The Housing Bubble

Falls Church, VA Housing Prices Plummet 9% YoY As Inventory Balloons 73%; Demand Craters

http://www.movoto.com/falls-church-va/market-trends/

Fairfax, VA Housing Demand Collapses 31% YoY; Prices Plunge 12% As Excess Inventory Spikes 54%

http://www.movoto.com/fairfax-va/market-trends/

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/VA-Fairfax-home-value/r_4655/#metric=mt%3D30%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D5%26rt%3D8%26r%3D4655%252C53279%252C245345%26el%3D0

“Realtor, Friend Charged With Fraudulently Renting Out Vacation Properties”

http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x855032296/Local-Realtor-friend-charged-with-fraudulently-renting-out-vacant-properties

“STL Realtor Facing Federal Fraud Charges”

http://www.971talk.com/news/missouri/stl-realtor-facing-federal-fraud-charges

San Luis Obispo, CA Rental Rates Plummet 18% YoY As Excess Housing Inventory Hits Market

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/CA-San-Luis-Obispo-home-value/r_6923/#metric=mt%3D46%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D5%26rt%3D8%26r%3D6923%26el%3D0

Is China’s property market a bubble?

Is the recovery in stock prices helping you find a job?

It seems stock prices can rise making people feel wealthy but when people go to cash out at the same time that wealth can evaporate quickly.

Seems we have a lot of people holding their stocks hoping they keep going up. That did not end well in 2000.

The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, the Corporations and Congress

written by john w. whitehead
monday july 21, 2014
Homeland Security ICE

“What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.”
—Author Tom Clancy

Call it what you will—taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc.—but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft.

We’re operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, you’ve got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich. In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.

What Americans don’t seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights. You’re nothing more than a serf or a slave.

In this way, the police state with all of its trappings—from surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray guns, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conduct—is little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of corporations.

The rationalizations for the American police state are many. There’s the so-called threat of terrorism, the ongoing Drug War, the influx of illegal immigrants, the threat of civil unrest in the face of economic collapse, etc. However, these rationalizations are merely excuses for the growth of a government behemoth, one which works hand in hand with corporations to profit from a society kept under lockdown and in fear at all times.

Indeed, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the real motivating factor behind erecting a police state is not to protect the people, but to further enrich the powerful. Consider the following costly line items, all part of the government’s so-called quest to keep us safe and fight terrorism while entrenching the police state, enriching the elite, and further shredding our constitutional rights:

$4.2 billion for militarized police. Almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participate in a military “recycling” program which allows the Defense Department to transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. In 2012 alone, $546 million worth of military equipment was distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

$34 billion for police departments to add to their arsenals of weapons and equipment. Since President Obama took office, police departments across the country “have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” While police departments like to frame the acquisition of military surplus as a money-saving method, in a twisted sort of double jeopardy, the taxpayer ends up footing a bigger bill. First, taxpayers are forced to pay millions of dollars for equipment which the Defense Department purchases from megacorporations only to abandon after a few years. Then taxpayers find themselves footing the bill to maintain the costly equipment once it has been acquired by the local police.

$6 billion in assets seized by the federal government in one year alone. Relying on the topsy-turvy legal theory that one’s property can not only be guilty of a crime but is also guilty until proven innocent, government agencies have eagerly cashed in on the civil asset forfeiture revenue scheme, which allows police to seize private property they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the cops keeps the citizen’s property. Eighty percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner. Some states are actually considering expanding the use of asset forfeiture laws to include petty misdemeanors. This would mean that property could be seized in cases of minor crimes such as harassment, possession of small amounts of marijuana, and trespassing in a public park after dark.

$11,000 per hour for a SWAT team raid on a government dissident. The raid was carried out against Terry Porter, a Maryland resident who runs a welding business, is married with three kids, is outspoken about his views of the government, and has been labeled a prepper because he has an underground bunker and food supplies in case things turn apocalyptic. The raiding team included “150 Maryland State Police, FBI, State Fire Marshal’s bomb squad and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat ‘special response’ vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.”

$3.8 billion requested by the Obama administration to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention camps and add border patrol agents. Border Patrol agents are already allowed to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. As one journalist put it, “The surveillance apparatus is in your face. The high-powered cameras are pointed at you; the drones are above you; you’re stopped regularly at checkpoints and interrogated.” For example, an American citizen entering the U.S. from Mexico was subjected to a full-body cavity search in which she was subjected to a variety of invasive procedures, including an observed bowel movement and a CT scan, all because a drug dog jumped on her when she was going through border security. Physicians found no drugs hidden in her body.

