The Wealthiest Poor In The World

The poorest in the US live better than the wealthiest did 100 years ago. They eat better, have more conveniences, and live longer than our ancestors. For example, heating in 1900 was mostly  by coal or a fireplace. Only a couple rooms were heated. Today, most heating is done with a central heating unit powered by natural gas, electricity or propane which heats the entire house. No cold rooms exist today, unless you want it to be cool.

 Take a quick glance at the following chart and as an example, you will see that 63% of the US poor have cable or satellite TV!  (Conservative Tom has neither, he uses rabbit ears!) When a majority of our poor has microwaves, air conditioners, and a personal computer, this is not poverty!

Conservative Tom

How Do You Insure An Ever Present, Massive Welfare State? By Defining Poverty Upwards

Posted on December 6, 2012 by John Hawkins

There is no arbitrary standard for poverty; so what makes a person “poor?” Can you live in a million dollar mansion and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and be poor? Actually, you can under the government’s current defintion of poverty, which is based on income, not net worth. Can you collect more than $50,000 a year in income and government benefits and still be considered poor? Absolutely, you can. But, even these incredibly loose standards aren’t enough — well, that is, if your goal is to expand the welfare state as opposed to helping the genuinely poor. If you want to expand the welfare state, you need as many poor Americans as possible, no matter what the economy looks like. So, how do you do that? Simple, you put poverty into a sliding scale that insures the number of poor people can never really drop.

The federal government now considers a family of four in New York City to be poor if its pre-tax income is below $37,900.Even with full medical coverage.

The calculation helps explain why newly revised Census Bureau figures hike the number of poor Americans to 49 million as of last year, further widening an already yawning gap between ordinary perceptions of poverty and how the government sees it.

This breathtaking number begs the question: What does it mean to be “poor” in the United States?

To the average American, the word “poverty” means significant material hardship and need. It means lack of a warm, dry home, recurring hunger and malnutrition, no medical care, worn-out clothes for the children. The mainstream media reinforce this view: The typical TV news story on poverty features a homeless family with kids living in the back of a van.

But poverty as the federal government defines it differs greatly from these images. Only 2 percent of the official poor are homeless. According to the government’s own data, the typical poor family lives in a house or apartment that’s not only in good repair but is larger than the homes of the average non-poor person in England, France or Germany.

The typical “poor” American experiences no material hardships, receives medical care whenever needed, has an ample diet and wasn’t hungry for even a single day the previous year. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the nutritional quality of the diets of poor children is identical to that of upper middle class kids.

In America, about 80 percent of poor families have air conditioning, nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV, half have a computer and a third have a wide-screen LCD or plasma TV.

All these government statistics were based on the Census Bureau’s old definition of poverty. The new definition, released last week, stretches that gap between common-sense and government perspectives even further.

Previously, a family of four was considered poor if cash income was less than $22,800. The new definition sharply jerks up this threshold, especially in large cities.

Now, a family of four with full medical insurance, living in Oakland, can be considered “poor” if its yearly pre-tax income is below $42,500. In Washington, DC, the figure is $40,300; in Boston, $39,500; in New York, $37,900.

Remarkably, for the first time these new poverty thresholds are linked to an “escalator” that will boost them faster than inflation year after year. The income thresholds will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the actual living standards of the average American.

While the old poverty measure counted absolute purchasing power (how much steak and potatoes you can buy), the new measure counts comparative purchasing power (how much steak and potatoes you can buy relative to other people.)

This means it will be difficult to reduce poverty in America no matter how much the living conditions of the poor actually improve. Imagine a sprinter in a race where the finish line is moved back four feet every time the runner takes a step.

Look at it this way: If the real income of every single American were to double overnight, the new measure would show no drop in poverty because the poverty-income thresholds also would double. Under this new definition, we can reduce poverty only if the incomes of the “poor” rise much faster than those of everyone else.

This change isn’t about poverty; it’s about politics. Politically, Republicans benefit from seeing Americans pulled up out of poverty while Democrats have heavy incentives to see as many poor Americans as possible. If the Democrats can’t make people poor with their policies, then they’ll just have to cook the books to make them appear poor.

CAIR Caught Up In Coverup

Could CAIR finally get caught up in a cover-up of fraud?  It could only happen to this bunch.   The following link takes you to more information from the Washington Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/article/massive-fraud-cover-up-by-cair-exposed-federal-lawsuit?cid=db_articles

Remembering Pearl Harbor

We repeat the blog we wrote last year on this date. We think it still is appropriate to reflect on the men and women who died seventy-one years ago. If we forget, we will demean what the gave on that fateful day.

Conservative Tom

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December 7, 1941

Seventy years ago today the United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor which involved us in the Second World War. Thousands of sailors are still entombed in the Arizona and Utah which still lay on the seabed. We should remember these men, not for dying, but for what their deaths means to us today.

