Gestapo in the US - Public surveillance from private property questioned

What about the real threat from Muslim terrorism?

Public surveillance from private property questioned - Washington Times

By Andrea Noble 2-5-12

When D.C. police began installing surveillance cameras in neighborhoods more than five years ago as crime-fighting tools, privacy concerns voiced by civil liberties groups limited their scope and use.

Now a less-formal agreement from a citizens association planning to expand the Metropolitan Police Department’s watchful eye in Georgetown over the next few months is hitting a similar hurdle.

The Citizens Association of Georgetown, a private neighborhood association, plans to pay for the installation of up to 10 cameras in the hopes that the additional surveillance will deter crime.

“The No. 1 thing we would like is deterrence,” said Diane Colasanto, a member of the association’s public safety committee. “We just want crime not to happen here. But if crimes are committed, we hope the images from the cameras are images police can use.”

The Georgetown group’s cameras will tape public spaces such as streets and sidewalks, and video that could be used to solve a crime will be turned over to police, the group’s members said. The cameras will be located on private property, such as in residents’ yards, and as a result they will skirt the stringent rules imposed on the police department’s closed-circuit camera system.

-read on link-

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists

By Patrick Temple-West

WASHINGTON | Mon Feb 6, 2012

Reuters) - Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division.

-more of this at link-

One Could Only Hope It Were True - Egyptian TV: Poisoned Zionist Jeans From Israel Cause Infertility!

Egyptian TV: Poisoned Zionist Jeans From Israel Cause Infertility! — Winds Of Jihad By SheikYerMami

Governor Christie’s Judicial Missteps - By Carrie Severino - Bench Memos - National Review Online

Governor Christie’s Judicial Missteps - By Carrie Severino - Bench Memos - National Review Online

Here is the real Armageddon of 2012 - at the Strip Mall

Those 5 years term commercial office, retail and industrial leases signed in the go go boom of 2007 are about to expire this year!

Armageddon at the Strip Mall - By Kevin D. Williamson - Exchequer - National Review Online

February 4, 2012

Five years: Seems like it was only yesterday. By my always-suspect English-major math, that means that a whole bunch of commercial mortgages written at that poisonous sweet spot when prices were highest but lending standards were lowest are coming due . . . oh, any minute now.

In New York City alone, there’s about $70 billion worth of commercial mortgages — some of which have been sold off as mortgage-backed securities, naturally — coming due this year. The national total is more than $150 billion, or a bit more than 1 percent of U.S. GDP. That’s going to be a little awkward: The value of U.S. commercial properties has declined by an average of 45.7 percent since their all-time high in 2007, according to Real Capital Analytics. Those 2007 vintage loans weren’t exactly bulletproof: Typical terms included a 20 percent down payment and a five-year payment schedule that required little more than interest payments. An $80 million mortgage on a $100 million property is not so bad, but an $80 million mortgage on what is now a $60 million property is a problem. More than half of the 2007-vintage loans are expected to have trouble refinancing, and maybe well more than half.

This is true even for borrowers who have never missed a payment. Banks are required to take into account a number of factors when rating commercial mortgages. One of the most important is the loan-to-value ratio, which has a lot of borrowers over a particularly uncomfortable barrel: They may have the cash to make their payments, and they may have the cash flow to continue making payments on a refinanced loan, but their properties still are worth less than their mortgages, so nobody wants to refinance. And those are the lucky ones: Just as those loans were mostly for five years, most commercial leases are for about the same length of time. With retail and office-space rentals down, lots of commercial borrowers are sitting on largely vacant properties that are not producing much in the way of cash flow. Among the more high-profile cases, the WTC 3 tower at the World Trade Center still has not located an anchor tenant, which could put the much of the project on ice. Thousands of strip malls across the fruited plains have empty storefronts, and thousands of office buildings have floor upon vacant floor.

Standard & Poor’s advises: “One-third of maturing loans are for office properties, for which five-year lease terms are fairly common — and if tenants don’t renew these leases, securing new, long-term lease commitments may be more difficult in the current environment. Those leases [were] signed in 2007, at peak rents will likely reset to lower levels as five-year leases roll.” S&P’s bottom line: “50%-60% of the 2007 vintage five-year-term loans maturing next year may fail to refinance, and retail loans are at the greatest risk.”

Translation: Armageddon at the strip mall.

-read on at link-

Bernanke’s Housing-Market Meddling Tarnishes Trust

Constant meddling to save themselves and their buddies.

Shlaes: Bernanke’s Housing-Market Meddling Tarnishes Trust - Bloomberg

By Amity Shlaes Jan 18, 2012

In 2009, an economist named Paola Sapienza came up with an image to describe the challenge the U.S. economy faced after the financial crisis. The economy was like a board game, Sapienza, a professor atNorthwestern University, told me. Especially like the old favorite “Monopoly.”

Despite the name, “Monopoly” isn’t really about antitrust. It’s about trust. Trust and commerce, Sapienza said. If people want to buy properties, if renters pay their rents and the bank acts predictably, then the game will move merrily forward, and hotels will replace houses on the board.

But if the bank can’t be trusted -- if it cheats or proves too erratic -- there is a problem. The players walk away from the table.

-read on link-

Sipsey Street Irregulars: Sipsey Street Exclusive: Deception Plan. The Gunwalker Conspiracy was not, and is not, primarily an ATF scandal, although you are meant to think it is.

Read this here

Sipsey Street Irregulars: Sipsey Street Exclusive: Deception Plan. The Gunwalker Conspiracy was not, and is not, primarily an ATF scandal, although you are meant to think it is.