$61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most notoriously bloated government agencies ever created. The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHS—with its 240,000 full-time workers and sub-agencies—has been aptly dubbed a “runaway train.”

ronpaulinstitute.org/…-by-the-cops,-the-courts,-the-corporations-and-congress.aspx - 45k -

“China Home Prices Fall in Record Cities, Signaling More Easing”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-18/china-home-prices-fall-in-record-number-of-cities-on-price-cuts.html

Labor Force Participation Rates Hits Another New Low

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

A nation of unemployed, indebted citizens

Ten Truths About the American Police State

How the Feds Fund the Local Police State

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself…Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.”
-H.L. Mencken, American journalist

It’s vogue, trendy and appropriate to look to dystopian literature as a harbinger of what we’re experiencing at the hands of the government. Certainly, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm have much to say about government tyranny, corruption, and control, as does Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report. Yet there are also older, simpler, more timeless stories—folk tales and fairy tales—that speak just as powerfully to the follies and foibles in our nature as citizens and rulers alike that give rise to tyrants and dictatorships.

One such tale, Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, is a perfect paradigm of life today in the fiefdom that is the American police state, only instead of an imperial president spending money wantonly on lavish vacations, entertainment, and questionable government programs aimed at amassing greater power, Andersen presents us with a vain and thoughtless emperor, concerned only with satisfying his own needs at the expense of his people, even when it means taxing them unmercifully, bankrupting his kingdom, and harshly punishing his people for daring to challenge his edicts.

For those unfamiliar with the tale, the Emperor, a vain peacock of a man, is conned into buying a prohibitively expensive suit of clothes that is supposedly visible only to those who are smart, competent and well-suited to their positions. Surrounded by yes men, professional flatterers and career politicians who fawn, simper and genuflect, the Emperor—arrogant, pompous and oblivious to his nudity—prances through the town in his new suit of clothes until a child dares to voice what everyone else has been thinking but too afraid to say lest they be thought stupid or incompetent: “He isn’t wearing anything at all!”

Much like the people of the Emperor’s kingdom, we, too, have been conned into believing that if we say what we fear, if we dare to suggest that something is indeed “rotten in the state of Denmark,” we will be branded idiots and fools by the bureaucrats, corporate heads, governmental elites and media hotshots who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo—or who at least are determined to maintain the façade that is the status quo. Yet the truth is staring us in the face just as surely as the fact that the Emperor was wearing no clothes.

Truth #1: The U.S. is on the brink of bankruptcy, as many economists have been warning for some time now, with more than $16 trillion in debts owned by foreign nationals and corporations. As one financial news site reports: “Internationally, the world is fed up with The Fed and the U.S. government’s unabashed debt growth. China, Russia, Iran, India and a host of other countries are establishing trade relationships that are bypassing the U.S. dollar altogether, a move that will soon see the world’s reserve currency lose purchasing power and status. In anticipation of this imminent collapse gold is being hoarded by private and public entities from Berlin to Beijing in an effort to preserve wealth before the Tsunami hits.”

Truth #2: We no longer have a government that is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” What we have now is a feudal monarchy, run by wealthy overlords and financed with the blood, sweat and labor of the underclasses who are kept in check by the increasingly militarized police. This sorry state of affairs is reinforced by a study which found that average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process. A similar study published by thePolitical Research Quarterly revealed that members of the U.S. Senate represent their wealthiest constituents while ignoring those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Truth #3: Far from being a benevolent entity concerned with the well-being of its citizens, whether in matters of health, safety or security, the government is concerned with three things only: power, control and money. As an often quoted adage says, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Unfortunately, the master-servant relationship that once had the government answering to “we the people” has been reversed. Government agents now act as if they are the masters and we are the servants. Nowhere is this more evident than in the transformation of police officers from benevolent keepers of the peace to inflexible extensions of the military hyped up on the power of their badge.

