Message To Congress and the President--No Workee, No Monee

We had to laugh when we read the second line of this AP posting this morning. It says :

"The Nevada Democrat says it's up to congressional Republicans to come up with a plan that both houses would pass and President Barack Obama would sign."

We did not realize that the "Congressional Republicans" had so much power that they could decide what the House and Senate can pass and the President can sign. If Reed is not the most stupid man in the US,  he surely is in the top ten!  Where is his responsibility as the Leader of the Senate? Where is the President on this?  All of the blame is being placed on the Republicans and everyone else is throwing up their hands.

We blame both sides of the political spectrum. It is extreme dereliction of duty for them to have not passed and sent a budget to the President. They should be brought up on charges for not fulfilling their Constitutionally mandated responsibilities. Some times the only way to get a mule's attention is to hit them over the head with a 2x4! Ours is the following.

Over the past months we have posted several ideas about how to save the country money. We would like to add another. Cancel all Congressional and Senate salaries, benefits, perks. They and their staff receive NOTHING until they pass a balanced budget that reduces the deficit to 10% of GDP in ten years. The budget must have decreases starting in the first year and every year through the tenth. No accounting gimmicks will be allowed.

This means that now they personally will have to pay for their health club, their franking privileges, their parking at Reagan National, their phones, their staff and their office space. Most of these men and women are very wealthy so they can take a hit to their pocketbooks. It might get their attention.

The same goes for the President. The only benefit he will receive is Secret Service Protection and the use of Air Force One. However the use of the plane is for official Presidential duties only. No pleasure trips, no vacations will be allowed. He is rich, he can pay for the plane himself for those activities.

Until and unless we hit these guys in their greedy pocketbooks will we ever see any real action. This goes for both parties and the independents. Our new motto is: No workee, no monee!

Conservative Tom

Sen. Reid: nation appears headed over fiscal cliff

Senate Majority Leader Reid says government appears headed over "fiscal cliff"

By Associated Press | Associated Press – 30 minutes ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the government appears headed over the so-called fiscal cliff because of a lack of progress in bipartisan negotiations.

The Nevada Democrat says it's up to congressional Republicans to come up with a plan that both houses would pass and President Barack Obama would sign.

Reid says of missing the Dec. 31 deadline to avoid the fiscal cliff, quote: "it looks like that's where we're headed."

Major tax hikes and spending cuts will hit most Americans if Congress and the White House don't reach a compromise by the year's end.

Lots of Noise--Not Much To Back It Up

Yes, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings are tragic. It is a despicable act, done by what had to be a deranged individual who saw the school as a target. However, it is no different from other incidents that have occurred in the past.

We went to the NY Crime Commission report on mass murders (those who kill more than four at a time) and the data found there is enlightening. The source of this information can be found at: http://www.nycrimecommission.org/initiative1-shootings.php

There are several ways to look at this information. We are going to look at three.

1--Over the 28 years covered by this report there were 30 events which killed 290 people which means 9.67 persons killed in each incident. If you remove the four worst deadliest events from the total, the per incident death rate falls to 7.2

2--Of the 30 events:
       -18 of the perpetrators died by suicide (two at Columbine)
       - 3 were killed by police (suicide by cop)
       - 8 were convicted of their crimes--two were convicted and are now free
       - 2 are still on trial (at the time of the preparation of the report)

3--The three deadliest crimes were:
       - Virginia Tech where 32 died
       - Sandy Hook where 27 died
       - Luby Cafeteria where 23 died and
       - McDonalds where 21 died

Our point is not to minimize the immensity of the crimes that occurred over the past 28 years, but to point out that there are far more serious situations that need addressing.

Yes, tragic but hardly an emergency. The rush to put in onerous gun control is politically grandstanding and if government were really concerned with deaths, they would be attacking the real causes. More people die each day from medical reasons, accidental falls, poisoning deaths and cars than all of mass murders have caused in the past 28 years!

The problem is hardly a gun. It is the nut who fires the gun!

For your information we present the following statistics regarding car accidents and other causes of accidental deaths as a frame of reference:

National Car Accident Statistics (2010)

• The number of highway deaths fell to 32,885 in 2010. It’s the lowest number since 1949.
• Fatalities in accidents involving drunk drivers dropped 4.9%. Approximately 10,228 people died.
• There were about 3,092 deaths in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2010.
• Motorcycle deaths increased in 2010 to 4,502.
• Pedestrian deaths also increased to 4,280 in 2010.
• While fatal crashes decreased, the number of crashes involving injuries increased to 1,546,000 – an increase of 1.9%.
• Pennsylvania was one of the states that saw an increase in fatalities. The number of deaths rose to 1,324 — an increase of more than 5%. Other states with increases in the number of fatalities include Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.

