How is snatching a video camera from someone not theft? She clearly had no right to confiscate that camera regardless of how passionately she felt about protecting the privacy of some stranger (haha). If you or I did that and it was witnessed by a police officer we would be arrested and charged. Probably with more than just theft. Also, if these cops were so goodhearted and honest how do explain the trumped up charges weeks after the event? Those cops are also guilty of malicious or false prosecution if they go after him for those bullshit contempt of cop charges.
You would be having a "mental health breakdown" too if a cop was beating you badly enough to bloody your face. Of course the police report won't see it that way. According to the police report you had a psychotic breakdown and began slamming your face very hard into the pavement. Why did you do it? Because you are crazy! Or you suffered from temporary insanity. And out of respect for your privacy the cop who was either beating you or covering for the one who was beating you will confiscate that shameful video of you beating your head against the ground out of respect for your privacy. The video of your embarrassing behavior will then be deleted so that even you will not have to watch it again. The police are so considerate and kind.
They don't just feel like they are on the same team. They are on the same team. So, yes, short of obvious video evidence that has not been confiscated and deleted, very few DAs are going to prosecute a member of the police force that they work with every day. The evidence would have to be absolutely overwhelming and probably public.
Based on my own personal experience with cops in this country (does not apply to cops in other countries that I've lived in) there is a very good chance any particular cop you encounter in real life will not be a "decent human being". Far from it. If you aren't expecting a violent, dishonest, angry bully or thug you could end up in a lot of trouble. Maybe even dead. Treat them like normal people at your peril. I naively did so, and I'm lucky to have only suffered fractured ribs, a damaged knee, a severe concussion with lasting memory impairment, and serious felony charges which might have landed me in state prison for several years. My advice: expect them to be at least as cruel, violent, unpredictable, and dangerous as members of a street gang in South Central LA.
Just because a police officer states something doesn't make it true. Lying is as natural to them as breathing. They are trained to lie. What she did was illegal. Regardless of her alleged motivations. She should be charged with theft at the very least.
I think requiring video evidence for any arrest the police would like to make, particularly when someone is charged with known contempt of cop charges (like resisting arrest, assault and battery against a police officer, disorderly conduct, failure to obey an order, etc, etc) would be a good start in the right direction. Ideally police would have video evidence of everything they have claimed to have witnessed. That would make it much more difficult for them to lie about what happened as they routinely do.
Well after being severely beaten and nearly killed by an angry cop and nearly getting several years in prison for made up charges I am moving to somewhere very remote, with very loose gun laws (so that I can protect myself against cops), and where coming into contact with the police at all is much less likely. For me, it's either that or leaving the country. America has some of the most violent, dangerous, corrupt, and angry cops in the world. And they are both well armed and well protected with body armor. How I long for a place where cops are just normal people doing a job. Somewhere where the majority of cops are not sociopaths with no feelings of remorse and no conscience. Was there ever a time when cops in America actually had a sense of right and wrong like they often have in the movies and on TV? American cops don't even respect the very laws they are supposed to enforce. At least when it applies to themselves.
The problem is it is almost never their best friend. I was told by a criminal attorney in my state that the state decided to discontinue video recording police encounters because 99.9% of the time it was losing cases for them. The video evidence was almost never in their favor. So they stopped. The number of violent, dangerous, angry, sadistic cops on the force is nothing but an embarrassment for the state. Police brutality and perjury is not just routine it is expected by almost everyone.
What do those chemical substances have to do with the American STASI arresting people in foreign countries? Would you be comfortable with some police from a middle eastern country arresting you in the US for breaking some law they have over there? Does the word "Homeland" have any meaning for you at all?
You haven't answered the most important question: how is the trillion dollars removed from the money supply? I suppose if the Federal Reserve were to raise their lending rate to 30% or more that might do the trick. Removing dollars from circulation to account for all that was added when the government 'prints up' a trillion dollars.
Governments printing money to pay their debts is nothing new. It has a long history indeed. And I don't think there is a single major example where inflation did not soon follow. Often hyper-inflation in fact. If this weren't the case all governments could and certainly would just print money without worrying about borrowing it or even collecting it in taxes.
If the trillion dollar coin is never spent then it is meaningless. If it is spent then it is put into the economy and inflation will surely result eventually. Dollars are meaningless by themselves. They are only good for one thing: exchanging them for goods. If you increase the number of dollars but the goods remain the same (at any given point in time) then the number of dollars it takes to buy the goods should increase. Just like any other commodity if the supply of dollars increases while the demand remains constant the price of dollars will decrease. They will be worth less. People exchanging goods for dollars will demand more of them for the same goods.
