Another Reason Not to Use Your Credit Card: The Feds Track You Without a Warrant

As reported here at wired.com:

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

Look for rfid chips in the currency next.

Tyrannies Desire to Know Everything You Say and Do: Feds Violate FISA

From The Washington Post:

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of US citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

What the ACLU got was heavily redacted. Read about it here.

Assume no communication whatsoever is exempt from eavesdropping. I know I don't.

So to all my regular readers over at 216.81.81.84 in the Department of Homeland Security in Woodbridge, VA, hello! And a big shout out to you over at Customs and Border Protection at 63.167.255.154! Also to the DHS in Springfield, VA, at 216.81.81.83, greetings! And you over at United States Army Information Systems Command Headquarters at 141.116.212.32 in Alexandria, VA, thanks for visiting!

I would be remiss if I left out the FBI. Hello over there in Clarksburg, WV! Nice of you at the Criminal Justice Information Systems office at 153.31.113.26 to stop by! And also those of you in Bridgeport, WV, at 153.31.113.21. I appreciate your interest, ever so much!

What will you all do, when the power goes out?

Is Ron Paul the Republicans' Dennis Kucinich?

He was one of just three Republicans in the US House to vote with the Democrats today to send a bill to the Senate which extends the Bush tax cuts only to those making less than $250,000/$200,000.

Can't wait to hear from Dennis Ron the chapter and verse from the US Constitution which allowed him to vote Yea on a tax increase for only "wealthy" Americans.

TheHill.com reports here the independent Democrats who voted against Pelosi's class-warfare tax increase bill on the "rich":

Here are the Democrats who voted against the bill (nine of whom lost their reelection bids):

Rep. Brian Baird (Wash.)

Rep. Dan Boren (Okla.)

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (Pa.)

Rep. Artur Davis (Ala.)

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (Texas)

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (S.D.) 

Rep. Ron Klein (Fla.)

Rep. Jim Matheson (Utah)

Rep. Mike McIntyre (N.C.)

Rep. Mike McMahon (N.Y.)

Rep. Jerry McNerney (Calif.)

Rep. Walt Minnick (Idaho)

Rep. Gwen Moore (Wis.)

Rep. Jim Moran (Va.) 

Rep. Collin Peterson (Minn.)

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) 

Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.)

Rep. Gene Taylor (Miss.)

Rep. Mike Thompson (Calif.)

Rep. Pete Visclosky (Ind.)

Among the brave above who were re-elected to return next year I count Dan Boren, Lloyd Doggett, Jim Matheson, Mike McIntyre, Jerry McNerney, Gwen Moore, Jim Moran, Collin Peterson, Bobby Scott, Mike Thompson, and Pete Visclosky. 

Why couldn't the three Republicans have been more like these eleven Democrats and voted No?

Libertarians are nuts.

Come On, Come On, Come On, Do The Mussolini With Me!

Here's Why Your Government Stalled on the FOIA for Two Years

Because the American taxpayer has bailed out the whole world, that's why. We're now the biggest suckers in history.

And the following information wouldn't have been released either, except for the Dodd-Frank legislation:

Citigroup ($2.2 trillion)

Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion)

Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion)

Bear Stearns ($960 billion)

Bank of America ($887 billion)

Goldman Sachs ($615 billion)

JPMorgan Chase ($178 billion)

Wells Fargo ($154 billion)

Swiss bank UBS ($165 billion)

Deutsche Bank ($97 billion)

Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack ($1.25 trillion)

General Electric ($16 billion)

Harley-Davidson Inc. ($2.3 billion)

Caterpillar Inc. dealers ($733 million)

The story from yahoo.com is totally irresponsible for saying the Fed didn't take part in an appeal to the Supreme Court with a group of commercial banks seeking to prevent the disclosure of the names of institutions receiving emergency loans in 2008. Hell, the Fed appealed all the way up the line until it came time to appeal to the Supreme Court or comply with two (2! II! Zwei!) orders from lower courts to disclose the information. And we still don't have that.

Has anyone painted a clearer picture of the bankruptcy of our largest institutions and industries?

Only a fool would keep his money in a bank now.

Hell, only a fool would keep money.

Stupid Shit I Read at Washington's Blog

Here:

Since there's only 300 million of us, I guess when this is prefaced by "polls show that" it means that 1) nearly everybody got asked, and 2) the country is considerably bigger than we realized.

As for 1), no one polled me. And last time I checked, the people voted for Bush rather conclusively in 2004.

As for 2), they must be hiding all that extra population in the extra 7 states of the union candidate Obama claimed to have visited in 2008.

What a wack job. 

Federal Reserve Emergency Lending Round Up of Stories at Naked Capitalism

Lots of reaction pouring in on today's data dump, nicely pulled together by nakedcapitalism.com, here.

Chris Whalen Explains How the Taxpayers Bailed Out the Shareholders

They don't teach angry at church. You'll just have to go here. 

The Federal Reserve is a wholly owned subsidiary of the financial sector, and so are you.

TSA Thinks Sanitary Napkins are Suspicious

Imagine having to submit to a search for that. One woman actually did. Story here.

TSA Detains Woman in Glass Screening Box for an Hour

Over a dispute about x-raying her breast milk. Story here.

Combat Troops Overwhelmingly Oppose Lifting DADT

The people who actually do the killing don't want queers in the front lines, let alone in the rear, so to speak:

[C]ombat troops, who live in intimate surroundings while deployed, overwhelming reported that open gays would undermine military readiness, or preparedness for combat.

