics say the country is just too far behind the U.S. and Canada to be included in a so-called common community. But the task force wants military and law enforcement cooperation between all three countries.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Indeed, an exchange of personnel that bring Canadians and Mexicans into the Department of Homeland Security.

ROMANS: And it wants temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility of labor between the three countries in the next five years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union. Yet, just this week, voters in two major countries in the European Union voted against upgrading -- updating the European constitution. So clearly, this is not the best week to be trying to sell that idea.

DOBBS: Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don't have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It's astonishing.

ROMANS: The theory here is that we are stronger together, three countries in one, rather than alone.

DOBBS: Well, it's a -- it's a mind-boggling concept. Christine Romans, thank you, as always.

This post on the outdated New York State court system from the Judical Watch Blog Corruption Chronicles:

New York’s Medieval Justice

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Serious abuses occur daily in small-town courts throughout New York State that practice dark-ages justice led by judges with no formal education and little knowledge or regard for the law.

A lengthy newspaper expose details how New York’s town and village courts regularly violate basic rights and often close their doors to the public. The incompetent judges are not lawyers but rather truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers with little knowledge of even the most basic legal principles.

The 1,250 town and village courts have nearly 2,000 part-time justices that serve from the suburbs of New York City to the farm towns of Niagara Falls. The courts are officially part of the state court system and the State Commission on Judicial Conduct is responsible for disciplining the outlaw judges but seldom does.

Cases of wrongdoing are rampant and include a Montgomery County judge who closed his court to the public and let prosecutors run proceedings for two decades, a Westchester County judge who warned police not to arrest his political buddies for driving drunk and a Delaware County judge who had been convicted of having sex with a mentally retarded woman in his care.

Perhaps one longtime judge, a phone-company repairman, in the tiny town of Dannemora helped summarize the sentiment among his peers in the small courts when he said “I just follow my own common sense and the hell with the law.”

Incredibly enough, New York is one of 30 states that still use this outdated and seldom regulated local court system that was originally created to keep peace in the Colonial days when lawyers were scarce. Justices are not screened for competence, knowledge of law, temperament or even reading ability. They are simply elected and usually keep their often tainted records from going public. One longtime prosecutor calls it a “closed door, back of someone’s house, in the barn, in the highway department, no record” justice system.

More from the NY Times article that was quoted in the Corruption Chronicals post:

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: September 25, 2006

Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge’s bench or jury box. Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.

A yearlong investigation by The New York Times of the life and history of New York State’s town and village courts found a long trail of judicial abuses and errors — and of governmental failure to curb them.

Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school.

But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine.

This from the Laptop America Newsletter:

North American Union docs exposed via FOIA:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce slated to implement NAU!

Judicial Watch, the public interest organization that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law, today released records obtained under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce concerning the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America."
On July 19, we wrote about the SPP and asked our members to send in FOIA requests asking to see the exact agreement signed by President Bush, Vicente Fox and the ex-Canadian Prime Minister. Your response was overwhelming!

On August 23, we reported back that many of you who sent in your FOIA requests had received basically an invoice from the government demanding money before they released the requested documents. We hit the FOIA oversight committee hard declaring FOIA responses should be free.
Why is the FOIA process so important?

Let these two examples from Judicial Watch answer this question:

1. The Commerce Department provided substantial documentation concerning the North American Competitiveness Council. The council consists of 30 members, 10 each from the United States, Mexico and Canada. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Council of the Americas "agreed to jointly lead the U.S. Secretariat."

2. The North American Competitiveness Council recommends that the North American "partnership" include advice on how to handle an international disease outbreak: "It is also essential that throughout a pandemic all borders and major roads remain open" With respect to border enforcement, the council recommends that, "A reasonable grace period should be established at border crossings, during which time people lacking documents are educated about their options and allowed to pass." The council also makes recommendations on energy issues such as the "enhanced integration of the Mexican [electricity] grid with that of the United States."

Using the FOIA process, we now know that the Chamber of Commerce is helping to lead the NAU and the SPP into existence and that open borders and infrastructure integration are two goals of the SPP.

According to their website: The U.S. Chamber is a non-profit membership organization representing the unified interests of U.S. business before Congress, government agencies, and the courts.