It has been years since I have read the book, but does he actually argue that an individual scientist will literally never change his views? That you have to wait until older scientists die off? That's not how I remember it at all. I thought his point was more that the same data can have multiple interpretations and that at some point, often when more and more data seems to contradict the current favored interpretation, people start to look at that same data in a different way. The interpretation changes even when the data hardly changes at all.
By 'paradigm shift' Kuhn is talking about a change in how scientists look at the things. The point is not about whether science is more about moving forward in little baby steps or huge leaps or even whether it moves 'forward' at all, but about what happens when everyone starts looking at things differently. It's' a change in perspective more than some objective 'breakthrough', although a major breakthrough may be the stimulus for a paradigm shift.
Since I don't have a copy of the book in front of me here's a blurb from wikipedia that seems to understand where Kuhn is coming from.
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. This is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them.
There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around.
and
When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.
By paradigm shift Kuhn is not just talking about a big change in science. The data might be nearly the same, but the conceptual model has changed and the data begins to prove another theory entirely. Don't forget that when Copernicus' theory was first released Ptolemy's model fit
I don't think Kuhn was really thinking in terms of social sciences in his book. He was thinking of traditional science which is about using the scientific method of testing hypothesis with experiments. Depending on how you define "social science" I don't think there is a lot of objective experimentation going on.
If the plan is to remove a trillion dollars from circulation when they introduce the trillion dollar coin then I don't think it would result in inflation. But if that is the plan I'm not sure how it would help them. How would they remove a trillion dollars from circulation anyway? By asking the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates? That trillion dollars would have to come from somewhere. I guess it would have to come from the banks.
Why only one? If you run on the platform of a trillion dollar coin in every pot I will run against you promising a thousand trillion dollar coins for every citizen of this great country. Or perhaps I will cut to the chase and just promise a one googol (10^100) dollar coin for every citizen. After that the race will be on limited only by the exponent that will fit on a reasonably sized coin without having to resort to microscopes to see. I suppose the exponent itself could be written as a number to an exponent. And so on until you run out of space on the coin.
It doesn't take much thinking to realize that just printing the money you need to pay a debt, any debt, is ridiculous. If all the government needs to do to pay off the national debt is to print a new coin then why not pay for everything that way?
Print a million or a trillion of those coins and we'd immediately have enough money to do anything. A Rolls, a Mansion, an army of servants, and a large corporation for every man, woman and child in the US. Enough money to spend on the space program such that we could all take trips to Jupiter and Saturn as often as we want. We could all be eating at the finest restaurants. Flying out to Manhattan or San Franscisco or Chicago in our private jets to eat at the best of the best. In fact we'd be so rich that we could all just quit our jobs and retire. Our children and grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives again either. It would be like the singularity that science fiction writers like to go on about. And all it would take is for the government to print up some platinum coins with big numbers printed on them. Who would have thought.
Perhaps we should immediately mobilize every man, woman, and child in the US in order to print as many of these coins as possible. After all, we will all benefit from the proceeds. The sooner we get them printed the sooner we can all retire to tropical islands sipping frozen drinks with a harem of 100 beautiful teenaged girls (who presumably don't have a government smart enough to print platinum coins yet).
People complain about the 1%. With a brilliant Keynesian scheme like this we can all be the 1%. Every one of us not even a billionaire, but a trillionaire. Not only can we eliminate poverty, at least within our borders, but we can eliminate scarcity. If only someone had realized before that the singularity would not come from the invention of replicators, but merely from the great genius of Obama's idea that all we have to do is print up a bunch of metal discs with some writing on them. Not just any writing of course. But with numbers so high that scientific notation or some other abbreviation would be required to be able to even fit it on the face of the coin. Of course, Obama shouldn't get all of the credit. Some must go to the great John Maynard Keynes. Without his genius this final elimination of all scarcity would not have been possible.
How big would a $100 bill have to be for the material to actually be worth $100? I would say that is also outside the realm of possibility. The bill would be impractically large.
Ever hear of the broken window fallacy? Or swords into ploughshares? We spend a ridiculous amount of money on our ability to kill lots of people. Not in self-defense, but for other reasons.
It would be better to put those resources into something more productive for both Americans and the rest of the world. Pretty much anything would qualify. I'd vote for a hugely enhanced space program. Of all the make work schemes that's the one I most favor. First a permanent lunar base with full manufacturing facilities. Then the construction of a spacecraft on the moon for a launch to Mars. Then the Jovian moons. Then Alpha Centauri. We could use every cent of what we now spend on murdering others of our species toward moving our entire species forward by beginning to actually explore this galaxy.
