Here’s yet another depressing area in which Victorville excels: According to the latest Housing Hall of Misery stats released by the National Association of Realtors, the greater San Bernardino metropolitan area came in 3rd place in the race to the bottom of the biggest collapse in last quarter’s home prices. And while it’s not #1, the area did manage to edge out some pretty fast-crashing competition from the likes of Phoenix, Reno, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. (more…)

This story first appeared on Alternet.org

It was immediately obvious wandering through Berlin last weekend that the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall were in trouble.

In Alexanderplatz subway station, the main eastern transport hub, wall-sized billboards advertising the Fest der Freiheit — Festival of Freedom — were side by side with huge Burger King ads for a new grilled cheese snack. The tag line: “The Cheese Revolution.” (more…)

I don’t want to go too deep down the Fort Hood Rabbit Hole Of Weirdness, so I’m just going to get off my chest some of the incredibly weird shit that’s being thrown around in the media to confuse us or throw us off. It’s looking pretty clearly like there’s a cover-up in progress, and not a very professional cover-up either. But the sad thing is that all the confusion and bullshit thrown our way will probably succeed in its goal of steering the public away from whatever it is the military doesn’t want us to find out about the shooting massacre.

Anyway, here’s my list of The Top Twelve Disinformation Tales to keep an eye on:

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Gen. Walker in Mississippi trawling for pro-segregationist cock

While wasting time yesterday I looked up that bizarro rightwing “patriot” General Edwin A. Walker, who was fired by Kennedy for insubordination, and who was later allegedly nearly shot by Oswald in Texas, and who was tied to the notorious “JFK Wanted For Treason” flyer distributed in Dallas on the day of Kennedy’s assassination. (I posted that flyer in my last entry on the JFK-Obama Repeat scenario.)

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We had ourselves one hell of a crime-filled summer out here in the greater metropolitan area of Victorville. And it’s only getting hotter as the High Desert transitions into the icy nights and gale-force winds of autumn that are starting to roar through. Case-in-point: just in the past week, there were three four bank robberies, a triple homicide, a couple of deadly shootings and a foiled drive-by (and that’s not counting all the usual petty crime and DUI manslaughter stuff). (more…)

Someone on Jon Stewart’s staff molested me this past Tuesday. He or she plagiarized my Fresno/Hannity story, which Alternet ran Monday, and the Daily Show aired Tuesday, much to my horror. It was as though someone—say, a writer/producer—fondled my funny-taint, and now it’s bleeding. Well, I am not pressing charges, yet, but I am attaching an Invoice. (more…)

Zoinks! I think I heard a liberal blogger!

This is just like America’s rightwing pussies: all bluster and no fight. When no one’s looking, they’re screaming crazy treasonous shit like they’re badass revolutionaries, but at the first whiff of liberal-blogger criticism, they’re fleeing with their tails between their legs. (more…)

Once again, the Case/Schiller Index has lived up to its name. All summer long, real estate shills have used it to jack up homebuyer confidence and fluff the housing market. Now, they are doing it again. Just look at the bullshit headlines coming out today:

U.S. Economy: Home Prices Increase by Most Since 2005 . . . US home prices up for third month . . . Index shows home prices rose for 3rd month in July . . . Money Daily Brief: US home prices rise for third straight month . . . Home prices gain for 3rd straight month . . . Denver home prices rise again, getting closer to 2008 levels

Most of this unbridled optimism is based on the just released Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller’s U.S. National Home Price Index data for the month of July, which showed that home prices went up by 1.2% since June. A one-point-two-percent month-over-month increase? Ain’t that something! (more…)

This should be nothing but good news for local Mexican haters, but don’t be fooled. While it may bring smiles to their faces, the story has a dark-lead lining for hardworking red-blooded Americans: (more…)

VICTORVILLE, CA—Following the general trend seen all over the country, there’s been a push around these parts to convince people that the recession will soon be a thing of the past. Local papers have been publishing articles with laughable headlines like “SoCal housing market may be stabilizing” or “Local economy back in growth mode.” Meanwhile, the city of Victorville has been abandoning non-mission-critical development projects, raising utility fees and borrowing from itself like mad to keep a few core development projects afloat to, you know, keep up appearances. Last week, community elders pulled together a who’s who of obscure shills for the 10th Annual High Desert Economic summit, hoping that a pep talk and some community time will help shake out the recession blues. (more…)

This article was first published in the March 21, 2002 issue of The eXile.

Hot on the heels of the the Homeland’s latest impluse-buy publishing hit, 1776 Things to Love About America, the eXile decided to put in its own 911 cents. Our agents think this things going to sell and sell and sell… but that’s not why we did it. We did it because this is how we as Americans feel deep inside. Take a gander! (more…)

This article was first published in the September 6, 2002 issue of The eXile.

AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD EXILE EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT THE UNSUNG GHOST-HEROES OF 9/11!

MIKE BERRINGER

Mike was always the hard charger, the sparkplug of his 77th-floor accounting office. He was the one who insisted that everyone stay at their desks on that fatal morning, wryly telling his frightened staff, “This is not gonna turn into one of those 20-minute coffee breaks, people” before he went back to work delicately balancing the books of Enron. (more…)

Exiled editor Yasha Levine has officially hit the Big Time. The front page of Victorville’s Daily Press newspaper featured a profile of our fearless Domestic War Correspondent, his life, his wisdom, and his work, as well as a Q&A sidebar to help locals get to know the celebrity in their midst. A full-color photo of Levine is splashed marquee-like on the front page, of course. (more…)

This article was first published on Vice’s blog.

California’s State Assembly dipshits should congratulate themselves for a job well done. They finally managed to pass a bill that will reduce the state’s prison population by 17,000. All it took was a riot that tore a prison in Chino apart from the inside. That, and a federal court ruling handed down in early August that said the state had to clear 25 percent of its 150,000 prisoner inventory.
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This article first appeared in Alternet.

America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan — a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what’s now being called “Obama’s War.” (more…)