Here is part of the Immigration Issue statement from the Chamber of Commerce: In 2006, the Chamber will work to pass comprehensive, fair immigration reform that along with improved border security will:

Provide an earned pathway to legalization for undocumented workers already contributing to our economy, provided that they are law-abiding and prepared to embrace the obligations and values of our society.

Create a carefully monitored guest worker program to fill the growing gaps in America's workforce recognizing that, in some cases, permanent immigrants will be needed to fill these gaps.

Is this what the America people want? Guest workers? Undocumented workers? Does anyone remember Amnesty?

Is the Chamber of Commerce and all the other organizations identified via the FOIA response working for America?

Our government with the help of the Chamber of Commerce has been hiding the truth from you! See the meeting group here.

Certain politicians didn't want you to know the FACTS surrounding the North American Union and the Security and Prosperity Partnership INTERNATIONAL TREATY signed by President Bush on March 23, 2005 in Waco that was not approved by the U.S. Constitution's requirement of 2/3s approval by the U.S. Senate.

Nor did they want you to learn about the multitude of working groups established in the US Department of Commerce to implement the SPP TREATY.

They certainly didn't want to you to learn about the U.S. Department of Transportation's grant to the business group planning the Trans-TX Corridor route to accommodate cheap Mexican labor at the expense of America's middle class (www.nascocorridor.com) NASCO's aim is to merge America's transportation system with Canada and Mexico, which undermines both our national sovereignty and national security.

But now you know. And we know all of this thanks to access to records under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA).

This from Yahoo Sports:

Golf great Byron Nelson dead at 94
By JAIME ARON, AP Sports Writer
September 26, 2006

IRVING, Texas (AP) -- Byron Nelson, golf's elegant "Lord Byron" whose 11 straight tournament victories in 1945 stand as one of sports' most enduring records, died Tuesday. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. No cause of death was listed on its Web site.


Known for his graceful swing and gentle manner, Nelson had the greatest year in the history of professional golf in 1945 when he won 18 tournaments. He captured 31 of 54 tournaments in 1944-45. Then, at age 34, he retired after the 1946 season to spend more time on his Texas ranch.

"When I was playing regularly, I had a goal," Nelson recalled years later. "I could see the prize money going into the ranch, buying a tractor, or a cow. It gave me incentive."

That incentive pushed Nelson to become one of the best players of his era. He won the Masters in 1937 and '42, the U.S. Open in 1939 and the PGA Championship in 1940 and '45.

He also finished second once in the U.S. Open, twice in the Masters and three times in the PGA. Nelson played in British Open only twice, finishing fifth in 1937.

Nelson's long, fluid swing is considered the model of the modern way to strike a golf ball and his kind, caring style with fans and competitors made him one of the most well-liked people in sports.

"I don't know very much," Nelson said in a 1997 interview with The Associated Press. "I know a little bit about golf. I know how to make a stew. And I know how to be a decent man."

His second British Open was in 1955, when he was no longer a serious competitor, although he did win the French Open on that trip for his last professional victory. His prize money, however, was not enough to pay the hotel bill.

"I had to put up another $200," he told the AP with a huge smile.

Nelson was born Feb. 4, 1912, on the family farm and started in golf in 1922 as a caddie at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth. One year, he won the caddies' championship, defeating Ben Hogan in a playoff.

It was the beginning of a rivalry that never really materialized. Though they were born six months apart, Nelson won all five of his major championships before he was 34 and Hogan won all nine of his after he was 34.

After graduating from high school, Nelson got a job as a file clerk in the accounting office of the Forth Worth and Denver Railroad and played golf in his spare time.

He lost his job during the Great Depression but found work in 1931 with a bankers' magazine. The same year, he entered his first tournament, the National Amateur in Chicago, where he missed qualifying by one stroke. With jobs hard to find, he turned professional in 1932.

Nelson started out competing against Gene Sarazen and lived to see Tiger Woods, an era that went from hickory shafts to titanium heads.

He made an appearance each year at the Masters, joining Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen in hitting the ceremonial first balls, and hosted the Byron Nelson Classic each May.

"I did not ever dream in my wildest imagination there would be as much money or that people would hit the ball so far," Nelson said in his 1997 interview with the AP.

"I only won $182,000 in my whole life," he said. "In 1937, I got fifth-place money at the British Open -- $187 -- and it cost me $3,000 to play because I had to take a one-month leave of absence from my club job to go."

