If the original coders back in 1960 to 1980 felt the same, you wouldn't be able to do a directory listing and windows would be a mythical dream still locked up in a Xerox research lab.
Code should be reused. ANY code built on something that was given to the public domain should be free and public domain.
Otherwise, they should buy every tool and properly license every library before releasing anything.
I think having millions more people making 10-12 million a year would be much healthier for the country than a few dozen making billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Clear enough?
I think having 1% of the population owning everything and getting a majority of the income is destabilizing and sets us up for a violent, bloody revolution.
In fact, contrary to Gibson's suggestion that $200,000 is a typical, middle class household income in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau's data for 2006 -- the most recent year available -- place the median household income at $48,451, and the mean household income at $65,527. According to the Census data, only 3.4 percent of U.S. households have an income of $200,000 or more.
3.4% is getting into outlier territory. So compared to most americans, they are wealthy. Not fabulously wealthy or millionaires but it's hard to say they are middle class.
Edwards said.. EDWARDS: Thank you. What you see happening in America today -- if you're president of the United States, and you're looking at this from altitude -- is you see very few Americans getting wealthier and wealthier. You see the biggest corporations in America, profits through the roof. Exxon-Mobil just made $40 billion -- record profits. All of that happening at the same time that we have 47 million people with no health care; 37 million who will wake up in this country tomorrow worried about feeding and clothing their children.
---
Arguing about the tiny percentage there at $200,000 is the conservative version of "protect the children and save the old people" game by the liberal side. The fact is the folks making $200,000 are a tiny slice and just past them, there is a population of people who are taking all the wealth of this country. Whose income has gone up 20 to 30 times since the 90's while the other 99% of the country (including the $200k slice) suffers a slow death of a thousand cuts. While bread, gas, housing have gone up 200% to 400%, the other 99%'s wages have only gone up 50%.
The wealthy have successfully propagandized a large block of the poor to voting against their own interests and voting for the interests of people shipping their jobs overseas. I'm not sure how much longer this will go on before folks wake up. I get the impression they are starting to wake up in Michigan at least.
There is nothing wrong with having a smaller battery form factor. You could have a standard specification for the smaller form factor.
Standards do not kill progress. As others have pointed out here, phillips head standards did not stop screw developments. There are several other screw head types. But there are not *hundreds* of other screw head types.
Out of the scores of battery formats, few make any difference in performance. It's still essentially 3-5 hours, depending on what activities you are doing. If there was a laptop/battery that had a 24 hour lifespan under heavy use, now that would justify a different format. But having one battery with 3.1 hours of load and another with 3.11 hours and another with 3.09 and all have different shapes and plugs is wasteful.
All the executives at my company get a plan that is double mine in cost.
I have no problem with that. It's their right- it's a capitalist system and I'm fine with capitalism.
However, I share jefferson's view of many mildly wealthy people over the current view of 1% of the population having most of the wealth and a majority of the income. I think that much concentration is *bad* for our country's political and judicial processes and I'm fine with raising taxes to 50 to 70% on income over a dozen million a year. I'll vote suitably.
I can see your point about the other issue and it should be considered. It's not what most people are talking about when they refer to gold plated plans however. Our executives have options not open to us on our standard plans. For example, 2 grand annual physicals that check *everything* as opposed to our $300 physicals that test a lot of things.
When people start dying for lack of a TV, I'll back your argument.
I think that it's not right for one person to have a gold plated plan and millions (billions?) of dollars sitting in the bank while others are dying for lack of health care and food. So I'll vote accordingly.
It depends on what you buy them for. I've made a profit on my car warranties ( a huge profit actually ). I've made a profit on my home warranties ( I use american home shield- every year they cut some benefit- at some point, I'll stop using them- but for now, I've saved more ($350-$1100 a year) than I spent ($480 a year). And it gives me great peace of mind. My one TV warranty saved my ass on a big screen TV.
I don't buy warranties for electronic objects that cost under $500. I typically won't pay over 8% for a warranty either.
Part of the issue is a lack of government enforced standards since the phillips screwdriver.
Capitalism works well when vendors can't form monopolies easily. Due to legal changes, it's become increasingly easy to form monopolies.
Imagine if the form factor and plug type for lithium batteries was legally mandated to be 3"x1"x8" with a standard six wire plug. In this case, standard lithium batteries would compete based on cost and charge duration. Given standard batteries, it would be very likely that recycling and reuse programs could develop.
Another perfect example of this is many car subsystems. You don't need 1200 Alternators and Voltage regulators. You probably need at most a dozen alternators for normal cars and trucks. If these were standardized, the cost would be lower. But we've let car makers take the same basic object and attach different custom fittings to it so it can't be reused and you must pay a premium for it.
It means you don't get food or water to live while a rich person somewhere is throwing food away. It means you don't have a right to keep your property or your family if someone else is powerful enough to take them away from you.