At that time, not only was the United States was unprepared for an attack, it was very isolationist. The thinking at that time  was this was Europe's or Asia's war and we needed to mind out business. We had not been attacked by Germany, Italy or Japan so "we had no dog in the fight."  Additionally, we had depleted our military to the point that soldiers trained with wooden rifles and no new airplanes or ships were in the pipeline.  We did not need a large military for the "war to end all wars" (World War I) had ended over 20 years before.

Isolationism might have been alright in 1776, however, it was not in 1941 and definitely not now. We, the United States, are still the big dog and we cannot afford to allow other countries to usurp that role by our inaction or inattention. We cannot afford to be attacked again and to have our military decimated as the Navy was at Pearl. Those men who died, died unnecessarily because our civilian and military leaders were asleep at the switch. They either did not fully understand that a war was coming or cavalierly dismissed the idea.

Let's remember those who still are at Pearl, seventy years later and pledge not to let it happen again.

Conservative Tom

Decline American Style

Some might think of us as pessimistic. We concur with that assessment. We see nothing positive in America's future. Let me explain with the use of a couple examples.

In the past week, we have seen Costco (a liberal organization whose co-founder Jim Sinegal spoke at the Democratic Convention) borrow money to pay dividends so that their stockholders could pay  a lower capital gains rate. Is that not ironic or should we say moronic?  Seems that it is ok to pontificate from on high but when it comes to the bucks, Mr. Jim is at the head of the line protecting his pocketbook. He saved a reported 4 million dollars in taxes with this move. We thought that the liberals think we are NOT paying enough taxes!  Greed shows up everywhere but who would think that a liberal organization would be so greedy. When individuals place their personal benefit over the country's (even though they express the opposite in public), it is an indicator of a country where "what's in it for me" has become the mantra. It is the end of doing good, its all about me.  The Costco example is a great example. It is enough to cancel your  membership.

Today in the Wall Street Journal it is reported that the military is looking for money to expand their anti-terrorism efforts and military presence into Africa namely Mali, Nigeria and Libya and other unnamed countries. We are big supporters of the military, however, when will  stop our attempts to control the entire world?

It is a sad day when Americans look to Washington to solve its problems and all we get back is rancor and posturing rather than hard work to solve the issues facing this country. One side (The President) wants only increases in taxes and spending and the other side (conservatives--we don't  think Republicans can get out of their own way) wants spending cuts.  Republican leadership (what is that?) offers the amount of increased taxes as Obama wanted on the campaign trail, but for the President that is not enough. What?  So much for principles?

No one in Washington seems serious about the spending, the absolute out of control government bureaucracy and the lack of seriousness that our "representatives" take to their job. Hey, we have a President that is going on a 20 day vacation to Hawaii just before we go over the cliff! And Congress will  be in recess during the same time, so they are no better! The House's last day is December 14 and the Senate's is December 31.  Does anyone really believe we will have a plan to solve the fiscal cliff in 7 days?  If so, I have this really cool bridge for sale.

You add onto this that our troops are in 80+ countries around the world--isn't it time to pull them back rather than continue to expand. We still have troops in Kosovo from the Clinton years. Why do we still have troops in Germany and Japan? Isn't it time that they provide for their own defense?

Rome ended when the government could no longer pay all the benefits its citizens wanted, when it could no longer support it far-flung military operations and when it went broke.  America is heading the same direction and very quickly. Unless we change direction very quickly, the US is destined for bankruptcy and worse. 

So when you look at the situation in which we find ourselves, it is very easy to pessimistic. We hold out the hope that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, however, we think it is a train!

Pessimistically yours,
Conservative Tom

Barack Obama’s Phony Mandate

December 7, 2012 by Chip Wood 

PHOTOS.COM

Let me see if I have this right. Earlier this year, while campaigning for re-election, Barack Obama said he wanted to raise taxes $800 billion on everyone making more than $250,000 a year. Republicans were virtually unanimous in shouting, “No way!”

Then what happened when the Spender in Chief wins the White House for another four years? He promptly doubled down. Now, he says he wants $1.6 trillion in new taxes over the next 10 years. And our “don’t call my bluff” President made it abundantly clear that he’ll play hardball to get it.

When he appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is serving as Obama’s messenger boy to Capitol Hill, declared flatly: “There’s no path to an agreement that does not involve Republicans acknowledging that rates have to go up on the wealthiest Americans.”

In other words, it’s our way or the highway. So what did the Republicans do? Rather than sticking to their earlier promise, the leadership countered by agreeing to give Obama the $800 billion he originally asked for. Way to fight for principle, guys.

Of course, $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue isn’t all that the Democrats are after. Obama also wants $50 billion in new stimulus spending and another $30 billion to extend unemployment benefits. Plus, he wants the death tax to go back up to 45 percent on estates and family farms worth $3.5 million and more.

