I’ve been poking around a bit on Prison Planet lately, thats a website run by Alex Jones, a radio talk show host who has been described as a “paleoconservative” whatever thats supposed to mean. Paleo means old, so I assume it’s being used to create a distance from the “neocons” (meaning New Conservatives) who were neither new nor really conservative in the first place. The first story I ran into over there was titled Louisiana Cops Plan for “End of the World” Scenario which goes on to describe how the program includes access to a .50 caliber vehicle mounted machine gun to help put down looters and rioting in the event of a crisis. I got a little further into the article and it is suggested that cities across America are beginning their own war training in preparation for the coming apocalypse in 2012. No, not the fabled Mayan end of the world, this refers to a prediction by a “futurist” named Gerald Celente.
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I’m not quite sure why I became so interested in this particular case, but I did. I think it might have been because I have been to a lot of concerts and I never went to one with any thought that I wouldn’t make it home again. I followed the story on several websites including websleuths, findmorgan.com, and local Charlottesville newspaper websites and crime blogs. Dana Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech student had planned to attend the Oct 17th Metallica show for a long time – along with a few friends – and before Metallica had even made it on stage she had somehow ended up outside the John Paul Jones arena on the University of Virginia campus, in 40 degree weather without her car keys. Her purse and cell phone (with the battery removed) were found the next day in an overflow parking area.
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For the last couple days I’ve been totally obsessed with one of the strangest murders I’ve heard about in a long time. We’ve all heard that “home invasions” (these used to be called burglaries back in the 70s, but for some reason “invasion” makes it sound so much worse) are on the increase. I personally think this is because it’s getting much harder for your average criminal to get away with sticking up gas stations, banks, or liquor stores what with all the cameras everywhere and the move to electronic commerce – who pays with cash anymore? This particular crime grabbed me though – I’m talking about the Billings murders in Pensacola. You’ve all heard about this already I know, but I thought I’d share some interesting links and (as always) some incredibly insightful opinions anyway.
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I watched a great ireport wherein the question is posed why it is that the guy who killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum and the the guy who shot the abortion doctor recently weren’t on a terrorist watch list since they had both committed similar acts in the past. It seems like we’ll send in the marines if the terrorists are muslim, but when they’re old white guys we don’t care?
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The reasons for moving off Long Island are mounting. (click ‘read more’ for reasons). Although the value of our current house is way up, if I can estimate it’s worth from the houses that have been sold and appraised around me, it’s still far below what comparable homes fetch in surrounding areas (from talking to others and looking through real estate ads). Therein lies the rub: sell the house, and we won’t be able to afford to buy anything else on the Island without getting saddled with huge debt! This hasn’t stopped most other folks I know who are happily saddled with massive debt ($600k+), maybe it’s me? Although the taxes are bad relative to other parts of the country, at our current place, they’re better than anywhere else on the island – if we sell and move, we won’t only have to pay through the nose to buy another house here, we’d also have to budget for at least doubling our taxes. The only solution would seem to be to move *off* the island, but then there’s the black hole of finding a job, etc.Running List of Reasons to Move:

• Plans are in the works to put a massive high security prison about a mile down the tracks from my house to replace the over-crowded one in Riverhead.
• Plans are in the works for a 6000 seat stadium / race track about 2 miles away – the roar will be incredible, not to mention the traffic.
• Not a real factor, but an annoyance: the huge baseball fields they put in down the road have so much light that at night the entire sky is lit up as bright as the light of dawn. On nights that they use the fields you can’t see a single star in the sky. Funny – it actually scared me one night I heard a roaring outside, and went out to realize that it was a huge crowd of people screaming at a game.
• There are still plans to stick a huge 58 megawatt electric generating oil burning facility at the end of my road. (update: it was *supposed* to be a gas fired plant, but it’s really dual-use, and since they currently have no source for gas, it’s pretty obviously *not* going to be gas fired. Oh, and its a 384 Megawatt facility now.