Truth #4: Our primary use to the government is as consumers, worker bees and bits of data to be collected, catalogued, controlled, mined for information, and sold to the highest bidder. Working in cahoots with corporations, the government has given itself carte blanche access to our phone calls, emails, bank transactions, physical movements, even our travels on foot or in our cars. Cybersecurity expert Richard Clarke envisions a future where data about every aspect of our lives will be collected and analyzed. Thus, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court might have said to the contrary, the government no longer needs a warrant to spy on your cell phone activity or anything else for that matter. As the Washington Post recently revealed, 9 out of 10 people caught up in the NSA’s surveillance net had done nothing wrong to justify such intrusions on their privacy. Clearly, the government now operates relatively autonomously, answering only to itself and unbridled by the courts, Congress, the will of the people or the Constitution.

Truth #5: Whatever problems we are grappling with in regards to illegal immigrants flooding over the borders has little to do with the fact that the borders are porous and everything to do with the government’s own questionable agenda. How is it that a government capable of locking down roads, open seas, and air routes is unable to prevent tens of thousands of women and children from crossing into the U.S. illegally? Conveniently, the Obama administration is asking Congress for $3.8 billion in emergency funding to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention facilities and add border patrol agents. The funds would be managed by the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State and Health and Human Services, the very same agencies responsible for bringing about a rapid shift into a police state.

Truth #6: The U.S. government is preparing for massive domestic unrest, arising most likely from an economic meltdown. The government has repeatedly made clear its intentions, through its U.S. Army War College report alerting the military to prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” through its ongoing military drills in cities across the country, through its profiling of potential homegrown “dissidents” or extremists, and through the proliferation of detention centers being built across the country.

Truth #7: As Gerald Ford warned, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” Too often, Americans have fallen prey to the temptation to let the government take care of whatever ails them, whether it be financial concerns, health needs, childcare. As a result, we now find ourselves caught in a Catch-22 situation wherein the government’s so-called solutions to our problems have led to even graver problems. In this way, zero tolerance policies intended to outlaw drugs and weapons in schools result in young children being arrested and kicked out of school for childish behavior such as drawing pictures of soldiers and crying too much; truancy laws intended to keep students in school have resulted in parents being arrested and fined excessively; and zoning laws intended to protect homeowners have been used to prosecute residents who attempt to live off the grid.

Truth #8: The U.S. is following the Nazi blueprint to a “t,” whether through its storm trooper-like police in the form of heavily armed government agents, to its erection of an electronic concentration camp that not only threatens to engulf America but the rest of the world as well via NSA surveillance programs such as Five Eyes. Most damning of all is the Department of Homeland Security’s self-appointed role as a national police force, a.k.a. standing army, the fundamental and final building block for every totalitarian regime that has ever wreaked havoc on humanity. Indeed, just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to police agencies in the form of grants.

Truth #9: Not only does the U.S. government perpetrate organized, systematic violence on its own citizens, especially those who challenge its authority nonviolently, in the form of SWAT team raids, militarized police, and roaming VIPR checkpoints, but it gets away with these clear violations of the Fourth Amendment because the courts grant them immunity from wrongdoing. Expanding its reach, the U.S. also exports its violence wholesale to other countries through armaments sales and the use of its military as a global police force. Yet no matter how well trained, well equipped and well financed, America cannot police the world. As history shows, military empires, once over extended, inevitably collapse into chaos.

Truth #10: As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the United States of America has become the new battlefield. In fact, the only real war being fought by the U.S. government today is the war on the American people, and it is being waged with deadly weapons, militarized police, surveillance technology, laws that criminalize otherwise lawful behavior, private prisons that operate on quota systems, and government officials who are no longer accountable to the rule of law.

So there you have it: facts rather than fiction, so naked that a child could call it for what it is, and yet so politically inconvenient, incorrect and uncomfortable that few dare to speak of them.

Even so, despite the fact that no one wants to be labeled dimwitted, or conspiratorial, or a right wing nut job, most Americans, if they were truly paying attention to what’s been going on in this country over the past few decades and willing to be truthful, at least to themselves, would have to admit that the outlook is decidedly grim. Indeed, unless something changes drastically for the good in the near future, it looks like this fairytale will not have a happy ending.

tenthamendmentcenter.com/2014/07/20/ten-truths-american-police-state/ - 87k -

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

- George Orwell;

‘He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.’