Read more on this from The Washington Times here.

Watch the liberalism rampant in the war colleges, the Pentagon, and the Joint Chiefs screw the pooch anyway. Their goal is to wreck the country, not defend it. Liberals don't care how inimical this is to the families who raise their young and volunteer them to fight for this country. Those families will stop doing so when they have to fight for values which they believe are un-American. Which means we'll be left to hire mercenaries and illegals to do our fighting for us.

The liberal death wish is about to ruin its last American institution: the US military.

Much Touted CBS Poll Never Asked About Scanners Exposing Nakedness

So says Jacob Sullum in a story exposing the tendentious claims made by the TSA and the servile media who defend the backscatter scanners and the groping:

The TSA likes to cite a CBS poll conducted a few weeks ago that found 81 percent of Americans support the new scanners. But the pollsters did not mention that the scanners reveal passengers' naked bodies. 

Housing Prices Still Need To Fall Much More

And they will.

TPC at Pragmatic Capitalism shows three charts here which demonstrate historically where we've been and where we are with respect to supply, demand and price.

From the peaks, demand for new homes is off nearly 80%, while prices of new homes are off only 25% and represent levels last seen in 2003.

Supply of existing housing is up over 70%, however. The current drop in supply to 10.5 months is seasonal but is still something like 160% higher than it was at the end of 2003. Clearing this inventory remains unemployment's doppelganger.

Spain's Property Bubble Sounds Familiar: 6 Years of Supply

Reported here by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

We can argue whether the overhang of unsold properties in Spain will reach 1.5m, or six years’ supply, as claimed by Madrid consultants RR de Acuna, but there is little doubt that the "Cajas" and smaller banks have played a game of “extend and pretend” to disguise the true scale of losses on their property loans.

Tom Petruno on the Zombie Bears

Not once in this more or less even-handed discussion does the massive rot infecting bank balance sheets because of declining housing and commercial real estate prices get mentioned.

You'd never know that half of the nearly 8000 banks in this country have serious problems, nor that the savings of millions of Americans have disappeared because of the bursting of the housing bubble.

But hey, we can live with rot, and maybe even recover, right? Cancer patients do it all the time. Except for the ones that die.

Against the sickening round of prolonged chemotherapy and radiation currently being applied through extend and pretend and stimulative liquidity, the bears instead advocate surgery:

The zombie bears are certain that the worst lies ahead, and that consumers and investors should prepare accordingly — although how exactly to prepare is a matter of debate.

"We need a deleveraging, deflationary depression, and in three to five years we're going to have a much better economy," said Michael Pento, senior economist at Euro Pacific Capital in New York.

"We just have to go through hell in the meantime."

Real Estate Loan Problems are Significant in Half of All Banks

And the total number of all banks is now fewer than 7800 due to mergers and failures, according to Richard Suttmeier of ValuEngine.com:

The total number of banks with real estate loan pipeline problems is 3938, or 50.7% of all banks in the banking system.

Read more about it, here.

Everything else is happy talk.

TSA Represents Danger to America, Says Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen for The New York Times says a word here on behalf of the Fourth Amendment, and seems to see in Homeland Security and the TSA an incipient threat to our American way of life:

The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year.


The trouble is, Roger Cohen has commented half-approvingly (here) that the large-scale targeted killings of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been "more eloquent than words," killings made possible by the use of predator drones, which, before long, Homeland Security and the TSA might very well use here at home to invade the privacy of the American people as surely as do these scanners.

Consider that the very same predator drone used by the military was already tested out of Fort Drum over northern New York in the summer of 2009 to evaluate its utility to law enforcement, according to this story. Not a year later five such drones are on active duty flying missions over America's southern and northern borders for US Customs and Border Control, as reported here by TheHill.com. The technology for drones has advanced so rapidly that their size is down to 3' in diameter and they are virtually silent, meaning they are becoming increasingly attractive to law enforcement. Three examples of law enforcement use of drones in 2006 and 2007 have been discussed here at The Rutherford Institute. Obama has been described as "in love" with the things.

The airport scanners represent only one element of the new national security state Obama and his surveillance enthusiasts Janet Napolitano and John Pistole want to erect in America. They are equally eager to install thousands of cameras all over the country, and they are funding them. Security check points are going to spring up everywhere if they get their way.

We'll see how eloquent people think all this is when the government comes looking for Roger Cohen and other American citizens with a complete portfolio of your movements and associations in hand, matched to your naked image.

Gold Hoarding IN GERMANY

From the UK Telegraph, here:

"You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders."

-- Professor Wilhelm Hankel, Frankfurt University 

The New National Security State Under Obama Progresses to Houston

In another installment in Aristotle's meme that tyrannies are abetted by women, we learn that the next city to fall to the transformation of America into the national security state is Houston.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting here that the Department of Homeland Security is helping fund the installation of 300 surveillance cameras there:

Judith Hanson, who was visiting downtown to watch her daughter's performance at the Wortham Center, said the cameras could provide comfort to women who come to the area.

"Just knowing that there is a camera just makes me feel a little bit safer," she said.

Most Newark Backscatter Scanners Idle on National Opt Out Day

The majority of Newark’s full-body scanners were idle throughout much of the day, depriving most passengers of the chance to opt out of the controversial screening procedure even if they had wanted to.

As reported here.