I'm guessing that the reason we Americans go from a technological breakthrough to wondering why the hell everyone buys the product from overseas is we're either to arrogant and set in our ways, we spent a lot of $$$$ being early adopters and now the technology we use is antiquated just as the rest of the world adopts it, or a combo of the two.
It's probably both, plus:
"I want another $2/hour raise, because I can barely afford the payments on two SUV's and a McMansion on the $24/hour they're paying me now. And if the union doesn't vote in a strike to get me that raise, me and a few buddies are gonna start sending trucks outta the plant with a few bolts missin' from the rear axles! Hell, it's already a wonder that anything makes it past Quality Control in this plant."
This is frequently followed by the same person saying:
"Well dammit, we need to increase unemployment benefits. Ever since they shut down the plant and moved production to Malaysia or Mexico or some damn place where the locals sign up in droves to work for $20/week, I've been out of work. Best damn job I can get around here is sweeping up at the local Hyundai dealership!"
Actually, I believe that just over half of those who are eligible are even registered, and of those, at least 25% don't even bother to vote in presidential elections. Voter turnout for off-year elections (to elect governors, senators, representatives, city council members, etc) is far lower.
It has been said that democracy cannot work unless the people participate. We're seeing the proof of that in the US right now.
Master of Puppets was okay. They started going downhill with And Justice For All, but I still went to the show. After that they were just another alternative band looking to make a buck.
By "original demo" do you mean the one they made before Cliff Burton replaced Ron McGovney?
*sigh* - I must be getting old, reminiscing about really kickass bands from the time before anyone under the legal drinking age was born...
That statistic is derived from the fact that a jury in the US is composed of 12 registered voters who aren't smart enough to avoid jury duty, or just don't have anything better to do.
Think about that for a moment. These are the people of whom 48% or so voted for the Shrub, and another 48% voted for Algore. That means you're dealing with a jury pool that's about 96% completely fucking stupid.
Thinking about it, maybe he should move here now. I hear that British prisons are a lot more comfortable than US ones.
Actually, I'd like to see McBribe moving to, oh, maybe Botswana, so he can be sentenced there. Or we could find some other developing nation - preferably one where the mandatory minimum punishment for stealing a loaf of bread is removal of the offender's hand, using a dull, rusty blade, and cauterization of the wound.
Or we could just break out the torches and pitchforks, and have us a good lynching. Or maybe we could tie him down on an ant hill and slather honey all over him.
Oops, I misread this post as "No, I have a problem with you doing that."
Please disregard my other reply.
. o O Proceeding to write "I shall carefully read all posts to which I reply" 1000 times on a chalkboard, followed by writing "I shall not post while under the influence of strong prescription cold/flu medication" 1000 times as well...
Come down here to Georgia and call somebody a Yankee. If you're real lucky, said person won't have his revolver with him, and will have to go to his pickup truck to get his shotgun - giving you time to put as much distance between you and him as possible.
Hell, I was 15 years old before I found out that God Damnyankee was two words!
Tennessee has a much higher gasoline tax than most of the surrounding states, with the exception of Virginia (and maybe Kentucky - I've never bought gas there, so I dunno what their gas taxes are like). In particular, Georgia's gasoline tax rate is one of the lowest in the nation. Since Chattanoogans can drive 5 miles south and save $0.10 to $0.20 per gallon, gas stations in Chattanooga are going under while those just across the state line in Georgia are racking up the sales.
If Oregon were to raise their gasoline tax to be greater than Washington's gasoline tax, guess what would happen to those gas stations in Portland.
1983-1986 General Motors J-body cars (Cavalier, Sunbird, J2000, etc. - manual transmission only)
All pre-1971 Chrysler vehicles equipped with 426 Hemi engines and 727 Torqueflite or manual transmission
1976-1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and 98 Regency
Almost all Toyotas and Hondas made after 1988, with few exceptions
Extraordinarily bad cars:
1973-1986 General Motors passenger cars (except 1983-1986 J-body cars with manual transmission)
All Isuzus, Mazdas and Mitsubishis I've come into contact with
All pre-1978 Toyota passenger cars with automatic transmissions
All Geo Metros
All Chrysler vehicles with 3.0L V-6 engines (those engines are made by Mitsubishi - apparently a cheesecake in Sally Struthers' fridge has a longer lifespan than those engines)
Pretty much all General Motors and Ford front-wheel-drive passenger cars with automatic transmissions (though I hear the US carmakers have finally learned how to make FWD cars with automatics in the last few years)
Chevrolet S-10 (includes the Blazers and pickup trucks, as well as the GMC S-15 series)
Pre-1997 Ford Ranger pickups and midsized SUV's (Bronpco II, Explorer)
All the vehicles in those lists that I haven't personally owned are listed based on ratings at auto-related websites and the experiences of people I've known - in each case the anecdotal evidence was in line with the automotive website review.
I currently own 2 vehicles:
1991 Nissan Sentra S Coupe, 1.6L I-4 engine, automatic transmission, air conditioning, factory AM/FM/Cassette stereo, rear windshield defroster. 253,000 miles on original engine and transmission, still drives quite well, uses about 1 quart of oil between changes. All the buttons still work, with one exception: the vent fan operates at all settings except the highest.
1996 Ford F-150 Longbed Standard Cab, 4.9L I-6 engine, automatic with overdrive, cruise control, air conditioning, ABS, dual fuel tanks, towing/camper package, aftermarket Sony AM/FM/CD stereo with Rockford Fosgate door speakers. 189,000 miles on original engine and transmission, still runs/drives like new, uses about 1/2 quart of oil between changes. All the buttons still work. Last week I hauled 2480 pounds (about 1-1/4 tons) of gravel home from the quarry, on steep hills and very twisty roads. 2480 pounds of gravel made the truck weigh about 1400 pounds more than its GVWR, but it drove/accelerated/pulled hills/stopped just fine, though I did drive cautiously on the way home.