George Orwell

? for Realtors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_NE4XZGAc - 142k -

Doobie Brothers – Long Train Running Lyrics

Down around the corner, half a mile from here
See FOR SALE signs standing, and you watch them disappear
Without HARP, where would you be now
Without H-A-A-A-R-P

You know I saw miss Lucy down along the tracks
She saved her home and her family but she won’t be paying back
Without HARP, where would she be right now
Without H-A-A-A-R-P

Well up in Illinois Central
And in the Southern States
Got to keep on pushin’ wood floors
Cause’ you know their payments late
Without HARP , where would you be now now now now
Without H-A-A-A-R-P

Well the Realtors keep on sellin’
And the wheels go round and round
The sales commissions cold and hard
And the prices don’t go down

Without HARP , where would you be right now
Without H-A-A-A-R-P ooh ooh
Where would you be now

This should liven up my neighborhood.

Banks moving more aggressively against delinquent Las Vegas homeowners, report says

After a brief lull, lenders are again ramping up pressure on delinquent Las Vegas homeowners, a new report shows.

The number of default notices filed in Clark County has climbed every month this year, from 194 in January to 735 in July as of Thursday, real estate tracking firm Auction Control Systems Ltd. reported today.

The company expects almost 1,000 default notices to be filed this month and 2,000 notices monthly by the fourth quarter.

Notices of default start the foreclosure process.

In a news release, ACS chief economist Anthony Martin said the uptick indicates that lenders have adjusted to state Senate Bill 321, which took effect Oct. 1.

Known as the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights…

COMPANY IN WHICH JOE BIDEN’S SON IS DIRECTOR PREPARES TO DRILL SHALE GAS IN EAST UKRAINE

Ukraine (or rather its puppetmasters) has decided to let no crisis (staged or otherwise) or rather civil war, go to waste..

Company In Which Joe Biden’s Son Is Director Prepares To Drill Shale Gas In East Ukraine

by ZERO HEDGE | JULY 26, 2014

Recall what we said earlier today: the proxy Ukraine war just like that in Syria preceding it, “is all about energy.”

Recall also the following chart showing Ukraine’s shale gas deposits, keeping in mind that the Dnieper-Donets basin which lies in the hotly contested eastern part of the nation and where as everyone knows by now a bloody civil war is raging, is the major oil and gas producing region of Ukraine accounting for approximately 90 per cent of Ukrainian production and according to EIA may have 42 tcf of shale gas resources technically recoverable from 197 tcf of risked shale gas in place.

Finally, recall our story from May that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, just joined the board of the largest Ukraine gas producer Burisma Holdings. From the press release:

The youngest son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, has been appointed head of legal affairs at Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings.
Hunter Biden appointed head of legal affairs at Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings. / Burisma.com
R. Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations. On his new appointment, he commented: “Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in the field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a strong economy in Ukraine. As a new member of the Board, I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”

R. Hunter Biden is also a well-known public figure. He is chairman of the Board of the World Food Programme U.S.A., together with the world’s largest humanitarian organization, the United Nations World Food Programme. In this capacity he offers assistance to the poor in developing countries, fighting hunger and poverty, and helping to provide food and education to 300 million malnourished children around the world.

Company Background:

Burisma Holdings is a privately owned oil and gas company with assets in Ukraine and operating in the energy market since 2002. To date, the company holds a portfolio with permits to develop fields in the Dnieper-Donets, the Carpathian and the Azov-Kuban basins. In 2013, the daily gas production grew steadily and at year-end amounted to 11.6 thousand BOE (barrels of oil equivalent – incl. gas, condensate and crude oil), or 1.8 million m3 of natural gas. The company sells these volumes in the domestic market through traders, as well as directly to final consumers.
Now put it all together and what happens next should be rather clear.

Still confused? It’s very simple, really.

In a nutshell Ukraine (or rather its puppetmasters) has decided to let no crisis (staged or otherwise) or rather civil war, go to waste, and while the fighting rages all around, Ukrainian troopers are helping to install shale gas production equipment near the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which was bombed and shelled for the three preceding months, according to local residents cited by Itar Tass. The reason for the scramble? Under peacetime, the process was expected to take many years, during which Europe would be under the energy dictatorship of Putin. But throw in some civil war and few will notice let alone care that a process which was expected to take nearly a decade if not longer while dealing with broad popular objections to fracking, may instead be completed in months!

“Civilians protected by Ukrainian army are getting ready to install drilling rigs. More equipment is being brought in,” they said, adding that the military are encircling the future extraction area.

The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development. They even wanted to call in a referendum on that subject. Environmentalists are particularly concerned with the consequences of hydrofracing, a method used for shale gas extraction, because it implies the use of extremely toxic chemical agents which can poison not only subsoil waters but also the atmosphere. Experts claim that not a single country in the world has invented a method of utilization of harmful toxic agents in the process of development of shale gas deposits.

Countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and France have given up plans to develop shale gas deposits in their territories.
Not only them but also all-important Germany, which two weeks ago announced it would halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over groundwater pollution concerns.

Which clearly makes Ukraine, potentially the last place with massive shale gas deposits and no drilling ban, quite valuable to those who want to develop a major source of shale gas, one which reduces Europe’s reliance on Russian gas even more, yet one whose future depends on one simple question: who controls East Ukraine?

Because what better way to accelerate “next steps” than to start drilling for gas in the middle of the Donetsk republic as a civil war is waging in all directions, and where public mood has shifted decidedly against the local “separatists” in the aftermath of the MH-17 tragedy.

The punchline: who will develop the gas field in conjunction with Shell (jointly owned by the Netherlands and the UK: the two countries that loathe Putin the most in the aftermath of the MH-17 disaster) which in May 2012 announced a tender for the right to develop the Yuzovka shale gas deposit?

Burisma, Ukraine’s oil and gas production holdings, also has the right to develop the shale gas fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk basin of Eastern Ukraine. The same Burisma where R. Hunter Biden, Joseph’s son, was appointed a director two months ago.
Q.E.D.

Looks like the North American Union is shaping up nicely.

ILLEGALS STILL CIRCUMVENTING TSA, CLAIMS BORDER PATROL WHISTLEBLOWER

“They bypassed TSA and boarded first. Even before me, an armed plain clothes law enforcement agent.”

Illegals Still Circumventing TSA, Claims Border Patrol Whistleblower
by ADAN SALAZAR | INFOWARS.COM | JULY 26, 2014

Illegal aliens are being loaded onto planes without being screened by TSA agents, a Border Patrol officer working in the Rio Grande Valley sector recently told Infowars.

Speaking out despite a federally imposed gag order, the officer, who spoke to Infowars on the condition of anonymity, but whose identity has been verified and confirmed, revealed that during a flight last week, he observed pregnant illegal immigrants “bypassed TSA” before boarding a plane.

Here’s the agent’s e-mail:

Good Morning,

I noticed that there were many pregnant adult female aliens and UAC [Unaccompanied Alien Children] teenage aliens on my flight from Corpus Christi to [redacted to protect officer's identity] this morning. They bypassed TSA and boarded first. Even before me, an armed plain clothes law enforcement agent. [Emphasis added]
The agent’s intel comes weeks after Border Patrol union reps alerted the media earlier this month that the federal agency tasked with policing airborne travelers was allowing illegals onto planes sans proper identification.

“The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” National Border Patrol Council #2455 spokesman Hector Garza told Breitbart News.

Following the allegations, the Department of Homeland Security fired back, issuing a statement claiming that “these reports are false. A notice to appear is not an acceptable form of I.D. at the T.S.A checkpoint.”

In the wake of the Breitbart story, the National Border Patrol Council also obtained a statement revealing the TSA had reversed its program following media attention.

“The policy reversal proves that the TSA has once again been caught lying to the American people in an attempt to cover up its malfeasance,” highlighted Infowars’ Paul Joseph Watson. “This latest scandal arrives months after it was revealed that the federal agency followed a State Department directive to spare members of the Muslim Brotherhood traveling to the US in 2012 a TSA pat down or any kind of secondary screening,”

Though brief, our Border Patrol whistleblower’s recent intel suggests that, in addition to using tax payer dollars to ship illegals virtually anywhere in the U.S. they want to go, the federal government is also allowing them to bypass security checkpoints every other traveler must go through.

The same agent made it known to Infowars last week that the Rio Grande Valley sector had received orders to begin releasing pregnant female illegal immigrants in “ANY stage of pregnancy,” even if they merely claimed to be pregnant.

“We do not have a method of testing for an actual pregnancy, either,” the agent wrote to us in an e-mail. “It appears that we have to take their word for it.”

“Sad to say a normal law abiding American citizen has to remove their shoes to get on an airplane these days and go through additional screening,” a Border Patrol union representative lamented to ValleyCentral.com. “For the U.S government to allow undocumented aliens access to our commercial transportation in the form of airlines is a giant security risk.”

Infowars did not receive comment from the Transportation Security Administration at time of publication, but will update this story with their response accordingly. We will continue to provide information from authentic whistleblowers as they reach out to us.