As a hemophiliac, Nelson was excused from military service during World War II. But despite the weak fields, his accomplishments in the war years were astounding.

In 1944, he won 13 of the 23 tournaments he played. The following year he won a record 18 times in 31 starts, including 11 in a row -- also a record. Nelson finished second seven times in 1945, was never out of the top 10 and at one point played 19 consecutive rounds under 70. His stroke average of 68.33 for the season is still the record.

Asked in 1997 how the winning streak affected him financially, Nelson said: "Well, I got some Wheaties, but not until after I had won seven or eight in a row did I get them. And I got 200 bucks."

The attention on Nelson as the streak lengthened grew quicker than the money.

"There wasn't any pressure at first, but it pyramided as the string grew," Nelson remembered. "It got to be like an auction. The headlines would say, `Nelson wins No. 5, can he make it 6?' or `Who can stop Nelson?"'

He was voted AP Male Athlete of the Year in 1944 and 1945. Nelson's 52 PGA Tour victories -- a mark tied by Woods this year -- was fifth on the career list behind Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Hogan and Arnold Palmer. He was elected to the PGA Hall of Fame in 1953 and to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.

In the 1960s he became one of golf's early TV announcers.

Although Nelson continued to play in an occasional tournament after 1946, he retreated to his 673-acre ranch in Roanoke, Texas, and never returned to competitive golf full time.

Nelson developed a widely imitated "Texas style" swing that was upright and compact, unlike some of the unwieldy swings of early players.

"The mechanics of my swing were such that it required no thought," Nelson said. "It's like eating. You don't think to feed yourself. If you have to think about your swing it takes that much away from your scoring concentration."

Nelson, who tutored eight-time major championship winner Tom Watson, had a swing players envied.

"I once watched him hit 20 drivers off a fairway in practice, and the trajectory never varied," recalled Bob Toski, who toured with Nelson and became a famous teacher.

"And he could hit a 1-iron or a 2-iron that carried over 200 yards no more than 15 feet in the air," Toski said. "I've never seen anybody else hit the ball quite the way he did."

I know that people have differing opions about the Motely Fools investment advisors but I think these two articles are worth mentioning:

Prepare For a Gruesome Retirement

By Selena Maranjian
March 3, 2006

It's time for some tough love. I want you to have a comfortable retirement, doing things that you enjoy and things you've always wanted to do. That may mean dining in some fine restaurants, traveling to the Galapagos Islands to see blue-footed boobies, taking your grandchildren to Hershey, Pa., and living in a spiffy retirement community. But judging from some statistics I recently ran across, you're in danger of a retirement that instead features dining on Salisbury steak TV dinners, traveling to the Git'n'Go down the street for a bag of chips, taking your grandchildren to the Salvation Army store with you as you shop for some new clothes, and living in your grouchy daughter's damp basement.

The facts
According to the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), we can be confident that many people will have gruesome retirements. Why? Here's a clue: According to a another survey, 31% of Americans would rather scrub a bathroom than plan for retirement. That's right -- if you've been putting off planning for your retirement, you're not alone.

The Numbers Are In And They Don't Look Good

By Jill Ralph
September 26, 2006

According to the latest Retirement Confidence Survey, nearly 60% of American workers report they've never attempted to calculate their savings needs for retirement. Of the workers who have calculated their savings, 75% report their assets total less than $10,000.

You can't retire on that!
A $10,000 nest egg won't last the average retiree 10 months -- and with the average retirement getting longer and longer, that statistic is meant to scare you. After all, not having a plan is the fastest, easiest, and surest way to a disastrous retirement.

More from Mens News Daily:

He sees that Western civilization is in the midst of a fierce culture war between those who embrace traditional manly values and those who want to change society into a “secular–progressive,” feminist-dominated community. In this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long. The stakes are high and time is not on our side.

In the ongoing struggle for the movement’s heart and soul, “Save the Males” poses the proposition that men must act as such and take charge of our destiny. Calling upon all major organizations and their spokesmen, Doyle argues for ultimate unification of the movement, borrowing the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum” (”From Many, One”); but more immediately and more practically he calls for a much higher degree of cooperation and communication. This entails putting aside petty, egotistic differences and rallying the disparate elements of the fractured men’s/fathers’ movement.

