Mickey D's fed up-Now testing new automated cashiers that won't go on strike demanding $15/hour

Behold McDonald's new automated cashiers.  According to a variety of sources over on Reddit, the new machines are currently being tested and could soon roll out nationwide. The kiosks would presumably be quick, efficient, require new "green" and "teal" check boxes on the employee diversity forms, and would never, ever, demand $15 per hour.

Hospitals (Obama Care) to begin monitoring your credit card purchases to flag 'unhealthy' habits

(NaturalNews) What you buy at the grocery store, where you live, and even your membership status at the local gym are all subject to a new data collection scheme by the American medical system. Reports indicate that hospitals and doctors' offices all across the country are now collecting this and other personal information in order to target individuals deemed to have "unhealthy" lifestyle habits that put them at high risk of disease.

Bloomberg reports that hospital systems in both North and South Carolina as well as Pennsylvania have already begun tracking people's food-purchasing habits by spying on them through public records and credit card transactions. Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), which operates some 900 care centers throughout the Carolinas, has teamed up with a data-mining company to compile and track this information for the later purpose of calling "high-risk" folks and urging them to make a change.

"What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble," stated Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes at CHS, to Bloomberg. "The idea is to use big data and predictive models to think about population health and drill down to the individual levels to find someone running into trouble that we can reach out to and try to help out."

Though seemingly benevolent, the plan is overshadowed by serious privacy concerns that many say violate the established terms of the patient-doctor relationship. Simply plugging an individual's purchasing data into a metric and coming up with a risk assessment figure is also an entirely shortsighted way of gauging personal health, not to mention the fact that sharing this information without consent violates the public trust.

The strategy "is very paternalistic toward individuals, inclined to see human beings as simply the sum of data points about them," stated Irina Raicu, director of the Internet ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.

Feds to track individual behavior under guise of 'preventive healthcare'

But this approach aligns with the overall goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known more accurately as Obamacare, which relies upon such data to come up with patient risk assessments. With the federal government now holding the reins of patient care, minimizing use of the system is a top priority that apparently requires managing the activities and eating habits of the general population in the same way that a farmer might manage his cowherd.

"The traditional rating and underwriting has gone away with health-care reform," admitted Robert Booz, an analyst at Gartner Inc., a technology research and consulting firm, as quoted by Bloomberg. "What they are trying to do is proactive care management where we know you are a patient at risk for diabetes so even before the symptoms show up we are going to try to intervene."

An example used in media reports is an asthma sufferer who is caught purchasing cigarettes along with her groceries. This individual would be further monitored to see if she is keeping up to date with her asthma medications; if not, she might be approached by a local hospital system or doctor who would advise her to follow official protocol, with the added bonus of this information providing a further "in" for the government to track members of the public.

"Just the notion [that] any US hospital institution is interested let alone willing to provide preventive care is bull," wrote one RT.com commenter about this latest government conspiracy. "US healthcare has eroded to despotism marketing people for profit with claims of healthcare merely an excuse to shoehorn their way into your business."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bloomberg.com

http://rt.com

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Why Are Chemtrails Being Digitally Added to Old Movies?

Chemtrails have been popping up all over TV shows, movies and commercials for a while now. Even video games and cartoons are adding these trails to what would otherwise be clear blue skies — why do that if not for propaganda purposes to normalize everyone to what’s going on in the skies above our heads?
One episode of CSI NY even featured a conspiracy theorist professor as a victim, someone who actor Gary Sinise’s investigator character on the show called “totally anti-American” because the professor believed in chemtrails and water fluoridation. (They don’t elucidate either that he believed water fluoridation is poison purposefully added to the water to, say, dumb people down or anything, they just say the professor believed in water fluoridation — I guess believing in water fluoridation at all period is anti-American? Way to go writers.)
Well now it appears chemtrails are actually being added to digitally remastered film footage decades after the fact.
Why do you think that is?
I’m asking because I just watched this video:

Apparently this movie “The Railway Children” was released in 1970. When footage of it was reused in the commercial above in 2005, whoever used it decided to go ahead and add a trail in a small corner of the sky over the children.
Sure, it’s very subtle…but again, name one justifiable reason why they would do that — go to the extra effort to add a trail to mar an otherwise pretty, clear blue sky in a film where no trails were in the sky to begin with — if not for propaganda/normalization purposes?

Ouestion Of The Day

"Has anybody ever heard of a logical reason why the Palestinian people should be destroyed because of what the Germans did to a bunch of other Europeans?" - bilejones 

Twenty-one questions about Ebola: government propaganda, medical corruption and bioweapons experiments

#1) How can U.S. health authorities claim there is zero risk from Ebola patients being treated in U.S. hospitals when those same hospitals can't control superbug infections? "Many hospitals are poorly prepared to contain any pathogen. That’s why at least 75,000 people a year die from hospital infections. If hospitals can’t stop common infections like MRSA, C. diff and VRE, they can’t handle Ebola." - Fox News (1)

#2) Why should we trust the CDC's handling of Ebola when the agency can't even keep track of its anthrax, avian flu and smallpox samples?