I've also owned, in the past:
1966 Oldsmobile F-85 Deluxe 2-door hardtop (Almost no one knows WTF an F-85 is - basically, in 1966, the Olds "Cutlass" was an F-85 with the Cutlass trim package). My first car, outran Mustang GT's and Camaro Z-28's from 0-50, survived years of abuse at the hands of a teenage driver, and the odometer read almost 300,000 miles when an idiot in a Saab ran a stop sign at 60-65mph and totalled my Olds for me.
1978 Chevrolet Camaro. Total crap. Slurped fuel like a dragster, and its performance left me wondering if I should get out and push. I spent more time working on it than driving it.
1984 Chevrolet Cavalier. Great little car - cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, cheap on gas, ran like a top till I sold it.
1982 Buick Regal. Another crapmobile. Died of oil pump failure at 132,000 miles.
1989 Geo Metro (hey, I was delivering pizzas at the time!). Burned valve at 112,000 miles, repair estimate was more than the car's value.
I have a Colorado Jumbo 250 sitting in a box somewhere. Last used about 2 years ago to read the data from some old media for transfer to CD. It's not worth what it would cost to ship, but if you're local to Chattanooga, TN you can have it for free.
My girlfriend said I need to get rid of some of my old hardware anyway. BTW, you wouldn't happen to need an ISA passive backplane with (2) single-board 486DX33 computers and (8) ISA SCSI controllers in a rackmount case, would you? Or maybe (56) 4x SCSI CD-ROM drives in rackmount drive enclosures?
Septic tanks work just fine - just don't drill your water well downhill from it
Basic health care is so expensive because the doctors and hospitals adjust their rates to the maximum that Medicare will pay (this helps them make enough profit to make up for all the deadbeats that don't pay)
Professional, publicly-financed law enforcement didn't exist until 1830. Until then it was up to the victim, his family, or someone he hired to investigate crimes and catch offenders. Society did not crumble during the 5,000 years of no law enforcement - indeed, the argument can be made for more crumbling occurring since the advent of professional publicly-financed law enforcement, though proving a cause/effect relationship would likely be impossible, if not ludicrous. In any case, the previous system can work as well now as it did then - not to mention the deterrent effect of an un-castrated 2nd amendment.
The local volunteer fire department will cover me just fine if I send them $100/year to cover equipment maintenance, negating the need for a professional fire department.
The one thing you mentioned that should be provided by the government is covered in the constitution - postal roads. See Article I, Section 8, Constitution of the United States. Incidentally, a tax levied on the states pursuant to the Constitution before the 16th Amendment (that is, a tax levied based on population count as of the last census) is the fairest way to pay for them.
Do you have any more straw men you'd care to erect?
So the standards by which you measure the social safety net available to the least fortunate Americans are those set by Ethiopia, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Bhutan, Malawi and Haiti? Countries regularly hit by draughts, famines, other ecological disasters, civil wars and/or coup d'etats?
First, let me summarize my initial post to this thread, because it appears you didn't comprehend the "house that needs some work" metaphor I used to describe the US:
The people of the United States enjoy a number of freedoms. Those freedoms are also enjoyed by the people of numerous other countries. Incidentally, most of those other countries with comparable freedoms also borrow ideas from ancient Athens and the Roman Republic. The people of the US - and Europe - enjoy a far more prosperous lifestyle than people who live in nations where communism, fanaticism, and/or nationalism are the rule.
I made sure to point out that the US implementation has its drawbacks, and distinguished between fundamental problems and correctable, transient problems such as the current administration's policies and legislation.
In my second post to this thread, I measured economic prosperity against the only universal scale that came to mind, which happens to include the people of the entire planet. My motivation was to demonstrate the apparent superiority of democracy, responsibly-practiced capitalism, and civic freedom in contrast to governments that brutally suppress dissenting opinions and actively deprive their people of life's basic necessities. I was sure to mention that Europeans also enjoy a well-above-average lifestyle in contrast to most of the rest of the planet. At no point did I claim that the United States was perfect. Neither did I claim that the US government was the best system on the planet. I said it had one of the best systems. The differences between the US government and most governments of Europe are differences of degree, and differences in the details of implementation. The basic principles are nearly identical.
I know we have a poverty problem here, and I believe that there should be help available to the poor. I don't, however, believe that wealth should necessarily be distributed equally among all. Some rich people are rich because they busted their asses all their lives, played by the rules, and achieved success the hard way. They deserve every penny they make. Some people are poor because they pissed away their chances to advance themselves, refused to earn their way in the world, and have no desire to do anything that involves work or self-reliance. They deserve nothing but contempt. The rest, the people who are just having a string of bad luck and don't mind working for their keep, deserve the help they need to make it on their own. I don't like the idea of a hand-out, but would be thrilled to death if we had job training programs available to anyone who needed the hand-up. Low-cost home ownership programs like Habitat for Humanity, which help provide those on the rebound with a place to live as well as the satisfaction that comes with owning their own home, are an excellent idea. Teach a fish to man, and all that jazz.
To answer your other questions, the only numbers I could turn up in a quick Google search are from 1991, and only address mean real purchasing power, but here goes. The average United States citizen's real purchasing power as of 1991 was $22,204, the highest of any nation on earth. Germany came in 2nd at a mean real purchasing power (MRPP) of $19,500. Canada was 3rd with $19,178. Japan's MRPP was $19,107. Denmark's MRPP was $17,621. Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Finland rounded out the top 9 for 1991 in MRPP.
In short, yes, there are plenty of countries out there with lower poverty rates. There are countries out there where the poor have better access to health care. There are countries out there with just as much freedom as we have. Relatively speaking, though, few have any of these things, and it's a rare country indee
I think that'd be what you call "excessive national pride combined with rabid xenophobia, and carried to the extreme"
Normal levels of pride in one's nation are, well, normal. And healthy. No matter where you're from, even if you can't be proud of your government, it's okay to be proud of your country.
Not trying to start an "Us v's You" argument here, but just pointing out that many Things That Make America American are not as exclusivly American as many people seem to believe.