And it doesn’t end there. Geithner, a tax cheater, also says that it’s time to abolish the ceiling on the Federal debt. No more coming back to Congress, hat in hand, to increase the limit on how much money our bankrupt Federal government can borrow. No, if Team Obama gets its way, there will be no limits on how much deeper this country will go in debt. Isn’t that a lovely situation to contemplate?

What about cutting some spending? “We’ll talk about that sometime down the road” is the best Team Obama will offer. No wonder Charles Krauthammer said that the Democrats’ proposal is “not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal.” In fact, he added, “Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox and he lost the Civil War.”

What happens if House Republicans dig in their heels and just say no? Well, inaction might give the Democrats an even bigger victory. It would mean that the Bush tax cuts (which Obama extended in 2010) would expire on Jan. 1. Those increases, plus all the new taxes and fees that are part of Obamacare, will mean that our taxes will go up even more.

A lot of observers are convinced that Obama and his advisers will be only too happy to see the U.S. plunge over the much-hyped fiscal cliff. Either way, they get the tax increases they want. Plus, under the latter scenario, they get to blame the Republicans for not being willing to compromise. It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose proposition, with the big spenders in Washington coming out ahead either way.

By the way, did you see what one top Obama supporter is doing to avoid paying a bunch of those new taxes? Jim Sinegal, the co-founder, director and former CEO of Costco, was so smitten by the job Obama is doing that he agreed to give a prime-time address at this year’s Democratic convention. So you’d think he’d be hunky-dory with the Obama tax increases, wouldn’t you?

Not on your life. This past week, Costco announced that it would pay a special dividend this month to all of its shareholders. It is doing it in December — and even borrowing the $3 billion it will cost — so shareholders won’t have to pay the higher tax on dividend income next year.

Since Sinegal owns 2 million shares of Costco stock, that’s $14 million he’ll get in this special dividend. At the current tax rate of 15 percent on dividends, he’ll have to fork over a little more than $2 million of it to Uncle Sam. But had Costco waited until January to pay the dividend, Sinegal’s tax rate would be 43.4 percent, or more than $6 million.

In other words, the former Costco CEO gets to pocket an extra $4 million that otherwise would have gone to the Internal Revenue Service. Merry Christmas!

So much for the “shared sacrifices” by Obama’s wealthiest supporters. Now, please allow me to puncture a few more holes in the Democrats’ balloon. Let’s turn to the myth that Obama got a huge mandate in the November elections.

Nonsense! Obama won 51 percent of the votes for President on Nov. 6. But only 60 percent of eligible voters even bothered to cast a ballot this year. Winning support from 30 percent of eligible voters is hardly an overwhelming mandate.

Plus, exit polls of the people who voted revealed that a majority of them didn’t want taxes increased on people earning $250,000 or more. Obama’s claim that the voters this year sent “a very clear message” that they favored higher taxes is a bunch of baloney.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that the problem in Washington isn’t too little revenue; it’s too much spending! If the Federal budget were reduced to what it was four years ago when Obama first took office, we wouldn’t need a nickel of new taxes to balance the budget.

In fact, if we held the line on spending and simply stopped increasing it every year, pretty soon Uncle Sam would enjoy surpluses once again. We could even start reducing the national debt, rather than see it go up more than $1 trillion a year.

Of course, there’s about as much chance of seeing this happen of a snowball surviving a trip through Hades. While it’s not what we wanted or worked for, I’m afraid it is now a virtual certainty we will see higher taxes and fewer new jobs and more new bureaucrats, regulators, tax collectors and other Federal busybodies next year.

And after that, it could get even worse.

Until next time, keep some powder dry.

More and More Bullets Being Purchased

Yes, we know that this is not the latest news, however, in the past four months nothing has changed. The government is making excuses and trying to marginalize the bigger stories which are why is the government buying all this ammo and why does each department have its own police force?

We love the argument made by the Social Security Administration in which they said their 259 special agents needed this ammo for "training".  Pardon me, that means each agent is allocated 671 bullets out of the purchase of 174,000 rounds. That seems like an awful large amount of ammo per agent.  Another question--what does Social Security need these law officers, aren't the local or State cops enough or how about the FBI? 

In an effort to reduce the deficit, we suggest that  law enforcement for all government agencies be combined into one. Then we need to eliminate half of the officers that were transferred. This would be a good start on the cutting the deficit. We are in a fiscal crisis and we need to reduce spending everywhere and make government be more productive with the dollars we give them. What is your opinion?

Conservative Tom

Agencies tamp down speculation over hollow-point ammo purchases

Published August 17, 2012

FoxNews.com

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Obscure federal agencies triggered a firestorm of conspiracy theories this week after they put out orders for thousands of rounds of deadly hollow-point bullets. 

But the agencies, most recently the Social Security Administration, are trying to put a damper on the speculation -- noting the ammunition is "standard issue" and simply used for mandatory federal training sessions. 

