Tax The Rich Explained

In the following link, the "tax the rich" campaign is explained. It will not work, it will not pay the debts for a year.  Listen to it and forward to your "Occupy" friends and Obama lovers and have them explain why the President is right.  We are sure you will get some interesting responses!

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=JY8LKII_MNA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Conservative Tom

Paul Loses Our Support

We have been a cool to warm supporter of Ron Paul until today.  In the following and other articles, it has become clear to us that he is way off the reservation when it comes to foreign affairs and would be dangerous, if not catastrophic to have him as our President.

To state that Iran has the national interest in closing an international waterway like the Strait of Hormuz is completely out of touch. This Strait is where a majority of Middle East oil tankers traverse on their way from the oil fields to the refineries.  To have these Straits closed would be catastrophic to the western economy and would cripple any hopes of economic recovery.

Additionally, when he says that Iran has the right to have nuclear weapons and that they have the right to strike back if sanctions are put in place, is ludicrous at best.

Ron has lost our confidence on foreign affairs with these statements. Regardless of how we like his ideas on cutting the budget and getting the Fed under control, we cannot endorse him for President.

If you disagree, that is your option and we will post your comments as long as they are  

thoughtful.

Conservative Tom

Ron Paul: Iran Would be Justified in Closing Strategic Waterway in Response to Sanctions

By Patrick Goodenough

December 30, 2011

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Sailors stand watch on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, deployed in the Persian Gulf, as an F/A-18F Super Hornet leaves the flight deck on December 22, 2011. (U.S. Navy photo/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kenneth Abbate)

(CNSNews.com) – As Iran ratcheted up its rhetoric Thursday about closing the Strait of Hormuz, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul revisited his earlier criticisms of Western policy towards Tehran, adding that Iran would be justified in cutting off the strategic waterway in response to sanctions.

Paul’s views on Iran and other foreign policy issues – essentially a noninterventionist, anti-war approach – have sparked clashes on several occasions during the GOP presidential primary season, and are attracting growing scrutiny as the Iowa caucus looms.

At a campaign event in Iowa Thursday, Paul called Western sanctions imposed against Iran over its nuclear activities “horrendous” and “acts of war,” while repeating earlier assertions that Iran would understandably want to develop a nuclear weapons capability, the Los Angeles Times reported.

On Iran’s threat to close Hormuz, the Texan congressman said that as president he would not respond with military action to any such move, as he would not consider it an act of war against the United States. Instead, he would refer the matter to the U.S. Congress.

Paul’s Republican rivals have stepped up criticism over his foreign policy stances.

“One of the people running for president thinks it’s okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told a Muscatine, Iowa event on Wednesday. “I don’t.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, campaigning in Des Moines, said, “You don’t have to vote for a candidate who will allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, because America will be next.”

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Sen. Rick Santorum have also both tussled with Paul over Iran during primary debates, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for robust measures to bring down the regime “with minimum use of force,” including cutting off its gas supply and sabotaging its oil refinery.

More than one-third of the world’s tanker-borne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, transiting the narrow channel through Iranian and Omani territorial waters. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Perry–Castañeda Library)

Some 40 percent of the world’s tanker-borne oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Tankers transit the narrow channel in the Persian Gulf use two-mile wide channels demarcated in each direction, sailing through Iranian territorial waters in the north and Omani waters in the south.

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, ships have the right of “innocent passage” through the territorial seas of a coastal state.

Iran’s vice-president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, warned earlier this week that if Western countries go ahead with proposed sanctions against Tehran's crude exports, then “not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said in response to the threats, describing the waterway as “an economic lifeline for countries in the Gulf region.”

A senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, fired back, telling the Fars news agency Thursday, “our response to threats is threats” and saying the U.S. was not in any position to prevent Iran from shutting the waterway.

Adding to the bluster, Iranian military spokesmen said a U.S. aircraft carrier had been monitored this week as it moved eastward through the Strait of Hormuz, near the area where Iran’s navy is holding wargames.

Iran has been carrying out extensive naval maneuvers in a wide area including the eastern approaches to Hormuz, with some politicians characterizing the wargames as a warning to the West. The drills are scheduled to run through January 3.

The Pentagon’s Little described the movement of the carrier USS John C. Stennis and accompanying vessels through the strait as a “pre-planned, routine transit.”

A Sea Hawk helicopter picks up stores from the flight deck of the combat support ship USNS Rainier, accompanying the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf on December 21, 2011. (U.S. Navy photo/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kenneth Abbate)

The carrier was earlier deployed off Iraq, where according to the U.S. Navy it carried out the final air mission in support of Operation New Dawn on December 18. It is now in the Arabian Sea, where it will support the mission in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom.