Oh, I understand your point. And I agree with you, at least for the most part - the US hasn't had a monopoly on those freedoms in quite some time, if it ever did in the first place. We merely have those freedoms, whereas there are a lot of places that don't.
And I wholeheartedly agree that our system here has its flaws. No government is perfect, ours being less perfect than some, more perfect than others. In the grand scheme of things, however, I don't think we're doing too badly. That is, apart from some recent atrocities that have been passed into law by a president whose actions have given me cause to rethink my political affiliations. I used to think of myself as a Republican with Libertarian tendencies - now I'm probably more of a Libertarian with slight Republican tendencies.
The good news is, someone will be convicted under one or more of those laws and appeal that conviction. Hopefully, that someone will eventually appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, which will declare the USA Patriot Act, among others, to be unconstitutional. Either that, or it'll be repealed by act of Congress sometime after Bush loses the 2004 election. I predicted in late November 2000 that no matter who ended up winning that contested election, he would be a one-term president. Partly because the election was contested and partly because it was apparent that neither candidate would make a good president. As far as Republicans go, I'm curious to see how Arnie does as governor of California. From what I've heard/read, he's a fiscal conservative, but has fairly progressive views with regards to the environment, education, and campaign finance reform. He also doesn't spout the Christian Right rhetoric you hear from people like Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms. If he turns out to be effective as well as agreeable, maybe we could pass a constitutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president. Maybe we should pass such an amendment anyway - I see no reason why someone who's jumped through all the citizenship hoops and been a citizen for, say, 15 years shouldn't be allowed to be president. It's not like they haven't proven their loyalty to the country - which is more than most native-born citizens have done.
As for the immigration services requiring Communist party members to declare their party affiliation, I wasn't aware that requirement was still around - quite an archaic throwback to the Cold War. It reminds me of those laws you read about on dumblaws.com, like the one in Lenoir City, Tennessee that requires motorists to discharge a firearm out the window as they approach an intersection, to warn approaching horse traffic. Drug convictions, well, recreational drugs are still illegal here - not that I agree with the law, but the majority of voters currently do, so all we can do is try to educate the majority as to the futility and stupidity of many of those laws. I could understand them asking if you have a felony conviction at immigration, but that's about it.
Oh and my nubile Southern women moved to this non-US country to be with me. Ain't she cute? We'll move back to the US in a few years time. Its like timesharing on an extended basis.
My nubile Southern woman woke up cranky and bitchy this morning:-/
Maybe if I give her some BBD this evening she'll be in a better mood tomorrow morning;-)
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where I claimed that the US has a monopoly on freedom of speech, press, and religion.
Small mistake. USA has approx 12% of its population living below the poverty line. That is absolutely unheard of in western europe for example.
Ah, I see - the world consists of Western Europe and North America, and the rest of the world doesn't count. My bad.
But I didn't mention poverty level, did I? I mentioned death by starvation. According to the World Health Organization, Protein-Energy Malnutrition (PEM), the most lethal form of malnutrition, affects 1 out of every 4 children worldwide. "...more than 70% of PEM children live in Asia, 26% in Africa and 4% in Latin America and the Caribbean." The United States isn't mentioned. Neither is Europe. If I were a child, I'd rather live in the US or Europe than, say, Asia or Africa - nevermind the climate, I'd like to eat on a regular basis!
Now let's take a look at that 12% figure. If you'll reread my previous post, you'll notice that I said that even the poor of America might be considered wealthy by the standards of many other nations. According to the US Census Bureau, 12.6% of all Americans over the age of 15 earn less than or equal to the dollar amount which it says defines the "poverty level" income of an individual. This excludes government aid payments, and every person is counted - including non-working teens aged 15-18 who live with their parents (even if those parents are wealthy), people who need not work because their spouses make money by the bushel, retired people who live on pensions, savings, and Social Security retirement benefits, permanently and temporarily disabled people who live on Social Security disability benefits and private disability insurance, and those whose wages are paid "under the table" and do not report or pay taxes on their income.
"Poverty level" is defined by the US Census Bureau strictly by individual income per year, and doesn't take into account the income of other family members, government aid income, or "allowances" such as the $5,000/month Little Rich Johnny gets from his parents every month while he attends college out of town.
Note that I didn't say that American poor were wealthy by the standards of the United Kingdom, or France, or Sweden - I said "many nations". Places like Ethiopia, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Bhutan, Malawi, Haiti, and so forth. Places where you're likely to see Sally Struthers pitching another Save The Children fund-raising campaign.
Now, let's take a look at someone who is part of that 12.6% who's under the poverty level - me. My income put me below the "poverty level" last year, as well as 2001, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1994, and every year from 1988-1993. I will probably just barely clear the poverty level this year, but only if the Dow Jones doesn't close out for the year any lower than its level as of last Friday (capital losses due to drops in stock prices deduct from your Adjusted Gross Income dollar-per-dollar). I own a modest but nice 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with a mixture of new hardwood floors and new carpet, on a 1/2-acre level lot, in a good neighborhood. I own it outright - no mortgage. I own a 1996 Ford full-sized pickup truck outright, no payments. I have 4 computers, a cellular phone, thousands of dollars worth of books, cable television with 300 or so channels, high-bandwidth internet access, a refrigerator full of food, a Ridgeway grandfather clock/curio cabinet made from cherry wood, and about $9500 in savings. But according to the US Census Bureau, I've been hovering right around the poverty level since I became old enough to be included in the statistics, with the exception of 2 years when I lucked out and made a "middle-class" income. According to the rhetoric spewed forth by the liberals, I've been screwed over by the rich, and should be getting big fat checks every month, financed by the "wealthiest 10%" - which, BTW, means those making about $65,000 a year or more.