Source: http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/car-accident-statistics.html

Mortality

All unintentional injury deaths

• Number of deaths: 118,021
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 38.4
• Cause of death rank: 5

Unintentional fall deaths

• Number of deaths: 24,792
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 8.1

Motor vehicle traffic deaths

• Number of deaths: 34,485
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 11.2

Unintentional poisoning deaths

• Number of deaths: 31,758
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.3

Source: Deaths: Final Data for 2009, tables 9, 18  [PDF - 2.1 MB]

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm

We want a fully informed decision on guns. It is hardly the issue that the press, the New York Crime Commission and the political class would like you to believe. We must stop this rush to judgment. 

Conservative Tom

America In Decline--More Evidence

We have written several postings to Conservative Musings regarding the decline we see in this country. It is getting worse and in the following post by Bob Livingston, he details incidents which show us as a country losing our way.  Where will it end and when, it still unclear, however, as President Obama stokes the fires of class envy, the anti-gunners try to remove guns from society and morals decline faster than a roller coaster, we believe the time is sooner rather than later.  Could it occur within the next five years, possibly? It definitely will in 20.

The US has seen its best days and our time as a leader of the free world is fading fast. We must repent from our evil ways and find our spiritual center otherwise, all will be lost. Take another look at our posting on December 19--"America's Decline Defined" http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4248793610847150213#editor/target=post;postID=7154073757341897643;onPublishedMenu=template;onClosedMenu=template;postNum=10;src=postname  . We think that you will find it speaks to our feelings about this country and the reasons for the decline.

For most of our life, we have been positive about the country and its possibilities, however, we have lost that energy, that emotion as we see life getting worse with each passing day. It may seem like the good 'ole USA, but it is not.

Conservative Tom

More Evidence Of Impending Societal Collapse

December 26, 2012 by Bob Livingston 

PHOTOS.COM

Manners, common decency and respect for others are lost American traits.

Interactions turn nasty at the drop of a hat. Name-calling and the violence now pass for discussion. Young children are resorting to theft.

I recently wrote about some of the signs of societal collapse here. Here are some more, taken from recent headlines:

A Pennsylvania man became irate after the replacement hamburger he requested contained a slice of cheese. The replacement was necessary because the first one he ordered at the drive-thru also contained a slice of cheese. He parked his car, entered the restaurant and demanded and received a refund. He then cursed the staff, knocked over a trash can and threw a children’s high chair across a room filled with diners. When he realized that a restaurant worker had followed him outside to get his license plate number, the man grabbed the female worker, put her in a headlock and smashed the phone she was carrying. He then threatened to fight another employee before leaving.

A 65-year-old priest waiting on a bus was attacked with pepper spray and robbed of $125 at a bus stop in Philadelphia in broad daylight.

A college student riding a Chicago Transit Authority train was attacked by a man who put asock filled with feces in her face and hair and on her clothes. The victim said she did not know the attacker and he uttered no words and did not demand her valuables. “I don’t know why he did it,” she said.

A diner at a Denny’s restaurant in San Antonia, Texas, became irate at being made to wait on his bill, so he set fire to the restaurant’s Christmas tree and left the restaurant. The flames caused $150,000 in damage to the business.

An 8-year-old girl was caught on a surveillance camera stealing a package off her neighbor’s porch in Clermont, Fla. Police investigating a spate of missing packages from the neighborhood believe the girl is responsible for all or most of them. Some of the stolen packages were found at a nearby abandoned house.

In Wentzville, Mo., barbershop patrons were discussing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. One patron said the incident “makes me want to murder the suspect.” For unknown reasons, another patron took that as a threat against him. He retrieved a gun from his car and fired three times at the other patron.

In South Union Township, Pa., two women tussled over a shopping cart at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. When one of the women abandoned the cart and grabbed another, the other woman “still engraged” then “ran down” the first woman with the cart, pushed it onto her back and began punching her in the face.

On a single afternoon in Chicago, a city in the State with the Nation’s most restrictive gun laws, a series of eight shootings left at least 10 people wounded, including four teenagers.

We live in a Nation in which God has been removed from schools, prayers are banned from public places and babies are slaughtered by the thousands on a daily basis. Unemployment remains high and inflation is sapping the wealth of the elderly and savers. Politicians squabble over whether they are going to screw us out of a lot of money or a lot more while ginning up class envy and promoting hatred of one group over another simply on the basis of wealth.

