Who Benefits From the Chaos in Washington?

"Who benefits" has become my favorite question. Who benefits from the government shutdown? Who would benefit from not raising the debt ceiling? Who benefits from not compromising? Who benefits from the farce we call Congress?

We know that the right/Tea Party has gambled that they could blame the funding crisis on Obama. We also know that more moderate Republicans went for the ride until they began to see the ship sink and public opinion turn against them. We know that the Democrats and the President have caved all to often and that they felt that if they didn't stand up, for once, that they would hurt their 2014 chances. But, is there a group that transcends this pettiness and gains no matter what happens?

While some vocal business interests have complained about this Beltway fiasco, one can't help but wonder why the monied interests are largely publicly silent. Yes, their henchmen, Tea Party, are quite vocal, but why would they support what could become economic chaos? Who benefits from such chaos? Who benefited from the 2008 Recession and is still making record profits? Who always comes out ahead when their are perceived economic problems? What is their real agenda? Who actually profits from negative conditions such as war, famine, disease, and economic collapse?

The decisions in Washington are not made by the politicians. Strings are being pulled and the puppeteer laughs all the way to the ....

We're Watching you!

Who's watching you ... well, quite a few people, not just the government.

Since the dawn of time, humanity has been watched by someone, or some thing. All ancient empires had their spies. The Church watched witches and heretics. The Romans watched the Jews and Christians. The rich watched the poor. The communists and Nazis watched everyone. McCarthy watched 'fellow travelers.' The government watched the Japanese. In the Cold War, all were being watched. We watch the Chinese and they watch us. With 911 we starting watching Muslims. Now we discover that our government is watching maybe all of us.

Perhaps even more insidious, corporations are watching all that you do. Have you ever looked up a product on Amazon or, for that matter, any internet company? Then, no matter what site you are on, you begin to see adds for the products that you searched elsewhere. I looked up kayaks and it seems that no matter what site I'm on, I see adds for kayaks.

There appears to be a great concern about Snowden and his release of information regarding how the government is spying on us. So what else is new? Is there an uproar over corporate spying on the average citizen? Haven't really seen any.

So the fundamental question is: Do we really care if 'someone' watches us? Do we care if they virtually know just about everything about us? If this is a loss of freedom, does it matter? What, as a society, are we willing to tolerate regarding others 'knowing' about us?

While we need to think about these things, I suspect that there is really nothing that can be done to stop the watching. How would one even go about it? Do we really think that we can stop secret spying into our lives?