Don't be so ready to accept statistics blindly. Sir Benjamin Disreali was right - there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Just a sampling from the top of my head, though not everything on this list appeals to everybody, and there are some things in this list that are in peril under the current administration:
Freedom of the press - you can print pretty much anything you want, and nobody can toss you in jail for it. The only exceptions I can think of are for libel, slander, and revealing classified information (because if you have classified information you either got it illegally or you signed a statement saying that you promised to not reveal it, understood the National Security Act, and understood that violating that act lands you in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison).
Freedom of speech - see above, only it applies to verbal communication as opposed to written.
Freedom of association (now severely curtailed by the Patriot Act, which will hopefully be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).
The right to not be subject to search and seizure without a warrant, issued by a judge, supported by an affidavit sworn under oath under penalty of perjury (also heavily eroded by the Patriot Act and various laws passed under the pretense of cracking down on drug dealers, which will also hopefully be declared unconstitutional).
One of the lowest overall tax burdens (for all income levels) in the industrialized world.
Nubile Southern Women (Southern USA Women, that is).
Wal Mart. You too can buy a riding lawnmower, a barbecue grill, an oil filter for your car, some clothes, and next week's groceries at 3am on Saturday.
Almost limitless opportunities for socio-economic advancement. My father's family got indoor plumbing for the first time in 1965 when he was 15 - and though they qualified, neither my grandparents nor my parents nor I have ever applied for or received one cent in government aid. He made over $80,000 in 1990, putting him in the wealthiest 5% of the nation. And he never had a management position with a title any more glamorous than "Mechanical Maintenance Foreman". To me, that illustrates the fact that with hard work, self-discipline, and determination, anyone in America can overcome a "lower-class" background. My house (a modest cottage) and my truck are paid for, and I get by just fine on a part-time job - to me, time to spend with my family is more important than money, and though I can afford everything I need, I am by no means rich. I am, however, housed, clothed, fed, and happy - and thus I'm better off than most people in the world, for which I'm thankful.
Backyard cookouts, tailgate parties, barbecued chicken with Texas toast. "Plugged" watermelon (cut hole in melon, pour rum into melon, eat).
Deserts, beaches, mountains, forests, grassy plains, swamps, bayous, rivers and lakes - all within a day or two driving time, and all the hotels accept Visa and Mastercard.
American Indians (aka Native Americans), Anglo-Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, Scots-Irish Americans, Indian-Americans, Spanish-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Asian-Americans, Polynesian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Palistinian-Americans, French-Canadian-Americans, mixtures of all the above and then some.
Near-total confidence of invulnerability from hostile invasion, even if military spending were cut by 2/3 (which isn't a bad idea).
Even the American "poor" are wealthy by the standards of many other nations - death by starvation is almost unheard of, for example.
The right to legal counsel if accused of a crime, the right to trial by jury, and the right to appeal an unjust criminal conviction. (Yes, I know about the people at Camp X-Ray - they are recent developments, exceptions to the rule, and with any luck a judge somewhere will order that they be given their day in court or set free)
Freedom to practice any religion, or no religion - so long as said practice doesn't infringe upon the rights of others.
Travis Tritt, Rob Zombie, System of a Down, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the New York Symphony O
Actually, and I'm being dead serious here, speaking from my own convictions...I believe the truth lies somewhere in between. Exactly where in between, I honestly don't know.
Do I think that invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein was the Right Thing To Do (TM)? Probably.
Do I think that it was right because there are/were/woulda been WMD's there that could threaten the US? Nope. Maybe Saddam had/has/was trying to get WMD's, maybe not - but no proof of that has been forthcoming, despite hundreds of thousands of US troops scouring the countryside in between dodging those pesky ambushes. Lack of proof isn't proof of innocence, but then again we're Americans, so the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Right?
Why do I think it was right for the US to invade? Because Saddam Hussein is/was one hyper-evil son of a bitch, that's why. His human-rights abuses made Ashcroft's wet dreams look like the work of Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*
Is G.W. handling the military action properly? Absolutely not. His "hands-off" approach merely gives the military leadership free rein to do what they want. They don't want to take the precautions necessary to provide security for the Iraqi people. They don't want to set aside enough manpower to fix the electrical grid or the water supply system or the telephone network. They're generals - they want to blow shit up with their shiny new toys, and dead civilians are just numbers on paper to them.
Do I think we'll come out ahead in this mess? Nope. Here's why:
In the past, when the US has engaged in a successful large-scale military deployment, said success has been mostly due to three things - all three of which are missing in this war:
Support of the people. If the people who keep the home fires burning aren't vigorously supportive, any war fought over their objections will be lost or at best grind to a stalemate. See Vietnam and Korea for examles. I'm not talking about a 51% approval rating, I mean people marching in the streets demanding they be given their chance to march off and fight the $ENEMY_NATION. 85% public support is a minimum for a successful long-term war. If the best support rating a president can get for his war is 70% or so, he might as well just bring the boys home to their families and send in the diplomats.
Competent, proactive involvement from the civilian authority, namely the commander in chief. G.W. hasn't shown competence, proactiveness, nor even active involvement in managing this military action. He just instructed his underlings to "take out Saddam". To use an analogy I just pulled fresh from the nearest convenient orifice, it's like a (NFL) football team without its head coach on the sidelines. Such a team will *never* make it to the playoffs, much less the Superbowl.
A clearly-defined enemy, distinct objectives, and an unambiguous set of conditions for victory. When the victory conditions are met, that means the boys come home and the war is deemed finished.
We lack all of these, and as a result I believe this military venture will fail.
Do I think Al Gore would be better? I seriously doubt it. Of course, IMHO, the Year 2000 election was a contest between two pretty evenly-matched levels of incompetence, corruption, and disregard for the "regular Joe". The way I perceived the 2 candidates, they were merely out to figuratively assrape different subsets of the public for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. They also had differences regarding the way each would demonstrate his incompetence as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. One wanted to tax me to death and buy electric cars for the street criminals, the other wanted to give the boardroom criminals a license to raid my retirement fund. Might as well ask us to vote on "Do you want your right eye removed, or your left eye?"