We have become an entertainment-centric, me-first society that has gone from slouching toward Gomorrah to a full-on sprint. We are on the brink of societal collapse.

Should Media Lose its First Amendment Rights?

Once again the media missed the opportunity to provide news to the people. Instead they align themselves with the Democrats and keep the facts of the housing crisis deeply buried.  Should we consider doing away with the freedom of press?

Another example was on Channel 4 (WDIV)   in Detroit last night. The eleven p.m. news was covering the "fiscal cliff", the news reader (and the accompanying information that was flashed on the screen) described the Democratic desire to increase taxes on the "rich" and that Republicans did not want to do that.  They completely left out the fact that the Republicans wanted spending cuts to go along with any increase in taxes which is not at all included int he Democratic position.

Some would say that is a small omission to which we say bull hockey! WDIV purposely misled the positions of both parties, painted a misleading image of both and presented a totally biased view of the actual conflict between the two parties. Additionally, based on the time allotted, the Democratic position on the story was 90%  and the Republican part was the balance. Since when is that balanced news?  It does not even come near!

Who else is coming to the belief that the news media must be held accountable? Should we have monitors that pull a story or news cast that is not balanced? Should we not do business with companies that advertise on/in this biased media? We would like to hear from you.

Conservative Tom

New study confirms economy was destroyed by relentless policies of Democratic Party

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=5513

ECONOMY
DECEMBER 21, 2012
BY: ROBERT MOONS

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left’s race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act–enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

(And is the main reason Barney Frank and Chris Dodd conveniently disappeared from the political scene. How about a genuine in-depth, independent prosecutor review to put these crooks in jail – hardly adequate punishment for the immense trouble they have caused us and in which Obama relishes and his father’s dreams are fulfilled) jsk

Let’s review:

-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.

-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary…to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn’t go along with the left’s Affirmative Action lending policies…all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left’s favorite blatantly partisan “fact-checkers,” Snopes, admits (while pretending to ‘set the record straight’).

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is “little evidence” of any connection between the “Republican” deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But now the media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

Why You Don't See School Shootings in Israel

Gun Deaths Not On The List of Top 15 Causes

According to the Center For Disease Control (CDC), the leading cause of deaths in the US lists homicide as  number 15, and only a portion are caused by guns!.  We have much larger problems than gun deaths! (The site address is listed at the bottom of the posting.)

The use of the "red herring" of gun deaths is a false argument which is intended to take our eyes off the real issues that face this country. We have a government that has not passed a budget in over three years, we are borrowing money at a rate that will soon bankrupt the nation and our legislators go home for Christmas vacation without taking the necessary actions to avoid a "fiscal cliff."

We have severe problems and all the press could focus on is the dreadful death of 26 people at the hands of a mad man in Connecticut.  We need to train our eyes on the real problems and not be distracted by Legislators who are incompetent, irresponsible and interested ONLY in their re-election.

This is NOT the time to take away a citizen's right to defend himself not only from the bad guys but from the government itself! We will need to protect ourselves soon!

Conservative Tom

Mortality experience in 2009
•  In 2009, a total of 2,437,163 resident deaths were registered in
the United States.
•  The age-adjusted death rate, which takes the aging of the popu­
lation into account, was 741.1 deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard
population.
•  Life expectancy at birth was 78.5 years.
•  The 15 leading causes of death in 2009 were:
1. Diseases of heart (heart disease)
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4. Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6. Alzheimer’s disease
7. Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
8. Influenza and pneumonia
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney
disease)
10. Intentional self-harm (suicide)
11. Septicemia
12. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
13. Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal dis­
ease (hypertension)
14. Parkinson’s disease
15. Assault (homicide)

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf

Fear Of Drones, Overblown?

What will be the effect of the growing use of domestic drones by the military, local police and business on the
 freedom of assembly, the Fourth Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and posse comitatus?

In the following blog, Naomi Wolf, writes a disturbing article on the changes that will occur in our lives as drones become more prevalent.  We had not read or heard on our news about this use in the US. Have you? Interesting, she writes for the Guardian in England!

We are very concerned that we are losing the freedoms upon which America was based. Combine these drones with the gun control debate, the government purchase of billions of  "jacketed bullets",  one can only fear the worst.

This country is in free fall and many Americans  don't even notice. They believe that Conservative Tom is a "Chicken Little" fearing everything.  We do not know where all this will end, there are just too many unexplained events for it not to be a plan.

So call us a worry wart, a believer in conspiracies or a pessimist, that does not bother us, we can take the heat. However, the complete inability by many Americans to even investigate the issues is a major concern. An uninformed public is a gullible populace who will accept anything the ruling cabal tells them.  This is where we are today.