"Our special agents need to be armed and trained appropriately," said a message on the official blog for Social Security's inspector general office explaining the purchases. 

The bullet purchases drew widespread attention as the website Infowars.com published several stories on them that were linked off the widely read Drudge Report and other sites. Infowars.com catalogued a string of recent purchases -- first by the Department of Homeland Security, then by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then the Social Security Administration. 

The Social Security Administration solicitation, posted Aug. 7, called for 174,000 rounds of ".357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition." 

Infowars.com speculated that the purchases were being made in preparation for "civil unrest," imagining a scenario of economic collapse where seniors could cause "disorder" if denied their Social Security benefits. 

But the Social Security Administration statement, posted Thursday, noted that their agents need firearms and ammo in the course of training, investigations and responding to threats against offices and employees. 

"As we said in a recent post, our office has criminal investigators, or special agents, who are responsible for investigating violations of the laws that govern SSA's programs," the office said. 

The agency said it has 295 special agents across 66 offices in the country. "These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests," the statement said. 

As for concern about the type of bullets -- hollow points, which expand upon impact -- the statement said the type is "standard issue" and is used during "mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions." 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, found itself scrambling to respond to a similar report this week about an order for 46,000 rounds of ammo. Though the agency initially indicated it was for the National Weather Service -- leading to questions about why the National Weather Service could possibly need so many bullets -- a spokesman clarified the bullets are actually meant for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. A "clerical error" resulted in the order saying the ammo was for the weather service. 

Spokesman Scott Smullen said the error's been fixed in the bidding system. He, too, said the ammo is "standard issue" and will be used by 63 enforcement personnel at NOAA during qualifications and training sessions. 

"NOAA officers and agents enforce the nation's ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles," he said. 

According to NOAA, the specialized agents are supposed to have 200 rounds in their "duty bag," and qualification and training requires another 500-600 rounds per agent.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/17/agencies-tamp-down-speculation-over-hollow-point-ammo-purchases/#ixzz2EJEuJknp

The West--Is The Fall Coming

When Bill Kristol says that the West is under attack, a lot of people will shake their heads as they go back to their discussion of Dancing With The Stars, the latest football game or the most recent Hollywood scandal. Hey, they have better things to think about than western civilization being under attack! 

Many of our countrymen seem to be unread, unlettered and uneducated and do not seem to care about our country. They will not be concerned until  their civil rights, religion and mode of dress are taken from them. Then they will get upset. Until that time it is only those of us, some would call the wacky conservatives, who will worry, post articles, and try to get into the brain of our numb skull fellow citizens.

By allowing the President to get away with standing by as our citizens  are being killed in Benghazi, are  we not also responsible? When an Army major kills American troops on American soil and our President refuses to call this terrorism but labels it workplace violence, are we not also to be held to account for our silence? When Israel is attacked by missiles and then she is blamed for overzealous response, are we not also responsible for keeping quiet?  We will not be quiet.  We will fight to our last breath to get the word out.  Are you as dedicated or are the results of the next football game more important?

We would like to know where you stand. Are you a "Paul Revere"?

Conservative Tom

On Thanksgiving – The West under attack as US and Israel man the front trenches

Read More About: "War on Terror", Outpost of Western Civilization, Pres. GW Bush, Stalin Hitler Resurgent Militant Islam

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The West Fights Back
http://israel-commentary.org/?p=5304
BY WILLIAM KRISTOL
Weekly Standard December 3, 2012
There are some facts so obvious that only a liberal could deny them. One of them is that, from Benghazi to Be’er Sheva, the West is under attack.
By the West I mean those nations — wherever on the globe they are — that hold aloft and carry the torch of liberal civilization, that seek to build on the achievements of modern liberalism and the older traditions of Athens and Jerusalem.
The United States stands at the head of the West, having had leadership thrust upon us several decades ago — at about the same time the state of Israel came into existence after the collapse of Western civilization in Europe. The West was saved, primarily by Britain and the United States, and its revival after the war was somehow exemplified by the founding of the state of Israel, which, as the philosopher Leo Strauss put it in 1956, “is a Western country, which educates its many immigrants from the East in the ways of the West: Israel is the only country which as a country is an outpost of the West in the East.”
To be an outpost is to be under the threat of attack. To be a leader is to be subject to attack. And so Israel and the United States bear the brunt of the attacks on Western civilization.
George W. Bush was ridiculed by the left, and criticized by some on the right, for speaking of the Global War on Terror. The left hated the notion of a global war of any sort, and the right disliked the imprecision of “terror.” But the term “war on terror” has always struck me as good enough for government work. For what the West stands against is terror — whether the terror of modern secular totalitarianism or the terror of an older, and now revitalized, religious fanaticism.
From the Great Terrors of Stalin and Hitler to the attacks on New York and Tel Aviv, and on Madrid, Bali, and Mumbai, terrorists of all stripes know who their enemies are. They attack across the world and kill Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike — but they grasp that the centers of resistance, the nations that stand most squarely in their path, are the United States and Israel.
And so these two very different nations — Christian and Jewish, large and small, new world and old (though the new world nation is older than its newly reborn old world counterpart) — find themselves allied. More than allied: They find themselves joined at the hip in a brotherhood that is more than a diplomatic or political or military alliance. Everyone senses that the ties are deeper than those of mere allies. Israelis know that if the United States fails, so shall Israel. Americans sense, in the words of Eric Hoffer, “as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.”
I write this on the eve of Thanksgiving, the most Old Testament, the most Hebraic, of our national holidays. On Thanksgiving we don’t celebrate our rights or our achievements, or honor our soldiers or great men. Rather, we thank the Almighty for our blessings here in America. We might also thank Him for restoring the homeland of the Jewish people, as Israelis might thank Him for the existence, side by side with Israel, of a loyal and steadfast America.