Should the Strait of Hormuz be closed to shipping – through Iranian action or for any other reason – an alternative route for oil moving through the Gulf to world markets would be via the 745-mile East-West pipeline across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. From there, tankers would have to sail north through the Suez canal or south through the Gulf of Aden.

But according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, while the Hormuz route accounts for up to 17 million barrels of oil a day (15.5 million in 2009) the Saudi pipeline only has the capacity to handle five million barrels a day. Longer, alternative routes would also push up costs, the EIA says.

Asked whether the U.S. was doing any contingency planning or holding discussions with other oil producers in case Iran closed the strait, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland issued a brief statement Thursday.

“The United States maintains a regular, full and robust dialogue with significant energy producing and consuming countries on various aspects of the oil markets, including contingency plans in the event of disruptions to those markets,” the statement said. “We cannot, however, comment on the specifics of these discussions.”

Obama Ignores Reality, Endangers the World

President Obama missed his calling, he should have been a preacher. Someone who can tell others how to live and completely ignore what he does personally.  He would have been one of the best rivaling Jim Jones and Jimmy Swaggart! 

When we hear him speak about the need to do more things green, he ignores it when it comes to his vacations. This past vacation involved two 747s (one for Michelle and the girls and one for him) plus other airplane support, limos, secret service, hotels and golf  etc etc with estimates running from 4-5 million. Could he not stayed in Washington and saved that money? Of course not, he could not play golf!

His wife, Michelle, lectures us on what we should eat and how we should get more exercise, yet if stories we have heard are to be believed, she loves junk food and detests walking.  And let us not forget the President's habit of smoking! They both do a good job telling us what we should do, while they doing just the opposite.

Then there is the lecturing the world on how it should operate according to the Obama Plan.  The dictators sneer at him and his friends have to lecture him on the relationship between the two countries. He is a laughing stock to other countries as they know he is a stuffed balloon where one good needle would completely deflate him!

Will we have another four years of this silliness or will he be defeated and allowed to go find his real occupation?  We hope for the latter. For if he is re-elected, the "shining city on the hill" as the United States has been described will no longer be so.

Here is more on the Obama relationship with other leaders.  What are your opinions?

Conservative Tom

The Region: Obama preaches, dictators sneer

Barry Rubin - The Jerusalem Post,  December 25th, 2011

I don’t think one could come up with a more teachable moment regarding international affairs – and including Middle East politics – than a little incident that just happened between US President Barack Obama and Venezuela.

First, the facts: Obama gave an interview to a Venezuelan newspaper in which he articulated some of his administration’s most basic themes. “Venezuela is a proud, sovereign nation,” said the president, adding that “the United States has no intention of intervening in Venezuela’s foreign relations; however, I think the government’s ties with Iran and Cuba have not benefited the interests of Venezuela and its people.

“Sooner or later, Venezuela’s people will have to decide what possible advantage there is in having relations with a country that violates fundamental human rights and is isolated from most of the world. The Iranian government has consistently supported international terrorism.”

Now, this is precisely the same approach that Obama has taken toward Iran. He said, and this has been a common talking point for administration officials, that Iran would not benefit from having nuclear weapons. He continued:

“Iran understands that they have a choice: They can break that isolation by acting responsibly and forswearing the development of nuclear weapons, which would still allow them to pursue peaceful nuclear power, like every other country that’s a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or they can continue to operate in a fashion that isolates them from the entire world.”

Obama has rejected America’s leadership role. He feels that the United States has been too much of a bully historically, so he doesn’t stress what US interests require but politely asks other – hostile – countries to behave differently. He tells them that to do so is in their interest because their current behavior doesn’t benefit them.

Foreign leaders can only react with astonishment and – if they are hostile – laughter. If they are pro-American they react with horror.

THIS APPROACH is a clear sign of weakness and fear. It practically puts a “kick me” sign on Washington’s back.

Furthermore, telling someone else what their “true” interests is no less patronizing than telling them what your own interests are and demanding that they be respected. When you ask an aggressive dictator “pretty please,” you are asking for some spit in the face.

That’s just what Obama’s gotten received from Venezuela, Iran, and others. Take the response from Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez: “Obama, mind you own business, man. Focus on governing your country, which has become a disaster.

Now you’re going looking for votes by attacking Venezuela….

“Obama, you’re a phony…. Go and ask the black community in your country what you are to them: the biggest frustration in I don’t know how many years. Go and ask the many people in Africa who may have believed in you because of the color of your skin, because your father was from Africa. You’re a descendent of Africa, but you are the shame of all those people.”

