Well this was a dramatic switch from illegals to Stockton- lol

Food– you like your mom’s meat loaf and lasagna– I was looking for pictures yesterday to see if one came close to the POD and started reading all your info–

You have to change your map of the US–

Nice to see Az is not in the Misery Measure– but there are foreclosures left and right here- on this block- two of them–

Your spring vineyard sure is pretty–

Adam,

F.Y.I

Air force jets have been flying over the past 2 days every half hour its very weird ….. i havnt heard anything about anything going on….. it could be just a training mission or it could be something….

minimum population of 371,000

I can’t imagine that many people! *LOL*

patty: the area i live in has a density of 40,000 people per square mile, though during the Carnival there are at least an additional million people, up to 2 million!

It looks like violent crimes made it to the top of the list. Families with children would prefer to live in non-violent crime areas, whereas possibly a single bachelor’s biggest issue might be commute time to major a company not located in Stockton. The biggest thing Stockton has going for it to make it off of the misery list is the attempt to make it worth while living there plus the nearby largest wine country, which has to be beautiful in itself. This photo is gorgeous and gives you a peaceful feeling.

Does the high number of unemployment reflect that businesses are there but jobs are not available or the business industry doesn’t exists for jobs to be created?

In Vegas, Mayor Oscar Goodman attempted to clean up downtown Las Vegas. He did accomplish that to a degree. There are now fancy new signs and a light show, expensive parking on very tiny lots and some of the homeless periodically get moved to shelters, which was one of his big campaigns, no homeless on the streets.

But after all of that effort, downtown Las Vegas is still centered around an area with a high crime rate. Low budget hotel rooms, inexpensive apartments that are riddled with faulty plumbing and electricity, are some of things you see circling the downtown Las Vegas area. Residents in that area tend to earn less money. Many people gamble in the casinos and lose what little money they have, which makes then desperate and the need to commit a crime increases.

Stockton seems to have the ability to make living there better than many other cities, even though downtown Las Vegas is small and can’t make it on the misery list, the same factors apply.

Adam,

what did your contacts say about the planes?

Putin is flexing his arms:

AP:

“Russia could aim nuclear missiles at Ukraine if the former Soviet republic joins NATO and accepts the deployment of anti-missile defenses on its territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow after holding four hours of talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Putin said that Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO would restrict its sovereignty.

“That of course is Ukraine’s internal process … and we don’t have the right, and we won’t, interfere in this process,” Putin said. But “that raises the question for Russia of the need for retaliatory actions.”

“It’s frightening not just to talk about, but even to think about, that in response to such deployment, the possibility of such deployments - and one can’t theoretically exclude these deployments - that Russia will have to point its warheads at Ukrainian territory,” he said.”

I’m shocked LV isn’t on that list. :-/

Almost everyone I know that lives here in Vegas does NO want to live here..
most families want to get their kids out!!!

I swear, I can only think of a couple people in my world that really likes it here.

It used to be pretty inexpensive (it was grrreat), but now it’s VERY expensive … our traffic is a mess and we have the rudest, nastiest and dangerous drivers on earth … AND
it’s hotter than Haiti in the summer….

We peel rubber to Utah every chance we get.

Gosh, I didn’t even mention the crime.

Avi: it seems the cold war could be coming out of deep freeze

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2008/02/whats-the-bigge.html

Terri, here’s one

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/reactor%20response.htm

yah i heard crazy,

This kid in my class who just moved here from russia told me ” Yah Putin is very strong he knows taykwando, russians love him , and russians dont like to work they are lazy.”

The takywando was the first thing he said to me when i said Putin….

the kid is cool

then there is this girl in 12th grade whose russian who i question shes russian to

and shes also a pro putiner ….. again becuase he brought $$$ to russia……

Israel has a whole bunch of russians …… i always feel like alot of them might be spies …. somthing about russians …..

Adam,

why doesnt america and the other countries scare russia like they scare them….. the russians will continue doing what they are doing becuase no one will do nothing about it but cry…. Now days words meaning jack …. action is what gets things going….

You see :

with the rUSSSIANS Japan had to scramble 23 or so jets to intercept one or so russian jets….