So here's how I handle all that on election day: I go and do what most people would call "throwing my vote away" - I vote Libertarian. Sure, they're not any
That's the beauty of the U.S. system. You can call any phone number in your area code free.
This is not always true. If you're in area code 404, 770, or 678 then all calls to all of those area codes are considered "local" and thus free. You must dial the area code when placing a local call, but you do not have to dial a 1 or 0 first. However, that area is the Atlanta "metro" area (in reality it covers at least a small chunk of western Alabama, almost all the way over to South Carolina, and the north-south stretch runs from Cartersville to Peachtree City or so).
Then you have places like Dade County, GA. The county seat is Trenton, and the local phone company is the Trenton Telephone Company. No other local phone providers are available - no CLECs, no baby Bells, nothing. AT&T is the only available long distance provider - they don't have billing agreements with anyone else, won't make the effort to get them, and the place isn't big enough to make it worth the while of a long distance provider to go through the red tape to force the local telco to obey the law and open up their lines to CLECs and alternate long distance providers.
You know those 10-10-xxx numbers you can call to get a different long distance service? You can't call those from there. Until about 1993 or 1994, they had no touch tone service. Until that time, the county was ona mid-50's-vintage switchboard, and you could dial any phone in the county using only 4 digits. My mother lives in that hellhole of a county, and I live in the next county over, which is a bit more civilized due to its very close proximity to downtown Chattanooga - at least I can get cable TV, cable modem, and my choice of BellSouth or one of a few CLECs here, and I have a choice for long distance...
We're both in area code 706, but when I call her it's a long distance call.
In addition to all that, the Trenton Telephone Company does not offer Caller ID, Call Waiting, 3-Way Calling, Call Return (*69), or anything else other than just a regular telephone line with the newly added option of touch-tone.
Until just about 3 years ago, *all* calls to *all* areas outside that 657-xxxx exchange were long distance. They recently changed that after the locals voted in a local election to make calls to the Chattanooga area local, at the expense of an extra $8.00 a month on everyone's phone bill. In practice, about 2/3 of the Chattanooga area is local - the rest is long distance. It all depends on what carrier the Chattanooga number is on - most cellular numbers that are local for someone in Chattanooga are still long distance from Dade County. For some reason, they didn't include Rossville (where I live) in that deal, even though it's in the same state with Trenton and you can stand in Chattanooga at the state line, take one step south, and be in Rossville.
Oh, and the Trenton Telephone Company doesn't offer an inside wire maintenance plan. If your inside phone wiring goes bad and you can't/don't want to fix it yourself, it's a minimum of $100 for the phone company to send someone out to fix it. That's a $50 service fee and $50/hour, minimum billing time of one hour.
Of course, the president/CEO of the Trenton Telephone Company is the brother-in-law of the County Commissioner and the nephew of the county sheriff or something ridiculously stereotypical like that.
Oh...even though my Cingular home calling area extends throughout GA, TN, OH, KY, part of IN and IL, part of AL, and a little piece of VA, when I go to my mom's I'm on roaming - apparently the only tower that I can get that one bar of service on is just outside the area, or owned by another company, or something like that. Not that I can really get good enough reception to make it worth the effort to use my phone out there anyway, unless I go outside, climb up on top of the toolshed and face in a particular direction with about a 1-degree margin of error...
Now don't you feel better about the phone systems in the more urbanized areas of the US? *grin*
Re:Someone ought to add a "sco" program to Linux..
on
SCO Execs Dumping Stock
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· Score: 2, Informative
Thank you very very much for that! I've just typed it up into an actual man page and stuck it in/usr/share/man/man1 - it's SCO(1) instead of SCO(6), but what the hell:-)
If you want a copy, I've put it on here. Just copy it over to/usr/share/man/man1 and then type "man sco" from your favorite shell...
Please be gentle, my webserver is a PPro 200 with 128MB, on an ADSL line that's allegedly 1500/128. I can't believe I'm voluntarily slashdotting my own server, but this is worth it! Have fun *grin*
The USA is advancing on a course of economic feudalism.
In one form or another, the whole world has various systems of economic feudalism.
A small elite of "Equity Lords" with a vast army of "salary peasants" to support them.
Yup, and it's been that way since the time of the cave men. Sure, different variations on the theme have been tried, with varying degrees of success. The thing is, those in power won't allow this system to be substantially changed. Even with Communism, you have the Party Elite living in the lap of luxury while the proles slave away in the factories and fields.
So far, of all the kinds of economic/government systems people have tried, the best seems to fall in among the systems of the US, Japan, and Europe. Maybe a mixture of the three - a happy medium if you will - would be the best system that imperfect humans are capable of. It would at least be "pretty good." I know that I can't think of anything better...
Gee they tout linux, but their own web menus don't work in mozilla?? What gives.?
They sort of half-assed work in Mozilla (the drop-down menus don't show up, but the top links in the bar work). Konqueror doesn't even show the links in the menu bar at all.
Oh well, it's not like I was planning to buy anything from them - I use and sell whitebox workstations and refurbished HP servers.
Slashdot Mirror
"I want another $2/hour raise, because I can barely afford the payments on two SUV's and a McMansion on the $24/hour they're paying me now. And if the union doesn't vote in a strike to get me that raise, me and a few buddies are gonna start sending trucks outta the plant with a few bolts missin' from the rear axles! Hell, it's already a wonder that anything makes it past Quality Control in this plant."
This is frequently followed by the same person saying:
"Well dammit, we need to increase unemployment benefits. Ever since they shut down the plant and moved production to Malaysia or Mexico or some damn place where the locals sign up in droves to work for $20/week, I've been out of work. Best damn job I can get around here is sweeping up at the local Hyundai dealership!"
It has been said that democracy cannot work unless the people participate. We're seeing the proof of that in the US right now.
By "original demo" do you mean the one they made before Cliff Burton replaced Ron McGovney?
*sigh* - I must be getting old, reminiscing about really kickass bands from the time before anyone under the legal drinking age was born...