In other words, your enemy reacts with disdain. You may not criticize him but he’ll criticize you. You may not do things he doesn’t like but he’ll do things you don’t like.

And each time Obama ignores these insults, ignores the violations of US interests, ignores the threats and attacks on US allies.

That is also why Obama can disrespect US allies: They can only rarely, if ever, answer back as Chavez or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do. Obama may sizzle over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s slap-down in a brilliant oration to a joint session of Congress, but his websites bulge with statements of praise wrung from Israeli leaders heard through their gnashing of teeth.

But there’s something else going on here that shows his ignorance and signals his ineffectiveness. America’s enemies know perfectly well where their interests lie. Of course, the Venezuelan regime benefits by building alliances with fellow radicals and anti-Americans. Iran’s regime benefits in many ways by seeking nuclear weapons.

Hamas and other fellow revolutionary Islamists. Palestinian Authority rulers benefit by not negotiating or compromising with Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood benefits by seeking to seize state power and transform their states into Islamist ones. And so on.

Obama thinks that he can persuade radicals to be moderate. Thirty years ago, President Jimmy Carter also thought the US government could persuade the new Islamist regime in Iran to be moderate. In the 1990s President Bill Clinton thought a spell in power would turn Yasser Arafat into a moderate. It was just a matter of these revolutionaries seeing where their true interests were.

More recently, Vice President Joe Biden said US policy in Afghanistan was to “try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al- Qaida or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies….”

Recently, a Third World diplomat whose democratic country has faced threats from radical regimes asked me why people fail to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical group. All I could answer was that people simply do not understand the role of ideology.

Part of this handicap is cultural; part due to ideological blindness on Obama’s own part. Yet the Obama administration is also ensuring it won’t learn by covering its eyes and ears, pretending that a revolutionary Islamist ideology doesn’t even exist.

Perhaps the most incredible aspect of all this is the numerous attempts by the Obama administration and its apologists –including Jews – to pretend that its policy is really good for Israel. Over and over again such people and their writings always ignore the regional strategic aspect of the damage that it is doing.

So what if the US government gives Israel military aid, which mostly consists of maintaining old programs? The Obama administration is building up the threat Israel faces to unprecedented levels. “I love Israel” statements don’t solve this huge strategic problem.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a featured columnist at Pajamas Media. His new book, Israel: An Introduction, will be published by Yale University Press in January.

What Does The Name Obama Mean?

We had to laugh today when we learned that the name Obama means. According to the article Sally Jacobs, author of "The Other Barack", a book about the president's father wrote "The president's great-grandfather's name was Obama. Obama is derived from the word "bam",  meaning crooked or indirect,..."  Now if that does not fit the President,  nothing does!


The article is reproduced below. What is your opinion?


Conservative Tom



 WASHINGTON (AP) — Almost two centuries before there was a man named Obama in the White House, there was a man named Obama shackled in the bowels of a slave ship. There is no proof that the unidentified Obama has ties to President Barack Obama. All they share is a name. But that is exactly the commonality thatEmory University researchers hope to build upon as they delve into the origins of Africans who were taken up and sold.

They have built an online database around those names, and welcome input from people who may share a name that's in the database, or have such names as part of their family lore.

"The whole point of the project is to ask the African diaspora, people with any African background, to help us identify the names because the names are so ethno-linguistically specific, we can actually locate the region in Africa to which the individual belonged on the basis of the name," said David Eltis, an Emory University history professor who heads the database research team.

So far, two men named Obama sit among some 9,500 captured Africans whose names were written on line after line in the registries of obscure, 19th century slave trafficking courts. The courts processed the human chattel freed from ships that were intercepted and detoured to Havana, Cuba or Freetown, Sierra Leone. Most of the millions of Africans enslaved before 1807 were known only by numbers, said James Walvin, an expert on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Once bought by slave owners, the Africans' names were lost. Africans captured by the Portuguese were baptized and given "Christian" names aboard the ships that were taking them into slavery.

But original African names — surnames were uncommon for Africans in the 19th century — are rich with information. Some reveal the day of the week an individual was born or whether that individual was the oldest, youngest or middle child or a twin. They can also reveal ethnic or linguistic groups.

The president's father was from Kenya, on the eastern coast of Africa, and Eltis said it was rare for captives to hail from areas far from the port where their ships set sail. The unidentified Obamas on the slave ships sailed from west Africa. Walvin, author of "The Zong," a book about the slave trade, said there were Africans who had been brought great distances before they were forced onto ships.