2 to 23 …

then the U.S. carrier 2 to 3 or so …… The russians apppear they can do what ever they want becuase if anyone does anything in response milatarily their screwed and resourcly screwed with oil….

the got an edge ……

Adam,
Tapping my foot at Picture of the Day Thread………..
That means we miss you over there.

hmmmmmmm

I do not think of stockton as miserable

They obviously have not been to burly Idaho, Monkey Eyebrow Kentucky, Rock springs Wyoming, Hohenwald Tennesee, Yakima Washinton, Columbus Georgia, or any of the other miserable little towns my dad lived in while I was a kid.

bleh

Hard to believe Stockton is worse than Flint MI. And, only slightly worse than Detroit.

Have you seen Detroit and Flint lately? Stockton cannot be that bad.

Well you people have too many people we have 23 people per square mile. We gots lots of room for you MAX.

Adam,

1. Help with the Pix

2. T-shirt I am smarter than any think tank I know of

3. Go look at superbowl slide show how many times do I have to ask?

BTW LA has to be worse than Stockton, I mean come on! The smog alone could kill you in LA.

I do know Charlotte has very expensive housing.

I like to think of us as having 250.3 people per square mile here. The thirds are people that have annoyed me neatly chopped and distributed throughout the county……ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh statistics

oh and when you guys are thinking man derek is one messed up dude, I want you guys to think of the conversation I had with my brother, yes my older brother that was consumed by drugs for years and is now a truck driver. We were talking about the demographics of our home state and voting and I mentioned some random statistic about 12 million people believed in aliens or something, and he scoffed at me, saying there were not 12 million people in the states. Somewhere in his mind he really believes that the entire population of the united states is around 10 million…it was an interesting conversation, me on one side trying to convince him that the united states has 100’s of millions and him on the other laughing hysterically because that is “impossible”

just thought I would share that with all of this population talk

man, when i had to drive up to the bay area. I used to hate to drive through Stockton, The smell every time was so nasty!……..even rolling up the windows didnt work!

I just now saw that we plan to have a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. But does anyone know why the Russians would do a flyover without strinking our carrier? I can see why they are upset but good does a flyover do? Are they just flexing their muscles to let us know that if they wanted to strike us they can or was this a practice mission for the Russians or did they plan on striking us if our fighter jets didn’t get there in time? I don’t get it.

Derek,

I was going to tell your brother to get out of the 60’s…..but, he has to go back to the 1820’s to get a US population just under 10,000,000.

Send him this link……

http://usapopulationmap.com/race_1820.html

Adam,

As far as I’m concerned L.A. should be #1. The utility rate hikes just erased my SSDI COL raise and then axed it again. In comparative dollars this last check is 5-6% less than the last one. In addition The Gas Co has changed it’s medical allowance. When I signed up for it a few years ago the deal was I’d pay no “Over baseline” charges. The new rule is that they only exempt the first 50 Therms from the over baseline charge. Cost to me? ~Another 40 bucks. L.A. Bites the big one -Rod-

Adam, the blog rolls, tags and categories don’t show up on your main page. You have to go into a thread in order to jump around. Is there a way to get those links on the main page, please?

Adam,

KT’s right. I keep getting a msg at the bottom saying “Transferring data from ad.doubleclick.net…” but nothing’s loading except the posts. Eventually I get a browser timeout. -Rod-

Modesto California? Isn’t this the Laci Peterson home?

New York must be having problems–

Avi and Adam–

this was sent to me–

A pair of Russian TU-95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at an altitude of 2,000 feet (660 meters) over the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a US defense official said Monday.

Four F-18 fighters jets intercepted the Russian bombers Saturday morning, but not before they had overflown the USS Nimitz, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Japanese F-15 fighters had earlier scrambled to intercept another pair of Bear bombers, and escorted them out of the area, said a US military official who asked not to be identified.

The Japanese government issued a strong protest with Moscow, but Russian officials denied their aircraft had crossed into Japanese airspace.

The second pair of bombers were flying south of Japan when they “essentially turned inbound toward the USS Nimitz, and USS Nimitz aircraft launched and intercepted the bombers,” said the defense official.

The US F-18s escorted the bombers until they departed the area, the official said.

“There were no verbal communications between the Nimitz aircraft or the Russian aircraft,” the official said.

The official said one of the Russian bombers flew directly over the US carrier at an altitude of 2,000 feet, while the second bomber flew at its side at the same altitude.