And if you can remember when Metallica opened for Stryper, you qualify as an official old fart.
Think about that for a moment. These are the people of whom 48% or so voted for the Shrub, and another 48% voted for Algore. That means you're dealing with a jury pool that's about 96% completely fucking stupid.
Or we could just break out the torches and pitchforks, and have us a good lynching. Or maybe we could tie him down on an ant hill and slather honey all over him.
Damn, I have far too much of a sadistic bent....
Please disregard my other reply.
. o O Proceeding to write "I shall carefully read all posts to which I reply" 1000 times on a chalkboard, followed by writing "I shall not post while under the influence of strong prescription cold/flu medication" 1000 times as well...
So, were you born an elitist asshole or did you have to work at it?
There's something wrong with exercising one's 2nd amendment rights and driving a high-cargo-capacity vehicle?
Hell, I was 15 years old before I found out that God Damnyankee was two words!
If Oregon were to raise their gasoline tax to be greater than Washington's gasoline tax, guess what would happen to those gas stations in Portland.
Extraordinarily bad cars:
All the vehicles in those lists that I haven't personally owned are listed based on ratings at auto-related websites and the experiences of people I've known - in each case the anecdotal evidence was in line with the automotive website review.
I currently own 2 vehicles:
I've also owned, in the past:
My girlfriend said I need to get rid of some of my old hardware anyway. BTW, you wouldn't happen to need an ISA passive backplane with (2) single-board 486DX33 computers and (8) ISA SCSI controllers in a rackmount case, would you? Or maybe (56) 4x SCSI CD-ROM drives in rackmount drive enclosures?
Septic tanks work just fine - just don't drill your water well downhill from it
Basic health care is so expensive because the doctors and hospitals adjust their rates to the maximum that Medicare will pay (this helps them make enough profit to make up for all the deadbeats that don't pay)
Professional, publicly-financed law enforcement didn't exist until 1830. Until then it was up to the victim, his family, or someone he hired to investigate crimes and catch offenders. Society did not crumble during the 5,000 years of no law enforcement - indeed, the argument can be made for more crumbling occurring since the advent of professional publicly-financed law enforcement, though proving a cause/effect relationship would likely be impossible, if not ludicrous. In any case, the previous system can work as well now as it did then - not to mention the deterrent effect of an un-castrated 2nd amendment.
The local volunteer fire department will cover me just fine if I send them $100/year to cover equipment maintenance, negating the need for a professional fire department.
The one thing you mentioned that should be provided by the government is covered in the constitution - postal roads. See Article I, Section 8, Constitution of the United States. Incidentally, a tax levied on the states pursuant to the Constitution before the 16th Amendment (that is, a tax levied based on population count as of the last census) is the fairest way to pay for them.
Do you have any more straw men you'd care to erect?
First, let me summarize my initial post to this thread, because it appears you didn't comprehend the "house that needs some work" metaphor I used to describe the US:
The people of the United States enjoy a number of freedoms. Those freedoms are also enjoyed by the people of numerous other countries. Incidentally, most of those other countries with comparable freedoms also borrow ideas from ancient Athens and the Roman Republic. The people of the US - and Europe - enjoy a far more prosperous lifestyle than people who live in nations where communism, fanaticism, and/or nationalism are the rule.
I made sure to point out that the US implementation has its drawbacks, and distinguished between fundamental problems and correctable, transient problems such as the current administration's policies and legislation.
In my second post to this thread, I measured economic prosperity against the only universal scale that came to mind, which happens to include the people of the entire planet. My motivation was to demonstrate the apparent superiority of democracy, responsibly-practiced capitalism, and civic freedom in contrast to governments that brutally suppress dissenting opinions and actively deprive their people of life's basic necessities. I was sure to mention that Europeans also enjoy a well-above-average lifestyle in contrast to most of the rest of the planet. At no point did I claim that the United States was perfect. Neither did I claim that the US government was the best system on the planet. I said it had one of the best systems. The differences between the US government and most governments of Europe are differences of degree, and differences in the details of implementation. The basic principles are nearly identical.
I know we have a poverty problem here, and I believe that there should be help available to the poor. I don't, however, believe that wealth should necessarily be distributed equally among all. Some rich people are rich because they busted their asses all their lives, played by the rules, and achieved success the hard way. They deserve every penny they make. Some people are poor because they pissed away their chances to advance themselves, refused to earn their way in the world, and have no desire to do anything that involves work or self-reliance. They deserve nothing but contempt. The rest, the people who are just having a string of bad luck and don't mind working for their keep, deserve the help they need to make it on their own. I don't like the idea of a hand-out, but would be thrilled to death if we had job training programs available to anyone who needed the hand-up. Low-cost home ownership programs like Habitat for Humanity, which help provide those on the rebound with a place to live as well as the satisfaction that comes with owning their own home, are an excellent idea. Teach a fish to man, and all that jazz.
To answer your other questions, the only numbers I could turn up in a quick Google search are from 1991, and only address mean real purchasing power, but here goes. The average United States citizen's real purchasing power as of 1991 was $22,204, the highest of any nation on earth. Germany came in 2nd at a mean real purchasing power (MRPP) of $19,500. Canada was 3rd with $19,178. Japan's MRPP was $19,107. Denmark's MRPP was $17,621. Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Finland rounded out the top 9 for 1991 in MRPP.
In short, yes, there are plenty of countries out there with lower poverty rates. There are countries out there where the poor have better access to health care. There are countries out there with just as much freedom as we have. Relatively speaking, though, few have any of these things, and it's a rare country indee
Normal levels of pride in one's nation are, well, normal. And healthy. No matter where you're from, even if you can't be proud of your government, it's okay to be proud of your country.
Oh, I understand your point. And I agree with you, at least for the most part - the US hasn't had a monopoly on those freedoms in quite some time, if it ever did in the first place. We merely have those freedoms, whereas there are a lot of places that don't.