This is from What Men Are Saying About Women possibly from the Forbes forum dedicated to the now infamous "Don't Marry Career Women" article:

Where feminist see Attila the Hun, I see "Death of a Salesmen". The overwhelming majority of men took care of their families above and beyond, and still do as sure as women cooked and cleaned. We have just been slandered, painted by feminist with a brush full of hate. As sure as one can disbelieve that "all men are potential rapists", one can believe that "men abandon their wive's and kids on desert islands filled with lions" LOL.

The article suggest not that we catapult women back to the 50s without being held accountable. It suggests, no it presents opinion, desire in what men want (for a change). It does not suggest that women should no longer work, it moves way beyond that to not caring if they work, but with the understanding that we will no longer bend to their will but seek our own goals and desires. It moves beyond catering to women, to the women's movement, and a man standing up and stating what he wants in a woman, as well as suggesting to other men the right road to happiness.

Men don't see "earning potential" as power in a relationship, just the outside world, because we were never granted such as a tool of power over women. Our income was always directed toward the family. Women see "earning " as power in a relationship, but not in society because that is what they were taught....so they reject the argument of this article based on a false premiss.

This from The Other Side of Kim on corporate America and Free Speech:

First, we have “reeducation”—it’s not enough to stop the behavior, we have to stop the thought behind the action— then comes an official “Watch it, buddy”—followed by execution, in the corporate sense. The difference between this and totalitarian government is that the latter doesn’t bother with all three steps, but uses either one of the first two followed by (inevitably) the third.

Now I’m familiar with the argument that corporations have a right to determine behavior on their premises or within their purview, and by and large I tend to agree with it. But, as with all things, the truth lies somewhere in the degree of the thing. Somewhere between extreme boorishness and extreme sensitivity lies the proper response, but corporations, ever wary of being accused of not responding to un-P.C. behavior and the litigation which follows, will always err on the side of 100% inoffensiveness, the craven lickspittles.

I agree that a company should be able to determine that Wendell Wolf can’t go around shouting that Sandra Slutty in Accounting has wonderful tatas. I also know that under current corporate rules, Wendell is not even allowed to look at said tatas—even if Sandra is wearing a tube top and no bra—because this constitutes “harassment”. And the punishment is the same three steps as outlined above. Even worse is the fact that Wendell can face the same consequences if reported not by Sandra, but by any other employee. So if Percy Prig catches Wendell leering at Sandra, he can report the “offense” and maintain complete anonymity.

Thus is the culture of the “confidential informant” created—yet another institution beloved of totalitarian government.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is all crap?

Here’s what I see arising from all this. Already, thanks to [spit] pay packet withholding, corporations (which exist solely at the behest of government) are doing most of the government’s work in terms of income tax collection. But in recent times, corporations have also been doing the government’s work for them when it comes to political correctness, speech- and thought control.

And let’s be under no illusions about the consequences of all this. By law, if prospective employer XYZ MegaCorp. calls Wendell’s previous employer ABC GlobalCorp. for references, and enquires after the grounds for termination, ABC will inform XYZ that Wendell was fired for sexual harassment. Anyone want to place odds on Wendell getting hired by XYZ?

Several people are predicting a financial crash sometime within the next 4-5 years. One of these people is Professor Laurence Kotlikoff. He's written a book on it called:

The Coming Storm

• Subtitle: What You Need To Know About America's Economic Future
• Author: Scott Burns, Laurence Kotlikoff
• ISBN: 0262612089

He's also given a radio interview about it that can be found HERE.

You can also read two of the papers he has written on the financial situation of the US Govt.

"Is the U.S. Bankrupt?" November 2005

"Why Things Could Get Really Bad" Fortune Magazine, May 24, 2004.

If you can't download the files you can visit his main page HERE and scroll down to get these and other articles he's written.

More on the Population Implosion situation from the International Herald Tribune:

Europe, East and West, wrestles with falling birthrates
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2006

Pushing their newborns in strollers along Na Prikope, Prague's main shopping street, Jelena Heitmankova and her two friends get emotional as they describe their desire for more children. But, nearing 30, they know their broods will probably end with the one child each has now.
"Having children here is expensive, and there is no structure: no services, no baby-sitting," said Heitmankova, who is on maternity leave. "It would be nice if there were still nurseries, like when I was a child," she said, referring to free Communist-era day care centers.

Birthrates have reached a historic and prolonged low in European countries, from Italy and Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic, straining pension plans and depleting the work force across the Continent.