What Does the U.S. Support When It Supports Israel?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/07/michael-s-rozeff/when-the-us-supports-israel/

‘According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $121 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although in the past Israel also received significant economic assistance.” Other special benefits also flow to the Israeli military. Each year, the U.S. pays for about 20 percent of Israel’s overall military spending, and the total places Israel as the 16th largest military spender in the world. “In 2007, the Bush Administration and the Israeli government agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package for the period from FY2009 to FY2018.” Obama has renewed that pledge.

The U.S. routinely supports Israel’s policies and avoids condemning Israel for its rights violations against Palestinians. It may never have done so. This week, for example, the U.S. cast the sole vote against the U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The vote was 29-1. A link to the full text of the resolution is here. (The texts vary slightly in different reports.)

Because the U.S. government has made itself virtually one with Israel, we must ask the question: What exactly is the U.S. supporting when it supports Israel? One cannot arrive at answers to this question without examining Israel’s history. One may make a start by reading Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet “The Jewish State”, a visionary tract. This provides insight into the goals of Herzl and his assumptions behind colonizing Palestine. How the colonization actually worked out has not been as he planned. Israel continues to be a problematic state, an expansionary state, and what is worse, a dangerous nuclear power state. Wikipedia has a number of articles on the history. This one provides a start. One thing the U.S. supports when it supports Israel is what Israel is doing in Gaza at this moment.

Murray Rothbard has a highly readable and valuable account of the history up to 1967.

Although America has stood in theory as a melting pot and a country that favored the assimilation of many peoples from all over the world, and in practice was against Black Nationalism, the U.S. government has supported Jewish Nationalism in Israel. It has supported a society that could only support such a state by being exclusionary and segregated, or even ethnically cleansed. The philosophy behind that state rested on Herzl’s assumptions, which in my view were deeply flawed. He simply ignored the native population of Palestine. He simply asserted that Jews were a people one people, that assimilation was out of the question and that a Jewish State was a solution to anti-Semitism. All of these assertions are questionable. He declared that “Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home.” Can any people or ethnic group of today return to the place where their ancestors originated with the idea of displacing its current residents and making their own State? No one would approve of such an idea. Anyway, this “historic home” idea was really not true of all Jews after 1,800 years had passed and Jews had had many, many homes in many lands. It was an appeal to a subset of Jews who wanted to emigrate and maintain their culture with others of their kind. Nor could this idea justify a Jewish State governing Palestine and its then current Arab inhabitants. But in addition Herzl’s philosophy in practice assumed a much more militant and exclusionary form as new generations appeared after him. In particular, David Ben-Gurion was an exponent of power and force.

Israel is a brutal state as the latest excesses of destruction and killing of innocent Palestinians in Gaza show. That’s what the U.S. supports’

Ben Jones and Macbeth, an article you each would like. And I like it too:

Ron Paul: I don’t blame America, I Blame Neocons

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/07/daniel-mcadams/i-dont-blame-america/

Facing a tough but respectful grilling on Fox Business’s The Independents over his recent comments on Ukraine and the apparent downing of a Malaysia Air plane, Ron Paul argues that the US government wants to blame Russia for the shoot-down while providing no evidence for its conclusion. Paul points out that the US claim that Russia was to blame for the disaster because they supply weapons to the rebels in east Ukraine is hypocritical because the US has armed oppositionists in Syria who went on to attack the US-backed government in Iraq.

But the best moment was when one of the hosts trotted out the old “aren’t you’re blaming America?” question, which was previously used by the likes of Giuliani and the other neocons over the 9/11 attacks.

Responded Paul to the claim:

That is a misrepresentation of what I say. I don’t blame America. I am America, you are America. I don’t blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion — that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.

They say ‘oh Ron Paul blames America therefore he’s a bad guy and we can’t listen to him.’ Well I’ll tell you what: the American people are listening more carefully now than ever before. …Non-intervention is the wave of the future.

FEDERAL JUDGE RULES DC BAN ON HANDGUNS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Court ordered city to allow residents and non residents carry handguns outside their homes..

Federal Judge Rules DC Ban on Handguns Unconstitutional
by REUTERS | JULY 26, 2014

A federal judge on Saturday overturned Washington D.C.’s ban on carrying handguns outside the home, saying it was unconstitutional.

“There is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” Judge Frederick Scullin said in an opinion.

“Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional,” he added in his 19-page ruling.

The court ordered the city to allow residents to carry handguns outside their homes and to let non-residents carry them as well.

phony scandals