The Unserious Idiots Who Run Congress

Bill Whittle take those unscrupulous, thieving idiots who run Congress (both parties) to task in the accompanying video.  It is well worth the time listening to it.

He calls upon all serious people from whatever party to join together to fix this country before it is too late. We agree, however, question whether there will ever be enough patriots to force this country to  get off its spending habits which has become a drug!. We simply cannot keep spending, however, where are the cuts going to come from? Our ideas would simply rankle many. Who has the moral courage to say "we won't stand for this anymore!"  Are you going to be part of the army of patriots who will finally get the attention of the spending whores?

Let us know what we can do to organize this army.  And listen to Bill, he is speaking the truth.

Conservative Tom

Here is the link: http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=7782

The Dictator Wants Dictatorial Powers

One can only wonder where the Dictator (aka President Obama) learned his Constitutional Law 'cause he ain't readin' the same document  we do! He wants to be able to raise the debt limit by himself and not go to Congress. Is he insane or living in some parallel universe? 

This is just the latest of what is becoming a long line of unconstitutional actions that he has taken. A couple examples will suffice. First, there was the appointment of 30+ czars, many of which have suspect  credentials. Then there was the the Dream Act which he could not put through Congress so he signed a Presidential executive order to make it law.

Why should we even have a Congress if this megalomaniac Dictator can do just what he wants with a flick of a pen?  One can only wonder what he will do when the Republicans balk at his increased taxes (without any cuts in spending) and we go over the fiscal cliff.  Will he institute ("instruct the IRS") to increase taxes to the limits he wants?  We would not bet against him.

Conservative Tom
Here is a direct link: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/05/morning-bell-obama-wants-power-to-raise-debt-limit-by-himself-anytime/

Morning Bell: Obama Wants Power to Raise Debt Limit By Himself, Anytime

Amy Payne

December 5, 2012 at 9:07 am

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President Obama wants to do away with Congress when it comes to raising the country’s legal debt limit. Instead of getting permission from the people’s elected representatives to borrow and spend more money, he wants to do that all by himself.

It seems typical of the President Obama we know, but just a few years ago, he spoke vehemently against putting America in debt. Here is then-Senator Barack Obama on March 16, 2006:

The fact that we are here today to debate raisingAmerica’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Of course, in Washington, one’s convictions can change with the electoral winds. And so this is the same man who today, as our President, is seeking unlimited authority to raise the country’s debt limit anytime, anywhere, all by himself. No Congress needed.

This new power is part of the “deal” the President offered to House Republicans on the fiscal cliff. His “deal” is massive tax hikes, more government spending, and the ability for him to send that government spending skyrocketing through the stratosphere without any vote of Congress. One White House official describes this proposal as “resolv[ing] the debt limitwithout drama.”

This issue has come up before. As Heritage’s J.D. Foster wrote in 2011:

Congress could dispense with the periodic ritual of raising the debt limit. It could simply give Treasury the authority to borrow such funds as are needed to carry out the deficit consequences of current fiscal policy. This would be the easier course politically, but Congress has wisely chosen not to take it. The nation is far better served when Congress is forced to acknowledge the net effects of its policies as reflected in the necessity of raising the debt limit to maintain that course.

As unpleasant as it may be, congressional debate over increasing the debt limit is an opportunity for Congress to consider vital course corrections on federal spending, including entitlement spending, which is growing unchecked.

Just a few short years ago, Obama said, “This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy”and that “interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans—a debt tax thatWashington doesn’t want to talk about.”

>>> See the Congressional Record where Obama speaks against raising the debt limit in 2006

That’s a great point. Today, U.S. interest on debt payments is already greater than spending on many major federal agencies. In just a few years, Obama’s policies will mean the U.S. will be spending more on just the interest than on our entire national defense budget.