A good place to start would be the 7.85 billion we spend annually on the TSA alone, an utterly useless agency that achieves nothing except to terrorize and humiliate and violate ourselves and anyone else who wants to come here for any reason.
We could start there. Then move on to gutting the military until it is more in line with other countries. If we want to lead the way in something space travel would be far more noble than murder or maintaining our ability to commit genocide.
Then start gutting other parts of the government until our national debt has been paid. Then make it illegal for the government to ever borrow money again. Or at least make them wait the same 7-10 years that the rest of us would have to wait until we let them borrow again.
My understanding was that the separation of powers was not supposed to depend on a two party system. I thought the idea was that the different branches of government were supposed to be inherently antagonistic toward each other. What a silly idea that was.
Over the years Democrats and Republicans have become more and more similar to each other. By now, I think we do effectively have a single party system. The lack of a fight over the DHS and TSA, perhaps the most serious threat to the core of what America once stood for, is a perfect example of that. Neither party wants to touch the American STASI. From here things can only get worse. And they will. Well except for those who crave the taste of boot leather. For them, the future looks bright indeed.
I think you are too optimistic. It's not the top 1% that is taking everything. It's the top 80% that is taking everything. If I were elected dictator of the US the first thing I would do is completely eliminate income taxes for everyone who made less than 35k/year. Those who made 35k - 50k would pay 50% income tax. Those who made 50k - 75k would pay a 75% income tax. Anyone who made more than 75k would pay a 99.9% income tax. How do you like those apples?
I'd be surprised if the kindle didn't use some power when not page flipping. The screen itself may not require power, but everything else will. Also the bath water is unlikely to be 100% pure distilled H2O. Body oils, skin cells, minerals, and other impurities are likely to be present. And waiting for the internal circuit boards to dry fully could take many months and the only way to actually have some confidence that it is dry is to open up the case, which might be tricky.
We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God. I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life.
Slashdot Mirror
How is snatching a video camera from someone not theft? She clearly had no right to confiscate that camera regardless of how passionately she felt about protecting the privacy of some stranger (haha). If you or I did that and it was witnessed by a police officer we would be arrested and charged. Probably with more than just theft. Also, if these cops were so goodhearted and honest how do explain the trumped up charges weeks after the event? Those cops are also guilty of malicious or false prosecution if they go after him for those bullshit contempt of cop charges.
You would be having a "mental health breakdown" too if a cop was beating you badly enough to bloody your face. Of course the police report won't see it that way. According to the police report you had a psychotic breakdown and began slamming your face very hard into the pavement. Why did you do it? Because you are crazy! Or you suffered from temporary insanity. And out of respect for your privacy the cop who was either beating you or covering for the one who was beating you will confiscate that shameful video of you beating your head against the ground out of respect for your privacy. The video of your embarrassing behavior will then be deleted so that even you will not have to watch it again. The police are so considerate and kind.
They don't just feel like they are on the same team. They are on the same team. So, yes, short of obvious video evidence that has not been confiscated and deleted, very few DAs are going to prosecute a member of the police force that they work with every day. The evidence would have to be absolutely overwhelming and probably public.
Based on my own personal experience with cops in this country (does not apply to cops in other countries that I've lived in) there is a very good chance any particular cop you encounter in real life will not be a "decent human being". Far from it. If you aren't expecting a violent, dishonest, angry bully or thug you could end up in a lot of trouble. Maybe even dead. Treat them like normal people at your peril. I naively did so, and I'm lucky to have only suffered fractured ribs, a damaged knee, a severe concussion with lasting memory impairment, and serious felony charges which might have landed me in state prison for several years. My advice: expect them to be at least as cruel, violent, unpredictable, and dangerous as members of a street gang in South Central LA.
Just because a police officer states something doesn't make it true. Lying is as natural to them as breathing. They are trained to lie. What she did was illegal. Regardless of her alleged motivations. She should be charged with theft at the very least.
I think requiring video evidence for any arrest the police would like to make, particularly when someone is charged with known contempt of cop charges (like resisting arrest, assault and battery against a police officer, disorderly conduct, failure to obey an order, etc, etc) would be a good start in the right direction. Ideally police would have video evidence of everything they have claimed to have witnessed. That would make it much more difficult for them to lie about what happened as they routinely do.