• Bad enough that the gravel places behind me work from 6am every day but Sunday (which I think is illegal – to be grinding stone (loud) on Saturday at 6am, but everyone is afraid to mess with them as they appear to be tied to the mob), but one of them now wants to graduate to start doing asphalt. This would really be a clincher – it would spell terrible consequences for Em who already has trouble with allergies. An asphalt place would eventually kill us all, too since the prevailing wind would bring the black cloud of death right over the house. –update: I think I had this confused. The asphalt plant would be in Middle Island at the gravel place on Middle-Island Yaphank Rd. Still bad, but wouldn’t affect us directly.
• there have been over 50 home invasions this year (I forget if that’s just Suffolk or both counties) and the police have no clue who’s doing them (despite the fact they are the highest paid cops in the country?)
• the traffic is awful now – it takes me 45 minutes some days to drive the 14 miles to work. It used to be I could wait till 6:00 to leave for home and miss most of it on the way home, but now the traffic is bad until 7, and still a factor till 7:30.
• I haven’t even mentioned Grucci setting off his bombs (fireworks manufacturer) in the summer about 1 mile away, or Gershow (recycling plant) chugging out fumes and setting itself on fire mysteriously every two years (to burn off the oil and gas in the cars?) because they are basically community fixtures. –update: I forgot all about Gershow’s bombs! Our local legislator has been fighting with them about it, they denied and denied and finally admitted that every once in a while they ‘forget’ to let the gas or oil out of a car they are recycling and it EXPLODES! Since they’re not that close, you’d think it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the whole house shakes, and it’s so loud you think it’s a bomb going off someplace. I actually called the police once about it, afraid it was a pipe bomb on the tracks or something.
• There’s a real possibility for having our house utterly destroyed in a hurricane – if we really are moving into a period of higher hurricane activity, although LI is less of a target than Florida and the east coast – huge hurricanes have hit here before with devastating effect. Perhaps we should get out now before another one hits? We’re certainly due.
• The illegal immigrant population here is booming. Hundreds of men stand on the corners of every road around here – some unlucky ones all day. There seems to be no attempt by the federal government to do even the basic work of processing these folks who I imagine would rather be here legally – so we end up with hundreds of people with no home, and no legal status to aquire one. They end up crashing in abandoned houses that can’t be sold because nobody wants to buy a house in a place where hundreds of men hang out all day on the street, or in illegal rentals where they are crammed in 60 per house with a cesspool that can only handle 4 people so the stuff backs up in the street.
• Our new postal delivery person doesn’t speak english. It seems to me that speaking/reading english would be a requirement, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. We’ve met more of our nieghbors than ever before since we constantly have to exchange mail with them – one neighbor found mail in her driveway! but it’s not your father’s postal service, man.
• The Expressway has always been loud, but now it is a consistent roar all night. Each year it gets a little louder, but during the winter with the windows all closed you don’t hear it – then comes the spring and the difference is immediately noticed. I guess for some, the Expressway is a plus – easier commute and all, and we’re not right on it – but it’s changed alot since I was a kid. Whenever you go outside you are surrounded by noise of cars all around + gravel guys + emergency vehicles + baseball fields, etc.
• Which reminds me! The people of Holbrook who have a lot more money than our neighborhood (collectively) convinced Islip airport (or whoever decides these things) to change the flight pattern for incoming flights. Now the planes go right over my house! Some nights I wake up with a start and hear a massive roar – and it’s a plane, flying low over the house. We’re almost 10 miles from the airport! I don’t know how that happened, but nobody told us they were changing this – it just happened one day.
• Gangs: there has been a huge increase of gang violence. MS-13 is big here (kids of illegal immigrants mainly). This in of itself isn’t much of a big deal, since gangs tend to blast away at each other, but if they move in on your street, your chances of getting caught in a crossfire go up considerably. Plus, you don’t want your kid ending up becoming friends with gang-members. There are some concerns about a big house at the end of the road where lots of males live. We don’t know anything, it’s just a concern.