The incident comes at a time when Russia is reviving the long-range air patrols that were once a standard feature of the Cold War.

It was the second time since July 2004 that a Russian Bear bomber has overflown a US aircraft carrier.

That incident involved the USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan.

The Nimitz, which was on a routine patrol in the western Pacific at the time of the incident, was back Monday in port in Sasebo, Japan, the official said.

It was not immediately known whether the United States issued any protests with the Russians.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with Russia’s deputy premier the following day on the sidelines of an international security conference in Munich.

Read More

Additional

Popularity: 1% [?]

Fox News has a story about the Russian bombers too-

Is anyone watching the Westminster dog show? And did you see the Dobie? The intelligence in that face, and those eyes, was frightening… -Rod-

Note to self: Go here and then select Working Group Video. Dobie is in that video:

http://video.westminsterkennelclub.org/player/?id=0#videoid=213344

ADAM,

OH OH HIZBULLAH NUMBER 2 KILLED ( THEY ARE BLAMING IT ON ISRAEL OO S H T) GET READY FOR RUMBLE !

-
Debka ——————————————————————————-
Major coup in war on terror: Notorious Hizballah terrorist hostage-taker Imad Mughniyeh killed in Damascus

February 13, 2008, 1:26 PM (GMT+02:00)

One of the few photos of elusive terrorist Imad Fayez Mughniyeh

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, the Hizballah’s supreme commander and plotter of major anti-US and anti-Israel terror operations in the last 25 years reportedly died in a car bomb explosion in the Damascus district of Tanzim Kafr Susa Tuesday night, Feb. 12.

Hizballah TV interrupted its broadcasts Wednesday to announce his death, accusing Israel of assassination. Hizballah TV interrupted its broadcasts Wednesday to announce his death, accusing Israel of assassination. Its leaders are conferring in Beirut on how to retaliate. Special security imposed at Israeli embassies and Jewish centers worldwide. Hassan Nasrallah will eulogize the dead man at his funeral in Beirut Wednesday by video link. Beirut is already tense since the funeral falls on the third anniversary of the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

On Aug. 5, 2006, DEBKAfile described Mughniyeh as the only undercover agent in the Middle East who enjoys the complete personal trust of both Iranian supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. In recent years he has liaised between them. His death is a blow to both.

The elusive Mughniyeh surfaced before both of them on the Islamist terror horizon. In 1982, He orchestrated the suicide bombings of US Marine and French Beirut headquarters, in which 241 Marines and 58 French soldiers were killed, prompting a decision by President Ronald Reagan to evacuate US troops from Lebanon.

In 1983, he orchestrated the US embassy bombing, which killed 63 people and wiped out the top CIA Middle East staff. That year, the Israeli command center in Tyre was blown up killing scores of troops.

In 1985, the United States indicted him for hijacking TWA Flight 847 and the resulting death of U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem.

Mughniyeh was also infamous for numerous brutal kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut through the 1980s, most notably, that of Terry Anderson and U.S. Army Col William Francis Buckley, who was later murdered.

The dead terrorist’s association with Tehran and its violent overseas exploits went back twenty years. In 1988, in collusion with Tehran, he organized the kidnapping of Colonel William R. Rich Higgins, the most senior American intelligence officer in Lebanon, who was tortured to death by Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen and Hizballah operatives.

The same partnership is believed to have staged the Khobar Towers blast in eastern Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, targeting US flight crews guarding Saudi oil fields. At least 19 Americans were killed and 200 injured.

Mughniyeh, acting for Tehran and Hizballah, was held responsible for the 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy and Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, in which more than a hundred people died.

He planned the kidnap and murder of three Israeli soldiers eight years ago and his hand is believed behind the abduction of two Israeli reservists in 2006.

After numerous attempts to capture him, the FBI in Oct. 2001 put him on its list of 22 most wanted terrorists and a $5 million bounty on his head.

The dead terrorist mastermind’s first mentor was the Palestinian Yasser Arafat as a member of the Fatah’s Force 17.

While America and Israel come first to mind as responsible for Mughniyeh’s death, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources note that a possible inside job is worth considering. Dissatisfied with his performance in the 2006 Lebanon War against Israel, Tehran deposed Hizballah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasralah as its supreme commander and replaced him with Mughniyeh.