More recently, when he was running for President, Obama condemned George W. Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over eight years, calling it “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.” Now—in the past four years—Obama’s Administration has already added almost $6 trillion to the debt. That means he is on track to triple Bush’s debt increase over eight years. But without congressional limits, who can say?

In 2006, Obama concluded:

Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead,Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Islam--A Religion of Peace???

For anyone living under the misunderstanding, Islam is NOT a religion of peace!  This fact is backed up by the website, religionofpeace.com which has documented over 20,000 fatal attacks since 2001. We have posted the information about the site below and encourage you to go to it and do your own research. It is scary.

Of course, there are detractors who bury their heads deep in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the work that has been done by the site.  We believe the site is credible but you should make your own determination.

Regardless of the site's veracity, we live near Dearborn, MI, and have seen how moderate and welcoming Muslims are, right! At the Arab Pride Fair over the past couple years, Christians were harassed or arrested for handing out information. They were on sidewalks, outside the event and even there their freedom of speech was attacked. 

Islam in on the march and for those who ignore the hoof beats will be run over.

Conservative Musings

Guess How Many Islamic Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Bob Unruh - WND,  December 5th, 2012

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

A little less than every five hours, somewhere around the world a Muslim is carrying out a fatal jihadist attack.

These are not the regular beatings and vandalism against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists but religion-oriented attacks in which someone dies at the hand of a member of the”religion of peace.”

A website called “The Religion of Peace” has listed more than 20,000 such fatal attacks since Sept. 11, 2001.

As of today, the total was 20,022. The 20,000th came a few days ago when a Jewish woman was cut in pieces in Iran by religious radicals “intent on expanding a mosque.”

Some 1,800 deadly Muslim terror attacks happen each year, amounting to about 150 a month and five a day.

The purpose of the website, according to operator Glen Roberts, a pseudonym, is to put the level of violence being inflicted by Muslims in perspective.

“I started watching [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] in the months after 9/11,” said Roberts, “and I was astonished by the self-absorption. Each day people are maimed and killed explicitly in the name of Islam while this organization complains about headscarves and hurt feelings.

“I thought,” he said, “that maybe if I started documenting the violence, it would inspire a sense of moral perspective on their part.

“I was wrong, of course.”

He said he monitors acts of Muslim violence from a range of news sources that are reliable, when “it can be reasonably inferred that the perpetrator was motivated to some degree by their Islamic faith.”

“I do not post anything that I believe to be false,” he said. ” … This is not to say that mistakes haven’t been made, but they are unintentional and relatively rare.”

Fatal attacks that are reported to him only are posted when they can be verified with a reference to a news sources that he would consider reliable.

He said while he’s not been able to convince Muslims that their faith is violent, he hopes others take notice.

“Critics seem to assume that I’m trying to convince others that they are in mortal danger or that Muslims are bad people because they are Muslim. This is not true, of course,” he told WND.

“The evidence presented by TheReligionofPeace.com is meant to drive home the message that Islam is not like other religion,” he said. “It is openly supremacist and more vulnerable to violent interpretations. When one religion inspires over 1,500 faith-motivated acts of violence each year while other religions contribute practically none, then it should be obvious that there are unique problems – and it should be OK to say so.”

He wrote that Islam continues to be “an open threat” to Western liberal values, including freedom of conscience.

“There is already pressure against free speech rights, particularly in Europe. We should be highly concerned about the logical path of the current trend regardless of whether or not the full consequences of Muslim immigration and deference to the increasing volume of Muslim demand will be experienced in our lifetime,” he said.

“Judging by the one-way flow of immigration, even Muslims find Islamic countries less livable. What sense does it make to continue importing and catering to an ideology that doesn’t work elsewhere – particularly when Islamic immigrants as a group are the most notoriously resistant to integration and acceptance of Western values?”

He said Muslims in the West who say that Islam is a religion of peace are generally sincere.

“They want to believe that their religion is superior, which wouldn’t be the case if it brought violence instead of peace,” he said. “Therefore, they convince themselves and others that Islam is really just the Judeo-Christian value system an Arabic vocabulary.”

He said the “far less pleasant reality is that those who want to believe in ‘peaceful Islam’ have a lot more of Islam to ignore than do the jihadis.”

Roberts wrote: “On a week in which two suicide bombers slaughtered over 54 Christian and Druze and Sunni extremists massacred nearly 200 Shiites in Iraq, TROP recorded our 20,000th Islamic terror attack since 9/11. It happened to be the stabbing and dismemberment of a Jewish woman in her Iranian home by religious radicals intent on expanding a mosque.

A UPI report explained the Jewish woman was stabbed to death and her family blamed her death on a religious motivation. The victim, identified in the report as just Tuba N., was attacked allegedly by her Muslim neighbors after they had been trying to drive her family from their home and confiscate the property. “Thugs broke into her home, tied up her two sisters who were living with her, and repeatedly stabbed her to death,” said the report.