And I wholeheartedly agree that our system here has its flaws. No government is perfect, ours being less perfect than some, more perfect than others. In the grand scheme of things, however, I don't think we're doing too badly. That is, apart from some recent atrocities that have been passed into law by a president whose actions have given me cause to rethink my political affiliations. I used to think of myself as a Republican with Libertarian tendencies - now I'm probably more of a Libertarian with slight Republican tendencies.
The good news is, someone will be convicted under one or more of those laws and appeal that conviction. Hopefully, that someone will eventually appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, which will declare the USA Patriot Act, among others, to be unconstitutional. Either that, or it'll be repealed by act of Congress sometime after Bush loses the 2004 election. I predicted in late November 2000 that no matter who ended up winning that contested election, he would be a one-term president. Partly because the election was contested and partly because it was apparent that neither candidate would make a good president. As far as Republicans go, I'm curious to see how Arnie does as governor of California. From what I've heard/read, he's a fiscal conservative, but has fairly progressive views with regards to the environment, education, and campaign finance reform. He also doesn't spout the Christian Right rhetoric you hear from people like Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms. If he turns out to be effective as well as agreeable, maybe we could pass a constitutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president. Maybe we should pass such an amendment anyway - I see no reason why someone who's jumped through all the citizenship hoops and been a citizen for, say, 15 years shouldn't be allowed to be president. It's not like they haven't proven their loyalty to the country - which is more than most native-born citizens have done.
As for the immigration services requiring Communist party members to declare their party affiliation, I wasn't aware that requirement was still around - quite an archaic throwback to the Cold War. It reminds me of those laws you read about on dumblaws.com, like the one in Lenoir City, Tennessee that requires motorists to discharge a firearm out the window as they approach an intersection, to warn approaching horse traffic. Drug convictions, well, recreational drugs are still illegal here - not that I agree with the law, but the majority of voters currently do, so all we can do is try to educate the majority as to the futility and stupidity of many of those laws. I could understand them asking if you have a felony conviction at immigration, but that's about it.
Oh and my nubile Southern women moved to this non-US country to be with me. Ain't she cute? We'll move back to the US in a few years time. Its like timesharing on an extended basis.
My nubile Southern woman woke up cranky and bitchy this morning :-/
Maybe if I give her some BBD this evening she'll be in a better mood tomorrow morning ;-)
Small mistake. USA has approx 12% of its population living below the poverty line. That is absolutely unheard of in western europe for example.
Ah, I see - the world consists of Western Europe and North America, and the rest of the world doesn't count. My bad.
But I didn't mention poverty level, did I? I mentioned death by starvation. According to the World Health Organization, Protein-Energy Malnutrition (PEM), the most lethal form of malnutrition, affects 1 out of every 4 children worldwide. "...more than 70% of PEM children live in Asia, 26% in Africa and 4% in Latin America and the Caribbean." The United States isn't mentioned. Neither is Europe. If I were a child, I'd rather live in the US or Europe than, say, Asia or Africa - nevermind the climate, I'd like to eat on a regular basis!
Now let's take a look at that 12% figure. If you'll reread my previous post, you'll notice that I said that even the poor of America might be considered wealthy by the standards of many other nations. According to the US Census Bureau, 12.6% of all Americans over the age of 15 earn less than or equal to the dollar amount which it says defines the "poverty level" income of an individual. This excludes government aid payments, and every person is counted - including non-working teens aged 15-18 who live with their parents (even if those parents are wealthy), people who need not work because their spouses make money by the bushel, retired people who live on pensions, savings, and Social Security retirement benefits, permanently and temporarily disabled people who live on Social Security disability benefits and private disability insurance, and those whose wages are paid "under the table" and do not report or pay taxes on their income.
"Poverty level" is defined by the US Census Bureau strictly by individual income per year, and doesn't take into account the income of other family members, government aid income, or "allowances" such as the $5,000/month Little Rich Johnny gets from his parents every month while he attends college out of town.
Note that I didn't say that American poor were wealthy by the standards of the United Kingdom, or France, or Sweden - I said "many nations". Places like Ethiopia, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Bhutan, Malawi, Haiti, and so forth. Places where you're likely to see Sally Struthers pitching another Save The Children fund-raising campaign.
Now, let's take a look at someone who is part of that 12.6% who's under the poverty level - me. My income put me below the "poverty level" last year, as well as 2001, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1994, and every year from 1988-1993. I will probably just barely clear the poverty level this year, but only if the Dow Jones doesn't close out for the year any lower than its level as of last Friday (capital losses due to drops in stock prices deduct from your Adjusted Gross Income dollar-per-dollar). I own a modest but nice 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with a mixture of new hardwood floors and new carpet, on a 1/2-acre level lot, in a good neighborhood. I own it outright - no mortgage. I own a 1996 Ford full-sized pickup truck outright, no payments. I have 4 computers, a cellular phone, thousands of dollars worth of books, cable television with 300 or so channels, high-bandwidth internet access, a refrigerator full of food, a Ridgeway grandfather clock/curio cabinet made from cherry wood, and about $9500 in savings. But according to the US Census Bureau, I've been hovering right around the poverty level since I became old enough to be included in the statistics, with the exception of 2 years when I lucked out and made a "middle-class" income. According to the rhetoric spewed forth by the liberals, I've been screwed over by the rich, and should be getting big fat checks every month, financed by the "wealthiest 10%" - which, BTW, means those making about $65,000 a year or more.
Don't be so ready to accept statistics blindly. Sir Benjamin Disreali was right - there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Do I think that invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein was the Right Thing To Do (TM)? Probably.
Do I think that it was right because there are/were/woulda been WMD's there that could threaten the US? Nope. Maybe Saddam had/has/was trying to get WMD's, maybe not - but no proof of that has been forthcoming, despite hundreds of thousands of US troops scouring the countryside in between dodging those pesky ambushes. Lack of proof isn't proof of innocence, but then again we're Americans, so the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Right?