"Often their enslavement had begun much earlier, deep in the African interior, most of them captured through acts of violence, warfare or kidnap, or for criminal activity ..." Walvin said in his book, which chronicles the true story of a captain who ordered a third of the slaves aboard his ship thrown overboard due to a shortage of drinking water.

Obama's ancestors, a nomadic people known as the River Lake Nilotes, migrated from Bahr-el-Ghazal Province in Sudan toward Uganda and into Western Kenya, according to Sally Jacobs, author of "The Other Barack", a book about the president's father. They were part of several clans and subclans that eventually became the Luo people of Kenya, Jacobs writes.

The president's great-grandfather's name was Obama. Obama is derived from the word "bam", meaning crooked or indirect, she said in her book.

But it's also possible that Obama was a name used by other cultural groups in Africa and for whom the name had a different meaning.

The slaves found aboard intercepted ships provided their names, age and sometimes where they were from, through translators, to English and Spanish speaking court registrars who wrote their names as they sounded to them.

Body scars or identifying marks also were recorded. The details were logged in an attempt to prevent the Africans from being enslaved again, which didn't always work.

Emory's researchers are including audio clips of the names as they would likely be pronounced in Africa.

"These people enslaved were not just a nebulous group of people with no place and no name," said Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, one of the researchers, who has found variations of his name, his brother's and his children's names in the database. He is originally from Ghana. "That's how lot of us view slavery. We don't have names faces to go with it ... It makes them that much more removed from us."

Eltis and his researchers acknowledge the database may not help African Americans with genealogical research because records on the Africans once they were freed from the ships are harder to find, if they exist at all.

However, the project provides another piece in a major jigsaw, and helps put together a bigger picture on slavery, Walvin said.

Before this project, Eltis and others assembled a database of 35,000 trans-Atlantic slave ship voyages responsible for the flow of more than 10 million Africans to the Americas.

Together, the two databases provide some details on the horrific voyages of the Africans, including the Obamas.

The Xerxes, which carried one of the unidentified Obamas, was a 138-foot schooner that began its voyage in Havana with a crew of 44. Five guns were mounted aboard when the ship left on a slave purchasing trip to Bonny on Feb. 10, 1828.

Sailing under the Spanish flag, the ship's captain Felipe Rebel purchased 429 slaves, nearly one third of them children, before setting out on a return trip to the Americas. But on June 26, 1828, the Xerxes was intercepted and forced to dock at an unknown Cuban port. By then, 26 slaves had died.

The other unidentified Obama, 6-foot-3-inches tall, was one of 562 Africans shackled in the belly of the Midas. The vessel was a Brig, a fast, maneuverable ship with two square-rigged masts. It was equipped with eight guns.

Midas' captain J. Martinez and a crew of 53 left Cuba on an unknown date. It left Bonny with 562 slaves but was intercepted. It docked in Cuba July 8, 1829 minus 162 slaves who had died during the voyage.

Some slaves freed from seized ships were returned to Africa, but not always to their original homelands. Some were sent to Liberia or were allowed to remain free in the cities where the courts were located. Some may have been re-enslaved and some died on ships that were returning them to Africa.

Prediction: Obama Gets Second Term

We are sure that some of you reading this headline are wondering form where we are coming.  We are very concerned with the mealy mouthed, lily-livered leadership that we have in the House and Senate. They cave at the earliest convenience and hand the opposition the fire power to take the issue and make it theirs.  Where are our leaders?

How can we expect to implement corrective actions that will save this country, if our leaders cannot even make their points in cogent, concise statements?  Or are they really just statists of another political stripe? They have no guts and are not willing to make the hard decisions that is needed in the rumble-tumble of politics. It is not a gentleman's sport and we seem to have people who think it is! 

In politics, those leaders who got things done (ala LBJ or Pilosi) were hard charging, get the H out of the way, we are doing it my way. They took no prisoners and when they talked, everyone listened.  The opposition might not agree but they knew that somehow these men and woman would get it accomplished. Why do we not have a Republican of this ilk?

With our current leadership in the House and Senate along with the weak crop of candidates that we have fielded, we can expect that Obama will be re-elected with the distinct possibility that the Democrats will regain the House and maintain the Senate. If this disaster were to occur, it would mean the end of the United States as the country in which we have grown up. Spending controls would go out the window and every socialist program that could be created, would be. 

Obama would have the opportunity to appoint several new Supreme Court Justices which would mean the end of the Second Amendment and other rights. Lower Federal Courts would be packed with liberal leaning jurists. Programs like "Fast and Furious" would be the rule of the day. Illegal immigration would be legalized.

In other words, the once great United States would be reduced to a third world country.