Didn't this BS start with the media sucking up to Jesse Jackson? - Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'

My favorite faux pas with this contrivance came from Geraldo Rivera. On his old CNBC panel show he was interviewing a lovely black lady. Rivera asked her for an "African-American" perspective.

She promptly corrected the PC buffoon Rivera by saying, "I'm not African-American, I'm English."

Newsvine - Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American'

JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer 2-4-12

— The labels used to describe Americans of African descent mark the movement of a people from the slave house to the White House. Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black."

For this group — some descended from U.S. slaves, some immigrants with a separate history — "African-American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture.

The debate has waxed and waned since African-American went mainstream, and gained new significance after the son of a black Kenyan and a white American moved into the White House. President Barack Obama's identity has been contested from all sides, renewing questions that have followed millions of darker Americans:

What are you? Where are you from? And how do you fit into this country?

"I prefer to be called black," said Shawn Smith, an accountant from Houston. "How I really feel is, I'm American."

--more at link-

After 9/11, why does the Gov't not believe these fanatics? Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel

It is as plain as day. The leaders of the Muslims of Iran want to kill all of us in the west, even if all Iranians are forced to die in their fanatical goals. As usual, these sick minded Islamic leaders protect themselves from harm and make sure their subject's make all their sacrifices.

The Obama administration, with its rorting its disputes with Israel to the press, set this new "justification" in motion.

Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel

2-6-11 By Reza Kahlili

Iran lays out legal case for genocidal attack against 'cancerous tumor'

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

-go to link-

Usually our enemies get our classified information from the New York Times

Panetta’s Biggest Worry

The Rosett Report

By Claudia Rosett On February 3, 2012

So, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just told told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that his biggest worry right now is that Israel will attack Iran in the next few months. Panetta then spelled out that the likeliest window for an Israeli attack would be April, May or June, before Iran stores enough enriched uranium deep enough underground so that only the U.S. would have the ability to stop the bomb-making. Perhaps Iran should send him a thank you note for the information?

Let’s hope that Panetta had some brilliant hidden agenda in talking like this to the press; perhaps a secret plan for imminent American air strikes that would render an Israeli attack unnecessary, or cover for an Israeli plan to attack tonight. But more likely Panetta simply meant what he said, and he meant to say it. In other words, while Iran keeps building the bomb, his biggest worry is how to stop Israel from acting in its own defense.

That’s fine if you’re dead certain that within the next few months Iran’s regime is either going to collapse, or throw wide open its nuclear program — a la Qaddafi — and invite the U.S. in to pick up the entire nuclear kit and haul it off to be examined at leisure in Tennessee. Does anyone believe that? The immediate collapse of the Tehran regime is a long shot. The notion of the Tehran regime amiably surrendering its nuclear program is utterly improbable, especially after the NATO-assisted demise of Qaddafi — who, had he held on to his nuclear kit, in the manner of North Korea, might have avoided being killed like a rat near a Libyan drainpipe. (Note: Qaddafi survived for years under sanctions. What persuaded him to give up his nuclear program was fear of suffering the fate of Saddam Hussein. What finally brought him down was use of force.)

-read on at link-

Wonder if this happened because of the technology Iran got from the Chinese, who got it from the Clinton Administration

The Obama administration's foreign policy has consisted of apologising for the US-for-exisitng to our stated and sworn enemies, insulting our friends England and Israel, allowing Mexico to dictate our immigration policy while snubbing Canadian support for our own energy, supporting and funding Brazilian off-shore drilling (Geo. Soros investment) and preventing all American drilling, supporting the anti-west Muslim Brotherhood over pro-west Mubarak in Egypt, calling for the overthrow of Qaddafi only after France, Italy and England supported the rebellion, and only after he thought it looked politically beneficial to Obama (without Congressional approval) bombing parts of Libya would take a month only. Doing nothing in Syria, hoping the UN would, so Obama could take credit.

So now what has he wrought, the Middle East is firmly in the hands of the Muslim brotherhood and Hamas, all enemies surrounding Israel and all anti-American. Oh yes, Obama gave approval to the Navy Seals to kill Obama bin Laden... Osama Obama ... Osama bin Laden. This was the Bush policy he followed (and for once did not blame Bush or give him credit) and is now putting it out front as his major foreign policy achievement. ♘

And now this, not to mention the Ostrich style policy in dealing with the Iranian A-bomb. ♘

Iran reports launch of small satellite into orbit

News from The Associated Press (who never know what year it is)

Feb 3, 2012 By NASSER KARIMI

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran successfully launched a new small satellite into orbit early Friday, state media reported, the latest in the country's ambitious space program that has raised concerns in the West because of its possible military applications.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called in to the launch site, saying he was "hopeful this act will send a signal of more friendship among all human beings," the official IRNA news agency reported.

IRNA said the domestically-made satellite, Navid, or Gospel, was designed to collect data on weather conditions and monitor for natural disasters.

It said the satellite weighs about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and would orbit Earth at an altitude of up to 234 miles (375 kilometers), circling the planet 15 times a day. It's of a type known as miniaturized or microsatellites, which are cheaper to produce and allow for less costly launch vehicles. ...

[In a 'gee they can't do that, it's against the UN rule' moment.]

In Washington, a State Department official said the technology used in the Safir rocket was "critical" to the development of a long-range ballistic missile and that its use violated a 2010 U.N. resolution prohibiting Iran from conducting launches using ballistic missile technology.

-more at link-