The United Steelworkers hopes to go viral with this new internet ad on YouTube, intended to demonstrate the possible dangers of tires made by replacement workers. The video is part of a new website the union has launched to inform investors about Goodyear Tires. 15,000 USW workers at 16 plants have been on strike since October 5, to protest plant closings and safeguard jobs and pensions. The jobs are being filled by non-union and temporary workers, plus management. Goodyear claims all replacement workers are qualified.

Meanwhile, some Midwest retailers are already feeling a trickle-down effect from the strikes and lay-offs. Wall Street analysts are predicting tough times for Rust Belt merchants this holiday season.

In Akron, the unemployment rate is 5.4 percent. It’s 5 percent in Cleveland, where steel and other manufacturing jobs have been lost. Detroit has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, 7 percent.

More than half of Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co.’s 35,000 to 40,000 white- and blue-collar layoffs are in the Midwest, and that will be especially challenging to stores such as Kohl’s Corp. that have a heavy presence in the region, Goldman Sachs points out in a report to investors.

Higher-end retailers and department stores stand to hurt the most, the analysts wrote in their report, while discounters might do better. – AP

But cheer up! Dick Cheney’s in Baghdad! Happy Thanksgiving.

~Stef