Stop Helping Us Federal Reserve! Go Away...

Beality

Eliminate Lame Duck Sessions

Once the people have voted, it is unwise to allow their legislative bodies to convene and legislate where the political losers have nothing to lose.   We should eliminate "Lame Duck" sessions in all legislatures.

Beality

Societal Cancer

The human body succumbs when cancerous cells proliferate to compromise a critical body function. In the same way, a human society, whether it be an empire, a nation, or the entire human race, will similarly succumb when enough of its human beings consume, rather than produce, societal resources and proliferate to compromise a critical societal function.

A person normally begins as billions of cells, ALL of whom are trying their hardest to support the health and survival of the person. A rapidly developing and productive person usually results. To maintain this survival state, there are roving cells within each person whose sole function is to search for and destroy cells that have been damaged or reprogrammed so as to take resources from the person, but not give any resources back. Normally, these damaged cells are entirely removed from the person to ensure its continued health and survival.

At some point, whether through import of poisonous resources into the organism, e.g. impure water and air or “dead” food or foreign substances, or just aging, the cells responsible for cleansing the being of cancerous cells are compromised, and the cancerous cells are allowed or even encouraged to reproduce. At some point the cancer “metastasizes” and the cancerous cells proliferate to compromise a critical body function, causing the death of the person, as stated before.

Similarly, whether through import of poisonous resources into society, e.g. entitlement beliefs, rather than productive beliefs, or aging, the persons responsible for cleansing the society of nonproductive persons are compromised, and the “entitled” persons are allowed or even encouraged to reproduce through raising their children in the same beliefs, encouraging their neighbors in the same beliefs, or in recent history, being encouraged by their governments in such beliefs!

Similarly, at some point these entitled (cancerous) persons “metastasize” and they proliferate to the point they compromise a critical societal function, causing the death of the society, as stated before.

Unfortunately, this “societal cancer” has taken root with a vengeance in current times, especially with the encouragement of increasing numbers of governments, local, regional, and even international. The numbers of persons, who believe that they are entitled to societal resources, rather than charged with producing societal resources for the benefit of all persons, are exploding. Increasing numbers of societies are compromising their critical functions, e.g. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and eventually, if not stopped soon, America.

Cancer, when it gets out of control, requires rigorous treatment to prevent death. Cancerous cells must be eliminated. In societal terms, unproductive persons must be returned to productive status. At the risk of being lynched, I am not advocating the death of unproductive persons, although theoretically this would be more efficient, but as far as humanely possible, all persons must be encouraged to produce as much as possible (through societal incentives) to support the health and survival of society, and must be discouraged (through societal disincentives) from only consuming the resources of society.

I am not advocating that persons should not be allowed to take any resources from society. Obviously, persons need resources (food, water, etc.) in order to produce resources, but receiving resources needs to be conditioned upon producing resources to guarantee survival of society. For example, as an incentive, I am advocating that welfare recipients produce societal resources (e.g. work) in return for receiving societal resources (e.g. money). As a disincentive, I am advocating that persons who riot and destroy human resources in order to obtain or maintain human resources should be arrested and institutionalized, until they are able and willing to produce, as well as consume, societal resources.

Quite frankly, failure to defeat the growing societal cancer will doom society to death.

Beality

Eliminate Professional Politicians

We pay politicians more money than we make to sit around all year and come up with more ways to take away more of our money. Something is wrong with this. Maybe we should go back to sending persons willing to volunteer their services to assemble every two years for one or two months to pass really signficant legislation in the best interests of all of us.

We need to rid ourselves of these relatively new professional politicians who seek to remain in office with larger and larger salaries and larger and larger benefits and larger and larger pensions payable until their death by legistlating larger and larger salaries and larger and larger benefits and larger and larger pensions payable until the death of those who vote to keep them in political office, persons such as government workers and labor union workers. These wonderful benefits are paid for by the decreasing numbers of the rest of us who are receiving smaller and smaller salaries and smaller and smaller benefits and smaller and smaller pensions. This cannot last.

Beality

On the Merits or Potential DUI Defense

Actually, when someone who has built up a tolerance (or dependence) for alcohol, that someone operates better (more efficiently, safely, etc.) when his or her alcohol level is within this tolerance (or dependence) range, and it is when his or her alcohol level is above this tolerance range, i.e. too much alcohol recently, or when his or her alcohol level is below this tolerance range, i.e. when no or not enough alcohol has been consumed, that he or she operates his motor vehicle less efficiently, safely, etc.

Applied to the operation of a motor vehicle, it is then possible that a person, who has a tolerance level at a blood alcohol level of .10, as measured by a breathalyzer machine, is driving his or her motor vehicle more safely at that level than when he or she has had no alcohol. Thus, due to the application of the arbitrary blood alcohol level, people could be arrested for DUI, say at a mandatory traffic stop for alcohol, when in fact, they are driving similarly to a person who has had no alcohol. Thus, the blood alcohol level is not a scientific standard of driving performance built upon the merits, especially in the case of alcohol tolerance (or dependence), and driving performance, rather than alcohol blood level, in this case, is more important for the safety and welfare of the rest of humanity.

It should not matter what causes unsafe driving, whether it is alcohol, drugs, cellphones, GPSs, razors, lipstick, cigarettes, sex, or whatever; it is unsafe driving that causes death, injury, and damage to others, and it is the objective unsafe driving that should be prevented, not solely a certain blood alcohol level. Alcohol tolerance (or dependence), once intervention is indicated, is more appropriately dealt with in the treatment context.

Beality

Who do you believe...Barack Hussein Obama or Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson said the following:

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Our greatest enemies are amongst us...

As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).

Now, in his riveting new book, Courting Disaster, How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.

(Regnery),

Here is an excerpt from Courting Disaster:

Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi. A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."

Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter."

Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer. Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location.

Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.

Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them that Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."

It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.

His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman." Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons that will be described later in this book.

He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists.

KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean.

Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

* United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.;
* American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m;
* American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.

They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.

Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.

And still fewer realize that the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Editor's Note: For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of Courting Disaster.

In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda

Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda-how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."

Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."

Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."

And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied :"Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."

On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.

The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially nonconcurring." The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.

A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -- including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"

In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their advice.

With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.