Why do I think it was right for the US to invade? Because Saddam Hussein is/was one hyper-evil son of a bitch, that's why. His human-rights abuses made Ashcroft's wet dreams look like the work of Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*
Is G.W. handling the military action properly? Absolutely not. His "hands-off" approach merely gives the military leadership free rein to do what they want. They don't want to take the precautions necessary to provide security for the Iraqi people. They don't want to set aside enough manpower to fix the electrical grid or the water supply system or the telephone network. They're generals - they want to blow shit up with their shiny new toys, and dead civilians are just numbers on paper to them.
Do I think we'll come out ahead in this mess? Nope. Here's why:
In the past, when the US has engaged in a successful large-scale military deployment, said success has been mostly due to three things - all three of which are missing in this war:
We lack all of these, and as a result I believe this military venture will fail.
Do I think Al Gore would be better? I seriously doubt it. Of course, IMHO, the Year 2000 election was a contest between two pretty evenly-matched levels of incompetence, corruption, and disregard for the "regular Joe". The way I perceived the 2 candidates, they were merely out to figuratively assrape different subsets of the public for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. They also had differences regarding the way each would demonstrate his incompetence as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. One wanted to tax me to death and buy electric cars for the street criminals, the other wanted to give the boardroom criminals a license to raid my retirement fund. Might as well ask us to vote on "Do you want your right eye removed, or your left eye?"
So here's how I handle all that on election day: I go and do what most people would call "throwing my vote away" - I vote Libertarian. Sure, they're not any
This is not always true. If you're in area code 404, 770, or 678 then all calls to all of those area codes are considered "local" and thus free. You must dial the area code when placing a local call, but you do not have to dial a 1 or 0 first. However, that area is the Atlanta "metro" area (in reality it covers at least a small chunk of western Alabama, almost all the way over to South Carolina, and the north-south stretch runs from Cartersville to Peachtree City or so).
Then you have places like Dade County, GA. The county seat is Trenton, and the local phone company is the Trenton Telephone Company. No other local phone providers are available - no CLECs, no baby Bells, nothing. AT&T is the only available long distance provider - they don't have billing agreements with anyone else, won't make the effort to get them, and the place isn't big enough to make it worth the while of a long distance provider to go through the red tape to force the local telco to obey the law and open up their lines to CLECs and alternate long distance providers.
You know those 10-10-xxx numbers you can call to get a different long distance service? You can't call those from there. Until about 1993 or 1994, they had no touch tone service. Until that time, the county was ona mid-50's-vintage switchboard, and you could dial any phone in the county using only 4 digits. My mother lives in that hellhole of a county, and I live in the next county over, which is a bit more civilized due to its very close proximity to downtown Chattanooga - at least I can get cable TV, cable modem, and my choice of BellSouth or one of a few CLECs here, and I have a choice for long distance...
We're both in area code 706, but when I call her it's a long distance call.
In addition to all that, the Trenton Telephone Company does not offer Caller ID, Call Waiting, 3-Way Calling, Call Return (*69), or anything else other than just a regular telephone line with the newly added option of touch-tone.
Until just about 3 years ago, *all* calls to *all* areas outside that 657-xxxx exchange were long distance. They recently changed that after the locals voted in a local election to make calls to the Chattanooga area local, at the expense of an extra $8.00 a month on everyone's phone bill. In practice, about 2/3 of the Chattanooga area is local - the rest is long distance. It all depends on what carrier the Chattanooga number is on - most cellular numbers that are local for someone in Chattanooga are still long distance from Dade County. For some reason, they didn't include Rossville (where I live) in that deal, even though it's in the same state with Trenton and you can stand in Chattanooga at the state line, take one step south, and be in Rossville.
Oh, and the Trenton Telephone Company doesn't offer an inside wire maintenance plan. If your inside phone wiring goes bad and you can't/don't want to fix it yourself, it's a minimum of $100 for the phone company to send someone out to fix it. That's a $50 service fee and $50/hour, minimum billing time of one hour.
Of course, the president/CEO of the Trenton Telephone Company is the brother-in-law of the County Commissioner and the nephew of the county sheriff or something ridiculously stereotypical like that.
Oh...even though my Cingular home calling area extends throughout GA, TN, OH, KY, part of IN and IL, part of AL, and a little piece of VA, when I go to my mom's I'm on roaming - apparently the only tower that I can get that one bar of service on is just outside the area, or owned by another company, or something like that. Not that I can really get good enough reception to make it worth the effort to use my phone out there anyway, unless I go outside, climb up on top of the toolshed and face in a particular direction with about a 1-degree margin of error...
Now don't you feel better about the phone systems in the more urbanized areas of the US? *grin*
If you want a copy, I've put it on here. Just copy it over to /usr/share/man/man1 and then type "man sco" from your favorite shell...
Please be gentle, my webserver is a PPro 200 with 128MB, on an ADSL line that's allegedly 1500/128. I can't believe I'm voluntarily slashdotting my own server, but this is worth it!
Have fun *grin*
Or maybe I'm the only one here who saw "MDK*" and thought MurderDeathKill...
In one form or another, the whole world has various systems of economic feudalism.
A small elite of "Equity Lords" with a vast army of "salary peasants" to support them.
Yup, and it's been that way since the time of the cave men. Sure, different variations on the theme have been tried, with varying degrees of success. The thing is, those in power won't allow this system to be substantially changed. Even with Communism, you have the Party Elite living in the lap of luxury while the proles slave away in the factories and fields.
So far, of all the kinds of economic/government systems people have tried, the best seems to fall in among the systems of the US, Japan, and Europe. Maybe a mixture of the three - a happy medium if you will - would be the best system that imperfect humans are capable of. It would at least be "pretty good." I know that I can't think of anything better...
They sort of half-assed work in Mozilla (the drop-down menus don't show up, but the top links in the bar work). Konqueror doesn't even show the links in the menu bar at all.
Oh well, it's not like I was planning to buy anything from them - I use and sell whitebox workstations and refurbished HP servers.