A list of headlines on the site was equally thought-provoking. The site listed a musician in Mali who was ordered into silence on the threat of having her tongue cut out, a teen in India who was found with chains around his hands and feet who claimed he had been chained after trying to leave a Muslim madrassa.

Then there was the Australian stabbed for “insulting the prophet,” advocacy for child marriages, the massacre of 10 Christians, a 15-year-old killed for dating a boy, a tailor now dead for making “inappropriate” women’s clothes and a gang-rape and murder.

The site explains the Quran has at least 109 verses that “call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.” “Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.”

The site continues: “Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.”

One verse, for example, states, “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah.”

The site says there are 10 reasons Islam is not a “religion of peace.” One is the thousands of terror acts committed in the name of Islam, while acts committed in the names of other religions have been minimal. More people are killed by Muslim terrorists each year than in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition. The daily Muslim terror toll is more than the Ku Klux Klan killed in 50 years.

Muhammad, meanwhile, “had people killed for insulting him or for criticizing his religion,” the site explains. Muhammad inspired his men to war with the basest of motives, using captured loot, sex and a gluttonous paradise as incentives. He beheaded captives, enslaved children and raped women captured in battle.

“Muslims continued their jihad against other religions for 1400 years, checked only by the ability of non-Muslims to defend themselves. To this day, not a week goes by that Islamic fundamentalists do not attempt to kill Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists explicitly in the name of Allah,” the site explains.

“Islam spreads like a virus. It radiates from Muslim countries that are too diseased to support it and into healthy systems that are that way because they have had the luxury of developing apart from Islam. Once in the host system, the Islam virus uses the existing machinery to make replicas of itself. Over time, the host makes unilateral concessions to the religion, feeding and appeasing it in the vain hope that this supremacist ideology can be tamed,” the site warns. “In a matter of time, the entire system groans to an agonizing death and assumes the condition of the diseased nations from which Muslims originally fled.”

WND previously reported Roberts received an email threatening: “We will kill you. Like this,” referring to an attached photograph of a man who had been beheaded, his body resting chest down on grass and his lifeless head placed in the middle of his back. Another photograph showed a bloody knife.

The website notes attacks have been documented in the U.S., Iraq, India, Sudan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, England, Thailand, Spain, Egypt, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Germany, Canada and more than 60 other nations

In one recent week, Nov. 24-30, there were 53 jihad attacks resulting in 272 dead bodies and 743 with injuries.

What Americans Should Be Demanding

Our Representatives and Senators as well as the President should represent us and should take our well being as well as that of  the country's into account when making decisions on the fiscal cliff and the budget. Additionally, they should take the lead in all things financial. For example, if sequestration is going to happen, should it not be their salaries, benefits, staff that are hit first?  We think so! In that light, we have prepared the following statement of demands:

We, the taxpayers of the United States, believe that our representatives in Washington D.C. need the personal motivation to complete a sound recovery plan for the United States; to provide a viable, workable and non-political solution to the fiscal cliff and ; to pass a budget for the United States. Therefore, we demand that until Congress and the President pass a recovery plan, present a solution to the fiscal cliff and pass a budget, the Treasurer of the United States will:

      --Freeze all salaries, benefits (i.e. health care, pensions, franking) and privileges (parking, chauffeured limos, airplanes)  of Representatives, Senators and the President. This included both active and retired "public servants." 
      --Charge each Senator and Representative  rent for his/her office space based upon comparable space in comparable Washington D.C. office buildings. The President  shall also be charged rent for his use of the White House based upon comparable Washington D.C. homes.
      --Direct that the Staff of  all Representatives, Senators and the President  be reduced by half.
      --Direct that Cabinet Officers' staff  be cut by one fourth.
      --Terminate all compensation and staff for all appointed Czars.
      --Direct the Office of Personnel to furlough all personal staff members (i.e. White House Chefs, chauffeurs  pilots, First Lady's staff) until the Congress and President complete their work.

Any salary, benefits or privileges lost during this period, shall NOT be recoverable from the Treasury of the United States. It will be considered a penalty for not doing the People's work.

To determine if the Congress and President meet the criteria for reinstatement of the aforementioned items,  50 average citizens who are business owners and 50 average citizens who pay taxes shall make up a committee of the whole. There shall be two individuals from each state.  No one on any government assistance (except Social Security, Medicare, Veterans Pension or benefits)  shall be allowed on the committee. A majority vote of these citizens shall determine if government officials have met the requirement for the return of benefits.  This committee shall have the right to call witnesses and subpoena any documents necessary for their work. All expenses incurred by this committee  shall be covered by the US government. 
Can we force Washington to do something like this? We sure would hope that it would not be necessary. What else would you like to see them do?

Conservative Tom

Repubs Must Find Themselves or Else

The Republicans must find what made them strong in the past. They cannot be Democrat Lite by giving away benefits, not repudiating any spending plan and refusing to cut spending. This will not work! 

