Residents Forming a Militia?

by ELISA HAHN / KING 5 News

KING5.com

Posted on May 28, 2010 at 10:38 PM

Updated yesterday at 10:38 PM 

BURIEN, Wash. - Fed up with burglars in their neighborhood, Burien residents decide to get creative. They posted signs throughout their neighborhood warning people to get out their guns.

It's happening in south Burien, near SW 160th Street and 12th Avenue SW. Pass through this part of town and you'll see posted neon colored signs, warning residents of burglars.

"We were seeing an increase in breakins and we wanted to make sure people were aware of what's happening," says John Lee.

Stacie Lee came up with the phrase for the sign "Get out your guns if you see any suspicious activity." She even wrote it in Spanish.

"I don't want to run into somebody walking into our backdoor and that scares me," she says.
It was meant to send a strong message to neighbors, and to the burglars too: Some homeowners who have guns are prepared to use them.

"If I'm in my home with my wife and my dogs, I will protect my wife and my family," says John Lee.

Flash Crash of 2010.

BY EMMA MOODY May 29, 2010 

Between the "Flash Crash" and angst over the worsening crisis in Europe, stocks suffered a dismal May, posting their worst decline for the month since Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House.
The month ended with a thud Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 122.36 points, or 1.2%, to 10136.63, leaving it in negative territory ...


On May 28, there was a "flash crash." If you didn't notice it, that is because it occurred not in 2010, but in 1962. Its aftermath offers some clues on what might happen in the wake of this year's flash crash on May 6.
"The stock market careened downward yesterday," reported The Wall Street Journal on May 29, 1962, "leaving traders shaken and exhausted." The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5.7% that day, down 34.95, the second-largest point decline then on record.

"The drop took place on volume so heavy," added the Journal, that the "ticker wasn't able to finish reporting floor transactions until 5:59 p.m., two hours and 29 minutes after the market closed."
Like this year's flash crash, the "market break" of 1962 came after a run-up in the market that had led many investors into complacency. In 1961, stocks had risen 27%, with leading technology stocks like Texas Instruments and Polaroid trading at up to 115 times earnings.

From poor to poorer.

May 28, 2010 04:00 PM ET | Peter Roff |

Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt is demonstrating the kind of leadership that is sorely needed in Washington right now.

Fearing that a commission chartered by President Barack Obama and chaired by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson will recommend the introduction of a value added tax to pay down the debt all of Obama’s new spending has accrued, Tiahrt has authored a resolution asking Congress to go on record against the VAT.
[See which industries donated the most to Tiahrt.]

House Resolution 1245, written by Tiahrt and co-sponsored by 32 of his colleagues, expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that the Value Added Tax is a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America’s economic recovery.
”
According to Tiahrt, his anti-VAT resolution is intended to put Congress on record as opposing a massive tax increase of this type, which he says is “the wrong path for the American economy and the working families of America.” As he points out, the VAT was first enacted in Europe in 1967, at a time when the United States and Europe both taxed about 27 cents out of every dollar of national income. Since the VAT is a sales tax that is imposed on goods and services at each stage of production, the true cost is ultimately hidden from the end user. Moreover, it is highly regressive, hitting unfairly the wallets of low and middle income wage earners while being a massive revenue machine for the government.

“Since the introduction of the VAT in Europe, its average tax take has gone from 27 percent to 41 percent, nearly a 50 percent increase in just four decades,” Tiahrt says.

Pakistan better wake up!

Published May 29, 2010

| Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is developing plans for a unilateral attack on the Pakistani Taliban in the event of a successful terrorist strike in the United States that can be traced to them, The Washington Post reports.

Planning for a retaliatory attack was spurred by ties between alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and elements of the Pakistani Taliban, the Post said in an article posted on its website Friday night, quoting unidentified senior military officials.

The military would focus on air and missile strikes but also could use small teams of U.S. Special Operations troops currently along the border with Afghanistan, the Post said.

Airstrikes could damage the militants' ability to launch new attacks but also might damage U.S.-Pakistani relations.

The CIA already conducts unmanned drone strikes in the country's tribal regions. Officials told the Post that a U.S. military response would be considered only if a terrorist attacks persuaded President Barack Obama that the CIA campaign is ineffective.

A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Pakistan already has been told that it has only weeks to show real progress in a crackdown against the Taliban.

The U.S. has put Pakistan "on a clock" to launch a new intelligence and counterterrorist offensive against the group, which the White House alleges was behind the Times Square bombing attempt, according to the official.

U.S. officials also have said the U.S. reserves the right to strike in the tribal areas in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and other high-value targets.

At the same, the Obama administration is working to improve ties with Pakistani intelligence officials to head off attacks by militant groups, the Post reported.

Robbing Banks to a Tea!

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- Robbers stole $5.5 million from a southern Iraqi state bank after giving guards tea laced with a sleeping drug, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.

No shots were fired during the incident Friday at a bank near Najaf, the Interior Ministry said. The money is the equivalent of 6.5 billion Iraqi dinars.
In recent months, there has been a spike of similar incidents and authorities believe that insurgents were behind them to fund their military operations

Earlier this week, 15 people died in southwestern Baghdad after a brazen series of jewelry store heists on Tuesday in which bandits made off with gold and money.
In this latest incident, robbers had an associate among the bank's guard force give drugged tea to the guards, officials said.

After the guards passed out, the robbers entered the bank and made off with the money.
Two people were arrested, but police were not able to recover any of the money. The Interior Ministry said it appears the two are poor people trying to make money and are not part of a terrorist organization.