We are scared, very scared. You should also.

Conservative Tom

The coming drone attack on America

Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised

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• • Naomi Wolf
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 December 2012 14.36 EST
  • Jump to comments (487)

By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. Photograph: US navy/Reuters

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by […] the defense sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.

Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them.

An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf) news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step – one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)

The air force document explains that the air force will be overseeing the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders of the US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones for 90 days without a warrant – and will then, retroactively, determine if the material can be retained – which does away for good with the fourth amendment in these cases. While the drones are not supposed to specifically "conduct non-consensual surveillance on on specifically identified US persons", according to the document, the wording allows for domestic military surveillance of non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a group of activists or protesters) and it comes with the important caveat, also seemingly wholly unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals "unless expressly approved by the secretary of Defense".

In other words, the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to hover outside your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your family, if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your friends and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not "specifically identified", a determination that is so vague as to be meaningless.

What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent, and that imagery can, in that case, be distributed to various government agencies; it may also include your most private moments and most personal activities. The authorized "collected information may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told CBS:

"In some records that were released by the air force recently … under their rules, they are allowed to fly drones in public areas and record information on domestic situations."

This document accompanies a major federal push for drone deployment this year in the United States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for their commercial deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc can have their very own fleets of domestic surveillance drones. The FAA recently established a more efficient process for local police departments to get permits for their own squadrons of drones.

Given the Department of Homeland Security militarization of police departments, once the circle is completed with San Francisco or New York or Chicago local cops having their own drone fleet – and with Chase, HSBC and other banks having hired local police, as I reported here last week – the meshing of military, domestic law enforcement, and commercial interests is absolute. You don't need a messy, distressing declaration of martial law.

And drone fleets owned by private corporations means that a first amendment right of assembly is now over: if Occupy is massing outside of a bank, send the drone fleet to surveil, track and harass them. If citizens rally outside the local Capitol? Same thing. As one of my readers put it, the scary thing about this new arrangement is deniability: bad things done to citizens by drones can be denied by private interests – "Oh, that must have been an LAPD drone" – and LAPD can insist that it must have been a private industry drone. For where, of course, will be the accountability from citizens buzzed or worse by these things?

Domestic drone use is here, and the meshing has begun: local cops in Grand Forks, North Dakota called in a DHS Predator drone – the same make that has caused hundreds of civilian casualties in Pakistan – over a dispute involving a herd of cattle. The military rollout in process and planned, within the US, is massive: the Christian Science Monitor reportsthat a total of 110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39 states. That covers America.

We don't need a military takeover: with these capabilities on US soil and this air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens. And these drones are not yet weaponized.

"I don't think it's crazy to worry about weaponized drones. There is a real consensus that has emerged against allowing weaponized drones domestically. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended against it," warns Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, noting that there is already political pressure in favor of weaponization:

"At the same time, it is inevitable that we will see [increased] pressure to allow weaponized drones. The way that it will unfold is probably this: somebody will want to put a relatively 'soft' nonlethal weapon on a drone for crowd control. And then things will ratchet up from there."

And the risk of that? The New America Foundation's report on drone use in Pakistan noted that the Guardian had confirmed 193 children's deaths from drone attacks in seven years. It noted that for the deaths of ten militants, 1,400 civilians with no involvement in terrorism also died. Not surprisingly, everyone in that region is traumatized: children scream when they hear drones. An NYU and Stanford Law School report notes that drones "terrorize citizens 24 hours a day".

If US drones may first be weaponized with crowd-control features, not lethal force features, but with no risk to military or to police departments or DHS, the playing field for freedom of assembly is changed forever. So is our private life, as the ACLU's Stanley explains:

"Our biggest concerns about the deployment of drones domestically is that they will be used to create pervasive surveillance networks. The danger would be that an ordinary individual once they step out of their house will be monitored by a drone everywhere they walk or drive. They may not be aware of it. They might monitored or tracked by some silent invisible drone everywhere they walk or drive."

"So what? Why should they worry?" I asked.

"Your comings and goings can be very revealing of who you are and what you are doing and reveal very intrusive things about you – what houses of worship you are going to, political meetings, particular doctors, your friends' and lovers' houses."

I mentioned the air force white paper. "Isn't the military not supposed to be spying on Americans?" I asked.

"Yes, the posse comitatus act passed in the 19th century forbids a military role in law enforcement among Americans."

What can we do if we want to oppose this? I wondered. According to Stanley, many states are passing legislation banning domestic drone use. Once again, in the fight to keep America a republic, grassroots activism is pitched in an unequal contest against a militarized federal government.