The number of elderly already exceeds the number of young people in many countries, and the European Union's executive arm, alarmed by the trend, estimates that the bloc will have a shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030 if the low birthrates persist.

Immigration from non-European countries, already highly contentious across the EU, would not be sufficient to fill the gap even if Europe's relatively homogenous countries were willing to embrace millions of foreign newcomers, experts say.

"You just can't integrate so many people," said Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU spokeswoman for employment and social affairs. "It is a very sensitive issue."

Throughout Europe, women have delayed having children, or opted out entirely, as they have become more educated and better integrated into the labor market. But the free fall in births is most precipitous and most recent here in Eastern Europe, where Communist-era state incentives that made it economical to have children - from free apartments to subsidized child care - have been phased out even as costs have skyrocketed.

New vibrant market economies provide young people with tantalizing alternatives to family. Lukas and Lenka Dolansky, both journalists, would like a sibling for their 3-month- old son, but they are not sure that will be practical. "We want to go abroad, study, have a career," Lukas said. "Our parents didn't have those opportunities."

The result is birthrates that are the lowest in the world - and the lowest sustained rates in history: 1.2 per woman in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Latvia and Poland, far below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain population.

West European countries are also suffering: Greece, Italy and Spain have had rates of 1.3 and under for a decade.

But Eastern Europe is faced with a desperate double whammy: plummeting birthrates combined with emigration to Western Europe for work, made easier by membership in the EU.

As countries begin to feel the demographic crunch, Europe's "birth dearth" [or what I refer to as "Population Implosion"] is becoming a political issue. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany pushed through a package of family-boosting incentives for working women in June, and President Vladimir Putin warned in May that Russia's population decline was critical. Almost all governments are increasing baby bonuses.

this is why the illeagal immigration issue IS A MOOT POINT:

As birthrates plummet across the developed world, politicians and demographers have been pondering whether immigration can provide the population boost needed by many countries to supplement shrinking labor forces and rebalance aging populations.

From Spain and Canada to the Czech Republic and Singapore, countries are creating and amending immigration laws to attract certain foreigners in order to expand their populations. New immigrants not only add to population numbers but also tend to have more children, providing aging societies with a much-needed infusion of youth.

In Europe, Spain has been spared the worst consequences of extraordinarily low birthrates, at least for now, by a massive influx of immigrants who have helped fuel the country's economic expansion.

There were 3.5 million immigrants in 2005, up from 900,000 in 2000, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute. By far the greatest number were from Latin America, and so meshed naturally with Spain's language, religion and culture.

Elsewhere, countries like Canada and Australia have in recent years successfully recruited skilled immigrants to buttress their populations, providing fast-track citizenship for foreigners with university education, talent or cash to invest in the country.

what the future of Europe could look like in 50-100 years:

GENOA There are hundreds of stores in the Fiumara Mall - Sephora, Elan, Lavazza Café. But in a nation long known for its hordes of children, there is not one toy store in the sprawling mix, and a shiny merry-go-round stands dormant.

"This is a place for old people," said Francesco Lotti, 24, strolling with his fiancée in Genoa's medieval old town. "Just look around. You don't see young people." Even for people their age, "there are not many places - no clubs, for example." Playgrounds? He looks quizzically at his fiancée. They can count them on a few fingers.

While all of Europe has suffered from declining birthrates, nowhere has the drop been as profound and prolonged as in this once gorgeous Mediterranean city, the capital of Italy's graying Liguria region. Genoa provides a vision of Europe's aging future, displaying the challenges that face a society with more old than young, and suggesting how hard it will be to reverse the downward population spiral.

There are no longer children playing in the streets here, nor many family- friendly restaurants. Schools have closed for lack of students. Hospitals are overworked with the elderly. Medical costs are bankrupting the government. And the fewer the children in a society, the harder it becomes to have them.

"This is a society that was based on family ties and now there are few families," said Daniela Del Boca, a professor of economics at the University of Turin. "It's easy to bemoan low birthrates, but it's hard to have good ideas to solve the problem."

Most Genovese today have only one child or none and are unapologetic about the choice. The birthrate (7.7 births per 1,000 people) was about half the death rate (13.7 per 1,000) in Liguria last year, a frightening ratio even by European standards.

More problems we can be thankful for courtesy of feminism....