Com’on Pam

Don’t you see the Christmas spirit in walking over a dead man to get to the good deals!

When accumulating material possessions is the highest form of virtue in a society, what do you expect?

Does that figure include sales of pepper spray?

I guess OWS must be proud of how its 99er base acquitted itself this weekend. Didn’t hear of any reports of rapes, drug ODs and crapping in public, though. Those people must have stayed downtown to mind tent city. B

Sure, when you practically give away merchandise, people will buy it. Let’s hear if profits were up.

Most of us are running scared. I think we know, at some level, that there are going to be some really shitty chickes coming home to roost in the not-very-far-off future.

Spending money, even money that we don’t have, is like shooting up smack that we’ve gotten on time from the dealer. It’s a lousy decision, but it feels good, anyway.

Troll alert@ 4. [Based on prior history.]

Reminder: do not engage.

Touche.

I’m not sure it’s a good sign for the whole holiday season.

This shows desperation, people who barely have any money who will go through hell to get a deal on some cheap junk just so they’ll have some presents to give on Christmas. You don’t see well off looking people in these videos. Also, you won’t see this sort of desperate behavior in countries with larger middle classes. It’s not that Americans are violent, shopping fanatics. Poverty and a declining middle class turn out this result.

The other thing to factor in is the hours were moved up at many places, so people who were not previously down with camping out in the cold all night could do camping in warmer weather after their thanksgiving dinners.

This means more companies may do this, and the downward spiral continues. Nothing is sacred. The growing lower class who work in retail have no rights. They may be required to work nights, holidays, whatever. Anything to make a buck. Compare this with Europe where even Sundays are still considered holidays, even for those working in retail.

People buying crap they don’t need with money they don’t have. Not what I would call good news.

OK, so some people got a few bargins. One day the industry made a billion more than last year. Tens of thousands of workers who would otherwise be home with their families on a national holiday were instead getting ready for work at an ungodly hour.
Why?
I’ve become tired of the endless demands made by corporate types that are driving us to become nothing more than animals.
Bring back holidays where a family can be together at home being thankfull for the little things. Like going to work in the morning.

“The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. broke its Black Friday record for shoppers, thanks to a decision to open at midnight for the first time.”

Well, that’s hardly fair — it’s still Thursday for everyone unless they went to bed first. Even Santas don’t land their helicopters until after sunrise.

What a crock of crap.

You wouldn’t know reality if it bit you in the ass and left a REALITY scar on your backside.

One wonders what color the sky and water is in such a fantasy world.

People are broke. They need that savings that early shopping provides. It says more about this economy than it says about anything else. People are broke and desperate.

Friday sales up 7% to 11.4 billion dollars. Since about 8 or 9 billion of the 11.4 billion sold was probably made in China, the Chinese economy thanks “us” and hopes that we will eventually have the money to pay our debts.

I get that, and understand it well. I’m broke, and I need all the savings I can get.

But I don’t get why they “need” the stuff that’s on sale on Black Friday. A grocery store slashes prices and a bunch of hungry poor folks descend on it, I get it. This I don’t.

Even when I could get around, Black Friday was always a day at home for me. And back then it wasn’t near as crazy as now.

I think folks are just so beatdown, so hopeless, that they latch onto something that is within their grasp, like a cheap phone, and just become desperate, in the real term, at getting ahold of what little may be in their grasp.

Whatever it is, it’s scary, and a warning too. Wait until food really does become mostly unaffordable and grocer stores really do have sales, I’m betting the violence then will make this look like a child’s recess.

Thanks for saying this. I have been trying to ignore the whole thing but
I found myself nauseated at the spectacle, not the least by the shameless marketing of the “event” by the corporate media.

We are living in the age of profit and greed and poverty all orchestrated by the marketers of junk.

How much cash vs. how much credit.

Most drug dealers will let you outspend your resources.

A breath of fresh air: A store called “Hobby Lobby” opened up a few weeks ago in my town, Merced, CA. They are headquartered in Oklahoma City, have over 400 stores and is a privately held company.

They close every evening at 8pm as opposed to the big box stores closing at 10pm and are closed on Sunday. They have a sign prominently displayed explaining that they are closed on Sunday so their employees can spend time with their families and also have time to worship.

I’m sure this has to do with their being a privately held company and reflects the views of the owners.

So far, it’s wildly popular. Running a successful business while treating their employees in a more humane fashion can be done.

Yes, running a successful business can be done like that.

Where the problems started was when accountants started nosing into business decisions instead of just doing their bookkeeping. I know, my major was accounting.

So, you start doing assessments of “opportunity” cost, and come up with how much per day rent you’re paying, even on the days you’re closed, and how much business you’re losing by being closed, and they come up with figures that make a business owner go “OMG, I want some of that!!!!”

And boom, no more nights off. Weekends off. Sundays off. Holidays off. If accountants had their way, all business locations would be open 24/7 in some fashion.

Can’t have a single dollar of opportunity cost go you know!!!

Even though I was one, I think accountants are a lot like our first woman vice Presidential candidate described of Republicans: They know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

I visited my local mall today to pick up some lunch on the way to work. The guy I know at the food court said it was a “madhouse” at the mall on Friday ONLY, and that, since then, it has been “dead.” It seemed very quiet to me at mid-day today.

Does the shopping madness on so-called “Black Friday” *really* boost our economy anymore? Methinks perhaps not, but it’s more gibberish that the fascist propoganda machine can spew forth to credulous “viewers” to make believe that “things are getting better.” I doubt that they are.