#3) Why were Ebola victims transported to cities in the USA when they could be given state-of-the-art medical care overseas? "Now, they are bringing in highly infectious patients into this nation that is Ebola-free. In doing so, they are violating the primary rule of contagion: isolation." - Radio host Michael Savage (2)

#4) Why is the company working on Ebola vaccines -- Tekmira -- receiving money from Monsanto and considers Monsanto to be one of its important business partners? (3)

#5) If Ebola is "not a threat" to U.S. citizens as government authorities keep claiming, then why did the U.S. Department of Defense spend $140 million on an Ebola-related contract with the Tekmira company?

#6) If Ebola is not a threat to the U.S., then why did the Department of Defense deploy Ebola detection equipment to all 50 states? (4)

#7) Why did President Obama just sign a new executive order authorizing the government arrest and quarantine of Americans who show symptoms of respiratory infections? (5)

The language of his new executive order states that government officials may forcibly detain and quarantine people with:

...diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.

#8) How can we trust a government to tell us the truth about Ebola when that same government repeatedly lies about Swine Flu, influenza, Fukushima radiation, weather control technology, the security of the border and seemingly everything else?

#9) If U.S. doctors claim to be so incredibly careful around Ebola that the virus could not possibly escape from the containment rooms at Emory University, then how did the American doctors being treated there contract Ebola in the first place? Weren't they also being careful?

#10) How are U.S. doctors and health workers supposed to even identify people with Ebola when they appear "fit and healthy" right until the very end? "What's shocking is how healthy the patients look before they die and how quickly they decline. A number of the Ebola patients I've seen look quite fit and healthy and can be walking around until shortly before their deaths." - Dr. Oliver Johnson (6)

#11) If Ebola is not spread through the air as some claim, then why do doctors who treat Ebola patients always wear masks?

#12) If hospitals are good at infection control, then why did so many SARS victims contract the infection while sitting in waiting rooms at hospitals? "A government report later concluded that for the hospital overcome by SARS, 'infection control was not a high priority.' Eventually, 77% of the people who contracted SARS there got it while working, visiting or being treated in a hospital." - Fox News (7)

#13) If Ebola escapes from patients at Emory University and begins to infect the public, do you think we would ever be told the truth about it? Or instead, would the official story claim that "Ebola terrorists" let it loose?

#14) WHO BENEFITS FROM AN EBOLA OUTBREAK in the USA? This is a key question to ask, and the answers are obvious: the CDC, vaccine manufacturers and pharma companies, and anyone in government who wants to declare a police state and start rounding people up for quarantine in a medical emergency.

#15) We already know there are powerful people who openly promote population reduction (Bill Gates, Ted Turner, etc.) Is a staged Ebola outbreak possibly a deliberate population reduction plan by some group that doesn't value human life and wants to rapidly reduce the population?

#16) Why are U.S. health authorities intentionally concealing from the public the true number of possible Ebola victims in U.S. hospitals who are being tested for Ebola right now? "In an apparent attempt to avoid hysteria, U.S. health authorities are withholding details about a number of suspected Ebola victims from the public." - Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars (8)

#17) If Ebola infections are so easy to control (as is claimed by U.S. health authorities), then why are Ebola victim bodies being openly dumped in the streets in West Africa? "Relatives of Ebola victims in Liberia defied government quarantine orders and dumped infected bodies in the streets as West African governments struggled to enforce tough measures to curb an outbreak..." - Reuters (9)

#18) Why do many locals in Sierra Leone truly believe the recent Ebola outbreak was deliberately caused by government officials? "Ebola is a new disease in Sierra Leone and when the first cases emerged, many people thought it might be a government conspiracy to undermine certain tribal groups, steal organs or get money from international donors..." - The Daily Mail (6)

#19) Given that the U.S. government has already funded outrageous medical experiments on Americans and foreigners (see the NIH-funded Guatemalan medical experiments), why should we not believe the government is capable of deploying Ebola in bioweapons experiments in West Africa?

#20) Given that many vaccines accidentally cause the disease they claim to prevent (due to weakened viruses still remaining active in a small number of vaccine vials), isn't it likely that Ebola vaccines might actually cause Ebola infections in some percentage of those receiving them? How can we trust any vaccines when vaccine manufacturers have been granted absolute legal immunity from faulty products or failures in quality control?

#21) How can we trust a medical system that continues to put mercury in flu shots, refuses to recommend vitamin D to cancer patients and has been criminally corrupted to the point where drug companies are routinely charged with felony crimes for bribery and price fixing?

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/04/ma...

(2) http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/ebola-madness-is-...

(3) http://www.naturalnews.com/046290_ebola_pate...

(4) http://www.naturalnews.com/046259_ebola_outb...