Well after being severely beaten and nearly killed by an angry cop and nearly getting several years in prison for made up charges I am moving to somewhere very remote, with very loose gun laws (so that I can protect myself against cops), and where coming into contact with the police at all is much less likely. For me, it's either that or leaving the country. America has some of the most violent, dangerous, corrupt, and angry cops in the world. And they are both well armed and well protected with body armor. How I long for a place where cops are just normal people doing a job. Somewhere where the majority of cops are not sociopaths with no feelings of remorse and no conscience. Was there ever a time when cops in America actually had a sense of right and wrong like they often have in the movies and on TV? American cops don't even respect the very laws they are supposed to enforce. At least when it applies to themselves.
All they have to do is arrest you on trumped up charges and then they have the right to search your car and they will.
The problem is it is almost never their best friend. I was told by a criminal attorney in my state that the state decided to discontinue video recording police encounters because 99.9% of the time it was losing cases for them. The video evidence was almost never in their favor. So they stopped. The number of violent, dangerous, angry, sadistic cops on the force is nothing but an embarrassment for the state. Police brutality and perjury is not just routine it is expected by almost everyone.
What do those chemical substances have to do with the American STASI arresting people in foreign countries? Would you be comfortable with some police from a middle eastern country arresting you in the US for breaking some law they have over there? Does the word "Homeland" have any meaning for you at all?
You haven't answered the most important question: how is the trillion dollars removed from the money supply? I suppose if the Federal Reserve were to raise their lending rate to 30% or more that might do the trick. Removing dollars from circulation to account for all that was added when the government 'prints up' a trillion dollars.
Governments printing money to pay their debts is nothing new. It has a long history indeed. And I don't think there is a single major example where inflation did not soon follow. Often hyper-inflation in fact. If this weren't the case all governments could and certainly would just print money without worrying about borrowing it or even collecting it in taxes.
If the trillion dollar coin is never spent then it is meaningless. If it is spent then it is put into the economy and inflation will surely result eventually. Dollars are meaningless by themselves. They are only good for one thing: exchanging them for goods. If you increase the number of dollars but the goods remain the same (at any given point in time) then the number of dollars it takes to buy the goods should increase. Just like any other commodity if the supply of dollars increases while the demand remains constant the price of dollars will decrease. They will be worth less. People exchanging goods for dollars will demand more of them for the same goods.
It has been years since I have read the book, but does he actually argue that an individual scientist will literally never change his views? That you have to wait until older scientists die off? That's not how I remember it at all. I thought his point was more that the same data can have multiple interpretations and that at some point, often when more and more data seems to contradict the current favored interpretation, people start to look at that same data in a different way. The interpretation changes even when the data hardly changes at all.
By 'paradigm shift' Kuhn is talking about a change in how scientists look at the things. The point is not about whether science is more about moving forward in little baby steps or huge leaps or even whether it moves 'forward' at all, but about what happens when everyone starts looking at things differently. It's' a change in perspective more than some objective 'breakthrough', although a major breakthrough may be the stimulus for a paradigm shift.
Since I don't have a copy of the book in front of me here's a blurb from wikipedia that seems to understand where Kuhn is coming from.
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. This is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them.
There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around.
and
When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
By paradigm shift Kuhn is not just talking about a big change in science. The data might be nearly the same, but the conceptual model has changed and the data begins to prove another theory entirely. Don't forget that when Copernicus' theory was first released Ptolemy's model fit
I don't think Kuhn was really thinking in terms of social sciences in his book. He was thinking of traditional science which is about using the scientific method of testing hypothesis with experiments. Depending on how you define "social science" I don't think there is a lot of objective experimentation going on.
If the plan is to remove a trillion dollars from circulation when they introduce the trillion dollar coin then I don't think it would result in inflation. But if that is the plan I'm not sure how it would help them. How would they remove a trillion dollars from circulation anyway? By asking the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates? That trillion dollars would have to come from somewhere. I guess it would have to come from the banks.
Why only one? If you run on the platform of a trillion dollar coin in every pot I will run against you promising a thousand trillion dollar coins for every citizen of this great country. Or perhaps I will cut to the chase and just promise a one googol (10^100) dollar coin for every citizen. After that the race will be on limited only by the exponent that will fit on a reasonably sized coin without having to resort to microscopes to see. I suppose the exponent itself could be written as a number to an exponent. And so on until you run out of space on the coin.
It doesn't take much thinking to realize that just printing the money you need to pay a debt, any debt, is ridiculous. If all the government needs to do to pay off the national debt is to print a new coin then why not pay for everything that way?