Nasrallah was confined to political functions, while his successor was assigned the task of rehabilitating Hizballah militia forces and preparing them for the next war on Israel.

The dead terrorist may have set up his headquarters in Damascus under the protection of Syrian and Iranian security services because he did not feel safe in Lebanon. Penetrating these two security belts to slay the wanted man was undoubtedly an exceptional intelligence feat.

Everyone:

go to http://www.debka.com

http://www.jpost.com

http://www.ynetnews.com

http://www.haaretz.com

for more info

this could be war

Avi………there could be more than one area of war brewing today………

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330500,00.html

things are getting eeeerie. What is going on, seems we are getting a lot of “probing” going on. All my training teaches me that when somebody is testing your reactions they are doing so that when you react to a real threat, they know what your next move is and how to counter it. Iran harassing our boats, Russia buzzing our boats, china spying, and Venezuela now cutting off oil.

I hate to sound like a nut job sitting in my basement with a tinfoil hat on, but all of this suddenly makes my eyebrows raise.

Our borders are not secure, could we be looking at a 3 prong attack? set of a bomb here in our country, cripple our shipping with no oil, then attack us with a bigger military?

This has all the makings to get very, very ugly.

Derek…….Sure looks like that “stirring in the woods” is a little more than just natural wildlife. Last summer DHS raised some concern about an attack, either within our borders, or against U.S targets abroad (other than Iraq/Afghanastan), before our presidential elections………….Well, that’s only 7 months away now.

Derek………If the information we’re getting regarding the Russian bombers overflying the Nimitz fleet is correct than the U.S Navy responded perfectly……..by not responding. As you stated, the “enemy” will probe your defenses before a bigger attack to see how you may react when SHTF. Our navy’s “non-response” means that, if the Russians were trying to learn something, they didn’t. I beleive it was a probe, because one bomber stayed off station about 50nm……probably to observe our reactions.
You can be sure though that our boys/gals in white were quite aware of any possible immediate threat those bombers could have caused to them…..and would have acted accordingly to save the fleet.

John, I see now they are warning against “mom bombs” and I can tell you I have first hand experience with them, they are very real. They also say that a “graduation” was performed and that the graduates were dispatched the the US and Briton. I do not think that most Americans realize how truly dangerous these people are.

Can you imagine the chaos if the average joe american had to watch for IED’s on his way to work, if people were terrified of all public places, if oild prices shoot through the roof and bankrupt our trucking industry, if we had explosions rocking major US cities.

I mean we could really suffer, and I am not talking about inconvenience, I am talking about grocery stores being empty (trucking companies bankrupt) panic in the streets (IED’s take a mental toll) large businesses closing doors (wal-mart would be a prime target) The average american paralyzed by fear of going out.

I do not think there are many militaries we could not completely dismantle, but what if they destroyed us from the inside?

john,

You are right, I think that our Navy did an outstanding job, and I can imagine that the intensity was thick enough to cut with a knife

Derek,

A few devices going off inside a mall or two, heavy casualties, and our economy will for a short time come to a screeching halt. Back before suicide bombers became all the rage, I predicted that our malls would be hit, but that it would be small bands of gunmen doing it. Basically a few at the doors and a few more inside doing their work. There’s no way the police could stop it. Luckily I was wrong. But the people that would like to do such things are out there, nonetheless. -Rod-

Detroit? How in the world did you come up with that one. Apparently you haven’t looked very far.
How could you have missed Fort Worth, Texas ?
we have more to offer than any of these.
Come on down!

Detroit, Flint, Chicago, NYC - what kind of yardstick are these loonies using to measure “most desirable”? Why not stick Buffalo in there as well? They’re all cities I hope never to have the misfortune of ever visiting again, let alone live there. And I’d surmise that all those ‘for sale’ signs in Stockton suggest, “wanna live there, can’t afford it.” That hardly makes for a desirable locale.

Jim McAlister, Tampa, FL

Here is a list of best rural places to live.

http://www.progressivefarmer.com/farmer/bestplaces/

Seattle should’ve been on that list …

The illegal / corrupt elections could kill ya … if ya don’t die from the price of the coffee … LOL
The traffic / politicians are sooooo much worse here than in LA … it’s not even funny …