(5) http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/executive...

(6) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-27...

(7) http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/04/ma...

(8) http://www.infowars.com/u-s-health-authoriti...

(9) http://news.yahoo.com/bodies-dumped-streets-...

Pic De Jour

12 Iconic Stores And Restaurants That Are Rapidly Disappearing

Rapidly Disappearing

(Brad Tuttle)  A dozen once-ubiquitous retailers and restaurants, places where you probably shopped and dined at as a kid may soon be shutting their doors.

Moody’s Investors Service said in a report this week that RadioShack is in danger of running out of cash by autumn of 2015, according to Bloomberg News. It’s the latest indication that the struggling chain is doomed, following news in the spring that it planned to close up to 1,100 stores. (Those plans were scaled back to around 200 store closures, but still…) The electronics chain’s difficulties probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given the times we live in today. After all, the word “radio” is in the name. Who buys radios anymore?

RadioShack is hardly the only well-known national chain that is flummoxed by the ultra-competitive, rapidly changing modern-day marketplace and shutting locations, among other steps, as a survival tactic. Here are 11 others.

Albertsons
Amid toughening competition in the grocery space—low-cost upstarts, dollar stores, big box all-purpose stores, and online sellers have all stepped up their game—the Albertsons supermarket chain announced earlier this year it would be closing 26 stores, most of them in California. In late July, Albertsons bought Safeway, and the merger is expected to bring about more store closures, most likely ones operating under the Albertsons or Vons brand.

Staples
Quite a lot is riding on the current back-to-school shopping season for Staples. After a subpar fourth quarter last year, it announced it would close as many as 225 stores in 2014, after closing 42 throughout North American in 2013. Declining sales have continued into the first half of 2014, largely due to the widespread consumer “shift to e-retailers, mass merchants and drugstores to buy their office supplies,” as Reuters put it. More closures are inevitable if sales during the all-important back-to-school period aren’t up to snuff—and maybe even if they’re decent, as Staples seems increasingly focused on online sales.

Family Dollar
In April, after yet another report of declining store sales, Family Dollar said it would be shutting 370 locations. Now that rival Dollar Tree is buying Family Dollar, it’s likely that more stores—from one or both of these brands, which often have locations in very close proximity to each other—will disappear.

Quiznos
The toasted sandwich chain peaked sometime in the early ’00s, when it boasted some 5,000 stores around the U.S. Quiznos closed around 2,000 locations during the Great Recession years, not only because household spending budgets shrunk, but also because of increased competition from highly successful Subway and all manner of trendy fast-casual restaurants. The more positive economic climate of recent years hasn’t brought Quiznos back from the brink. The companyfiled for bankruptcy earlier this year. While Quiznos wants to put this all in the past, a trickling of closures continues, such as one planned to take place in Austinin August.

Aeropostale 
24/7 Wall Street put Aeropostale on its list of “10 Brands That Will Disappear in 2015,” and some 125 of its stores are set to disappear by the end of the current fiscal year. The company’s sales and stock price have been cratering due to what’s described as a “seismic shift” in teens’ fashion taste.

Abercrombie & Fitch
Similar to Aeropostale, the much-higher priced Abercrombie & Fitch has cited a “challenging retail environment,” especially among teens, as a prime reason for declining sales—and why it is being forced to close dozens of stores. The overpriced merchandiseand the fat-shaming comments of its CEO probably haven’t helped either.

Toys R Us 
The continued shift to online shopping, combined with a shift among consumers away from toys and more toward gadgets, has had the toy store giant in a funk for years. To cope with declining sales, there have been thousands of layoffs at the retail and administrative levels, and some expect store closures at any moment. Overall, things look grim. “There is a 50-50 chance the company can survive,” Howard Davidowitz, chairman of the retail consulting firm Davidowitz & Associates, told the The Record in New Jersey, home of Toys R Us’s headquarters. “I’m not saying they are finished. I would not say that. But there is a limited time, given the debt level they have, for this business to get fixed.”

TCBY
Once 1,500 franchises strong, TCBY has closed two-thirds of its locations over the years. TCBY has tried many things to kickstart the business—Greek fro-yo, sharing space with sister brand Mrs. Fields Cookies—but some think that TCBY is likely to suffer the same fate as Crumbs, the trendy cupcake chain that recently shut down.

Barnes & Noble, J.C. Penney, Sears
The decline, and perhaps impending death, of these three iconic, old-timey retailers has been discussed for so long that it’s almost surprising they’re still around. Barnes & Noble has closed 10% of its stores over the last five years, despite the fact that its long-time book-selling rival, Borders, is no longer in the picture, and despite relentless pressure from Amazon.com. J.C. Penney is routinely described as being in a “death spiral” and “at death’s door.” As for Sears, when CEO Edward Lampert was speaking to investors this past spring, he offered a brutally honest vision of what’s to come. “Closing stores is going to be part of our future,” he said.