The choice we give Americans must be a choice not just of candidate but of philosophy. We cannot switch from anti-abortion to pro-choice, from anti-Obamacare to RepublicanCare on steroids, from strong military to military cuts or from budget hawks to spending hawks. We must re-find our roots, what has made us strong in the past and then emphasize that.  Unless we do, the Republicans will become the Whigs of yesteryear.

On January 16, 2012, we wrote a blog entitled "The End of the Republican Party", and unless we get things straightened out, we will see the GOP go the way of other parties which failed to remain relevant. Could Romney be the last Republican candidate?  Time will tell but if party leadership does not come to understand the role the GOP must fill, it will be the end.

Conservative Tom

The Repudiation Of Mitt Romney

November 28, 2012 by John Myers 

UPI

Mitt Romney’s defeat may mark the neoconservatives’ last chance to win the U.S. Presidency. The re-election of Barack Obama, arguably one of the worst Presidents in decades, underscores how bad a candidate the GOP nominee was. The way in which conservatives have disavowed Romney in the past couple of weeks highlights the scorn for him and the neocon policies he wanted to implement in a world rife with war.

Perhaps Romney’s candidacy was doomed all along. What we are left to do in the next four years will be a test of America’s global influence.

Obama needs to avert a war and perhaps even a social uprising within the Nation’s boundaries. And in four years, the Republican Party needs to nominate a leader that will revitalize the United States.

As Conservatives, We Must Find Our Roots

Romney was big on what he was going to do his first day in the Oval Office had he been elected President. It would have turned out to be a very long day, because the Nation has a long list of things that must be done. And as bad as Obama has been, America decided that Romney was not the one to revive the Nation.

On Aug. 28, 2010, during Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Sarah Palin addressed the crowd. She spoke out against Obama’s expressed desire to be a “transformational” President.

“I must assume that you too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honor,” Palin said.

In New York Times bestseller Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, Conservative Patrick J. Buchanan writes of Palin’s message: “It is a contention of this book that America has been changed in our lifetimes, that a revolution has taken place, that though we appear to the world as the same country, we are a different nation on a course far off the one our fathers set.”

Buchanan’s book was written before Romney won the GOP nomination. Yet he speaks out against the very policies of U.S. imperialism that Romney embraced. Most important, warns Buchanan, is that America is further down the road to bankruptcy because of an ongoing expansionism that persists in Washington despite the cold truth that the Cold War is over. The Federal government has spent $1 trillion over the past dozen years in two wars. Yet instead of winning over enemies, we have created more of them.

Buchanan compares the United States to another superpower that imploded two decades ago: the Soviet Union. In his introduction he lays out his comparison:

“Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” was the title of a 1970 essay by Russian dissident Andrei Amalrik. Forced into exile, Amalrik died in a car crash in Spain in 1980. Few had taken him seriously. Yet, nine years after his death, the Soviet Empire had collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

What has this to do with us? More than we might imagine.

As did the Soviet Union, America commands an empire of allies, bases, and troops. America, too, is engaged in a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. America, too, is an ideological nation. America, too, is a land of many races, tribes, cultures, creeds and languages. America, too, has reached imperial overstretch.

These are not the words of an anti-war liberal. They come from a staunch conservative. When words like these are not the rhetoric of the likes of Senator John Kerry, D-Mass, they are difficult to ignore.

Yet that is precisely what Romney was advocating: American involvement in Syria and other nations in the Mideast. It is getting harder and harder for America to be the world’s beat cop, especially with debts of $16 trillion. We are in effect borrowing money (by selling Treasury debts) from China to protect Taiwan from China, borrowing money from Japan to protect South Korea from North Korea and borrowing money from Russia to protect European nations from Russia.

Still, Romney announced that he planned to spend more to extend the global reach of America’s military, which is, by any estimation, huge. Defense spending took up $711 billion of the annual budget in 2011, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. In fact, the United States “spent more on defense in 2011 than did the countries with the next 13 highest defense budgets combined.” Yet Romney wanted to add $2 trillion to the Pentagon budget over the next decade.

Many Republicans were not partial to Romney and his geopolitical ambitions. Romney should have brushed up on history. Fredrick the Great said: “He who defends everything defends nothing.”

This has been proven true for every empire from the Romans to the Soviet Union.

That Obama was able to defeat Romney underscores the problems within the Republican Party. Conservatives must repudiate not only Romney but also the neoconservatives in the GOP. President George W. Bush and the neocons in his inner sanctum cultivated America’s strategy in the Mideast and lead us nowhere but closer to a global war.

We have seen a decade-long abandonment of foreign policies of containment put down by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Those were sound policies. The Republican Party and the United States must return to that strategy. We can only hope that four years from now won’t be too late and that we will have a better candidate than Romney. Otherwise, another Clinton may be President.

Yours in good times and bad,