Print a million or a trillion of those coins and we'd immediately have enough money to do anything. A Rolls, a Mansion, an army of servants, and a large corporation for every man, woman and child in the US. Enough money to spend on the space program such that we could all take trips to Jupiter and Saturn as often as we want. We could all be eating at the finest restaurants. Flying out to Manhattan or San Franscisco or Chicago in our private jets to eat at the best of the best. In fact we'd be so rich that we could all just quit our jobs and retire. Our children and grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives again either. It would be like the singularity that science fiction writers like to go on about. And all it would take is for the government to print up some platinum coins with big numbers printed on them. Who would have thought.
Perhaps we should immediately mobilize every man, woman, and child in the US in order to print as many of these coins as possible. After all, we will all benefit from the proceeds. The sooner we get them printed the sooner we can all retire to tropical islands sipping frozen drinks with a harem of 100 beautiful teenaged girls (who presumably don't have a government smart enough to print platinum coins yet).
People complain about the 1%. With a brilliant Keynesian scheme like this we can all be the 1%. Every one of us not even a billionaire, but a trillionaire. Not only can we eliminate poverty, at least within our borders, but we can eliminate scarcity. If only someone had realized before that the singularity would not come from the invention of replicators, but merely from the great genius of Obama's idea that all we have to do is print up a bunch of metal discs with some writing on them. Not just any writing of course. But with numbers so high that scientific notation or some other abbreviation would be required to be able to even fit it on the face of the coin. Of course, Obama shouldn't get all of the credit. Some must go to the great John Maynard Keynes. Without his genius this final elimination of all scarcity would not have been possible.
Why can't the treasury just create the money required for the government to cover it's deficit spending?
Hyperinflation? People burning $100 bills in their wood stoves to keep warm?
How big would a $100 bill have to be for the material to actually be worth $100? I would say that is also outside the realm of possibility. The bill would be impractically large.
Ever hear of the broken window fallacy? Or swords into ploughshares? We spend a ridiculous amount of money on our ability to kill lots of people. Not in self-defense, but for other reasons.
It would be better to put those resources into something more productive for both Americans and the rest of the world. Pretty much anything would qualify. I'd vote for a hugely enhanced space program. Of all the make work schemes that's the one I most favor. First a permanent lunar base with full manufacturing facilities. Then the construction of a spacecraft on the moon for a launch to Mars. Then the Jovian moons. Then Alpha Centauri. We could use every cent of what we now spend on murdering others of our species toward moving our entire species forward by beginning to actually explore this galaxy.
A good place to start would be the 7.85 billion we spend annually on the TSA alone, an utterly useless agency that achieves nothing except to terrorize and humiliate and violate ourselves and anyone else who wants to come here for any reason.
We could start there. Then move on to gutting the military until it is more in line with other countries. If we want to lead the way in something space travel would be far more noble than murder or maintaining our ability to commit genocide.
Then start gutting other parts of the government until our national debt has been paid. Then make it illegal for the government to ever borrow money again. Or at least make them wait the same 7-10 years that the rest of us would have to wait until we let them borrow again.
My understanding was that the separation of powers was not supposed to depend on a two party system. I thought the idea was that the different branches of government were supposed to be inherently antagonistic toward each other. What a silly idea that was.
Over the years Democrats and Republicans have become more and more similar to each other. By now, I think we do effectively have a single party system. The lack of a fight over the DHS and TSA, perhaps the most serious threat to the core of what America once stood for, is a perfect example of that. Neither party wants to touch the American STASI. From here things can only get worse. And they will. Well except for those who crave the taste of boot leather. For them, the future looks bright indeed.
I think you are too optimistic. It's not the top 1% that is taking everything. It's the top 80% that is taking everything. If I were elected dictator of the US the first thing I would do is completely eliminate income taxes for everyone who made less than 35k/year. Those who made 35k - 50k would pay 50% income tax. Those who made 50k - 75k would pay a 75% income tax. Anyone who made more than 75k would pay a 99.9% income tax. How do you like those apples?
I'd be surprised if the kindle didn't use some power when not page flipping. The screen itself may not require power, but everything else will. Also the bath water is unlikely to be 100% pure distilled H2O. Body oils, skin cells, minerals, and other impurities are likely to be present. And waiting for the internal circuit boards to dry fully could take many months and the only way to actually have some confidence that it is dry is to open up the case, which might be tricky.
We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God. I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life.
Osama Bin Laden. 2002.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview/index.html
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.