Will we stand for it? Probably, we would be so busy trying to feed our families that striking or protesting would hurt them.

However, we cannot allow this to happen. Obama and his legions must be defeated.  Are you going to do your part? We cannot depend on the leadership of the Republican party to do its share of the heavy lifting. It must be individuals, ground level activists that make the difference. Are you one of them?  I am and so was Derek Mothershead in the following story as was Joe the Plumber. We need you, are you with us?

Unless we all come together, Obama will get a second term. Do you want that?

Conservative Tom

America's Big Loser in 2011: Americans

By Ben Shapiro

December 29, 2011

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In North Carolina this week, a young man named Mostafa Kamel Hendi hit upon a plan to make ends meet in this rotten economy: He decided to knock over a local gold store. Tape shows this determined and enterprising flower of American youth strolling into the store, hoodie over his head, and then gesturing to the clerk, Derek Mothershead, to shove some money in a plastic bag.

Mothershead, however, not being a member of the liberal effete class who believe that all robbery is a noble redistributionist impulse, had an unexpected reaction. He handed Hendi some money — and then, as Hendi bent to put the money in the bag, Mothershead clocked him with a tremendous left. Hendi went down, bleeding profusely. "There was just an opportunity there where I thought that I could actually do something and justice could be served," said Mothershead, "and I thought that's what needed to be done." This tough Mother then forced Hendi to clean up his own blood with paper towels and cleaning solution. "If he wants money," Mothershead added, "get a job. Work like everybody else in this world."

Poor Hendi. If only he had worked for the government, none of this would have ever happened. Unfortunately, it seems there's simply no way to fight back against a government full of Hendis hell bent on taking our money at the point of a gun — for our own good, of course.

When 2011 dawned, it seemed a year of hope and change. After all, at the end of 2010, we elected Republicans in a Congressional landslide. President Obama was on the rocks thanks to charting a committed course of spending, spending and more spending. Most of all, the voting populace seemed to understand for the first time in 60 years that not only is there no such thing as a free lunch, but the man who offers the free lunch expects your firstborn child in return. Government, we realized, was Rumpelstiltskin rather than Santa Claus.

As the year progressed, however, it became clear that no matter who we elected, they were unwilling to say Rumpelstiltskin and make the greedy monster disappear. Republicans collapsed not once but twice on the spending issue. First, led by hack Speaker John Boehner, they imploded in April when, to avoid the dreaded "government shutdown" — a shutdown which, by the way, would essentially impact nobody except those on government benefits — Republicans agreed to cut a mere $38 billion from the 2010 baseline budget and keep funding to Planned Parenthood flowing. As it turned out, that $38 billion wasn't $38 billion at all but actually $352 million.

Obama's plans to move forward. And, to top that off, Obama got to push the debt crisis down the road past the election so that he wouldn't have to discuss his shopaholic problem until after his re-election. Oh, yes, we were also downgraded, to boot, on our national credit by Standard & Poors. So that worked out well.

The Republican Party has responded to all of this chicken-heartedness by feting Boehner as a great leader and proposing that conservatives nominate one Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts. Romney is clearly to the GOPs liking — he fits the profile of the tough-talking scalpel-wielder and the in-office wimp. And we've been told that he's inevitable, like death and taxes. Meanwhile, Iowa Republicans, in the apparent grip of rabies, are now considering nominating Congressman Ron Paul, who is a real scalpel-wielder on domestic policy but has his cannon fixed on self-slaughter on the foreign front.

To no one's surprise, with the GOP offering a contrast like this, many Americans are content to settle for the real thing: a second Obama term. Despite a list of scandals that would have sunk any Republican president, despite leading America to the worst economic performance since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, despite crippling American influence in the Middle East for the next two generations, Obama rides high with a 44 percent approval rating. All he needs is to split the independent vote evenly to win re-election.

So what will 2012 be like? It depends on whether Americans are willing to punch back — not just at Democrats but at Republicans as well. It depends on whether they are willing to tell their fellow citizens to stop leeching off of the 1 percent and start working for themselves rather than the great collective.

When Mothershead investigated Hendi's gun after K.O.-ing him, he found that it wasn't genuine — it was a pellet gun. The truth is that if we stand up to it, our government is armed with pellet guns, too. Let them shut down the government, other than essential services. Good riddance. Let them warn of dire economic consequences if they're unable to send billion-dollar checks to abortion clinics. Somehow, we'll deal with it.

If we want 2012 to be a year of freedom, we'll have to stand up for it rather than settling for an agenda of half-freedom. Half-freedom is no freedom at all, no matter who is in office.