I agree that many citizens feel increasingly desparate. For better or worse, there are some true “deals” to be had on so-called “Black Friday.” But I what also note are increasingly CRAZY ads on tv encouraging shoppers to behave like a bunch of lunatics. I guess the propoganda works… unfortunately.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

Yep! I went shopping at Best Buy yesterday afternoon and the place was deserted. Didn’t have to wait in line, had people to wait on me. All these stores did was steal sales from themselves, while making their employees miserable and contributing to our sad desperate consumerism.

Here’s a link for those interested.

Scary stuff.

My post below (above)was meant to be a reply to yours. I agree with you 100% — all stupid propaganda.

I don’t think it’s really the 7% increase in sales you should be casting aspersions on. You might consider what kind of people trample, taze, pummel, and mace their fellow community members all so they can get an extra 15% off on some random piece of junk that amounts to probably less than $20 in savings.

I tell my friends in other parts of the world about Black Friday and they’re unanimously dumb-founded by what a ridiculous society we are.

Thanks for letting us know. Notice “Liberal” Carl Levin and the supposedly rogue ‘decent’ John McCain. I am surprised John Kerry isn’t involved.

Scary is right. They are desperate and are trying to shut down unrest and the people. If this goes through they will have created a fascist state. These guys are psychos and need to be removed from power.

Point.

The declining middle-class and wealth gap problems are much worse in places like Russia and Brazil, yet people I talk to in both places literally don’t believe me that I tell them this is what happens every year on major shopping days. The whole concept of “major shopping days” is completely alien to them.

Worst news I’ve heard in years! Surpasses even all the other bad news! Feh!

These guys are psychos and need to be removed from power.

Teehee, the bill will allow the president to do that very thing, teehee.

It used to be (pre-1980′s) that retailers broke even or ran in the red until the Xmas buying weeks, when the large sales volume put them in the black for the year. But since the 1980′s every sort of calendar ‘holiday’ has become a major shopping opportunity, beginning with Presidents/Washington’s Birthday, then Super Bowl Sunday, then Lincoln’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day — geez, my fingers are numbing and it’s not even the All-Star Break yet.

Retail has been backing up the Xmas-in-the-black week so that it has to begin in January. Either Congress (read: Chamber of Commerce) will have to add a new month to the calendar or develop a week based on the decimal system before retail backs up to December 24, or the world will surely end.

One thing’s for certain: with numbers like that, more retailers will be opening earlier next year. Which means more and more workers will be spending less time with their families over the Thanksgiving holiday. Hell, why not cancel the holiday altogether? (except for elites of course)

There’s more: A temporary worker was killed in a stampede:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?pagewanted=all

Beat me to it, thank you.

Were the bargains worth it, people? Were they really?

I’m glad I stayed home Friday.

I can’t stay anything about Russia but I always thought Brazil, like the rest of Latin America, has always had tremendous gap between the rich and the poor? It’s almost historical in a sense (Latin American elites of European ancestry and those who are mixed-race, specifically those who are perceived and socially accepted as “White”, having all the wealth while the lower classes of various backgrounds are consistently screwed)? That is unless we’re making the distinction of the 1% and the general middle class, than I see and understand those references to Russia and Brazil.

If everyone were armed the shopping experience would be so much more civilized.

I believe “Black Friday” to be One Big Psy-op!

Covered so well by our Friendly Fascist Media Broadcasting–far and wide for all to hear and see. They created the right conditions, and expectations, and yes, there was ugliness, as desired, and covered by them up the ying yang.

A country of 300+ million increasingly desperate & dispirited people. How many people participated in the mayhem out of that population? What percentage?

“Look at the ugly, unwashed, unruly, GREEDY mob”

This was a calculated, pychological attack on The People, and their inherent beauty, and dignity!

Can we link this coverage to the “need” for a police state to protect us from ourselves?!

If only they could channel all that energy into storming Congress with pitchforks and torches. It’s merely a hint of what the American public will be reduced to when food and water become “luxuries.”

How dare you use the term “citizens?” You must not have gotten the memo, the people are now referred to as “consumers.”

And when there is no longer any money to feed the monkey on their backs there’s always a bullet to the brain.

It might also be a fact that Hobby Lobby is owned by Mormons, so I guess that is one benefit of the “family oriented” outlook of that religion.

There’s a societal obligation to give something to those in your immediate family or significant others. If you fail to do this, it makes you feel like a failure and perhaps those who don’t get anything from you will mistakingly think you’re a grinch or are a failure as well. They may not be creative enough to think of other things they could do cheaply or are afraid the person they’re giving the gift to won’t want something simpler, hand made, but rather an electronic item or video game. Hence, we have madness on Black Friday. I think others may just enjoy the excitement, getting out of the house, maybe away from irritating relatives, and may not desperately need the savings.

Accountants and MBA “consultants”. They have to justify their services and push these shitty changes not taking at all into account employee satisfaction. Perhaps in a better economy, they’d be more reluctant, but that’s not the case, people are desperate and will do whatever they’re told to keep their work as they have almost nowhere else to go.

Exactly. Hype up Black Friday hoping people think everything is fine, everyone else is buying shit in crazy hysteria, so they must too even if it means going deeper into debt.

Societal obligations is the difference. They weren’t super-wealthy countries with a strong middle class (though still a large amount of poverty) where the large middle class got conditioned into a ritual of excessive shopping before Christmas. This conditioning doesn’t just fade away, so people are trying to live up to what they believe is supposed to be the normal ritual (giving [usually store bought electronics or toys] presents no matter how little money or how much debt you have).

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?pagewanted=all

The data showing an increase in sales this Black Friday compared to last is because many of the biggest stores opened earlier this year, typically 10 P.M. Thursday night instead of very early Friday morning. In no way do these data indicate an uptick in the economy.

FALSE! This is an apparent Smear Campaign.

http://www.ng.mil/ll/analysisdocs/FY2012/S.%201867_bookmarked%20and%20highlighted.pdf

Starts at Page 359.