Which means by hobbe's leviathan, you and your 19 best poor buddies rise up every time it gets unfair enough and cut people's heads off, beat them to death in mobs, and other behavior. Because the asshats didn't have enough sense to keep things even remotely fair. So you are morally justified in doing any damn thing you please.
It's sad. They even view this as correct behavior in the U.S.
It's a large part of the reason our justice system is broken with regard to the wealthy and powerful and corporations. It's a large part of how RIAA succeeds. They just sue you to death until you are out of money and can't defend yourself.
This is an ironic point, and I'm Openoffice these days, and I know about the hundreds of special features that require code to preserve the document perfectly... but given OOXML, couldn't you still get the content out of most documents but just lose some of the more arcane formatting?
When I take one of my old word documents to work, I usually strip out all sections (5 minutes) and put them back properly because Openoffice doesn't import complicated sections well (and to be fair, word 2007 can't even print these word 2003 documents any more-- I'm pretty sure due to overlapping elements).
For bonus points, you got with a girl you just met and at some point*, the people on the screen get naked and have sex... that always felt a bit weird.
* have you noticed that most movies have sex at 40 minutes in? The exception is if sex is a big focus in the movie so it opens with it.
Google is like the car that you get in and drive around town in. While driving, you see a sign on the side of the road-- someone selling hand-made CD's on the side of the road and get some. Then you see a billboard for a strip-joint, so you pull off the road and help a girl with daddy issues get through college. Back in your car, you see a sign for some roses and get some for your wife.
So your wife includes Google Auto company in the divorce lawsuit when she discovers lipstick on your collar since the auto helped you get to the club.
But on that basis, the pirate bay is just a map of strip joints (no actual nudity- more of a yellow pages) or a map of high crime areas (they sell drugs in this part of town).
There is really no essential difference between google and tpb. One is just easier to use than the other. And one is richer than the other.
But the report does say "Since several other Midwestern states are reporting 3-5 times more fatalities than Indiana, it might also be concluded that we are doing something right. Is it a reasonable goal to de-clare that we never want to go back to the "good old days" of agricultural production when 60, 70, even 100 farmers a year died due to farm-related injuries, 30 or more farm chil-dren died annually and over 100 farmers lost hands or arms to corn pickers, balers and PTOshaftseachyear? Let's hope so!"
Here... http://www.agsafetyandhealthnet.org/Myers%20Old%20Farmers%20Conference%20Version%20071015%20Final.pdf CFOI data show that farm workers aged 55 years and older accounted for over half of all farming deaths between 1992 and 2004 (3,671 of 7,064 deaths), and had a fatality rate of 45.8 deaths per 100,000 workers compared to the overall farming fatality rate of 25.4 deaths per 100,000 workers. Most common sources of fatality were "tractors" (46%), "trucks" (7%), and "animals" (5%).
--- Having a devil of a time breaking out farmer fatalities as one number. all the studies are picking slices.
---
There are as of 2006, 683,396 full time state, city, university and college, metropolitan and non-metropolitan county, and other law enforcement officers in the United States. There are approx. 120,000 full time law enforcement personnel working for the federal government adding up to a total number of 800,000 law enforcement personnel in the U.S.
The EPA states:
There are only about 960,000 persons claiming farming as their principal occupation and a similar number of farmers claiming some other principal occupation.
That would make around 1.9 million primary and secondary occupation farmers.
So this means that farmers are dying at a higher rate than cops and in higher absolute numbers.
---
I tried to find some links on "Farmer Brutality" but apparently they don't stop and beat people up because they die a lot in a high risk occupation.
November 17, 2007. Angela Garbarino was taken into custody by a police officer in Shreveport, Louisiana on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. In the interrogation room Garabino acted frustrated and in emotional distress, screaming and protesting. The officer in charge turns off the camera. When the camera is turned on again, Angela is lying on the floor, severely beaten in a pool of blood. The officer claimed that she had fallen into a shelf. He was eventually fired. Garabino sustained severe facial injuries from the abuse. [1]
On the main police brutality page it says...
Other studies have shown that most police brutality goes unreported. In 1982, the federal government funded a "Police Services Study" in which over 12,000 randomly selected citizens were interviewed in three metropolitan areas. The study found that 13.6 percent of those surveyed claimed to have had cause to complain about police service (including verbal abuse, discourtesy and physical abuse) in the previous year. Yet only 30 percent of those who acknowledged such brutality filed formal complaints.[15]
This is why our police *NEED* required 24/7 multiple cameras and recording devices. To protect them from turning evil. To protect them from false accusations. To protect *US* from paying millions of dollars to for their abuse.
June 25, 2003. Albert Mosely was picked up on a probation violation and brought to the Baltimore's Western District police station where, after getting into a shouting match with police officers, he was picked up (while handcuffed) and thrown "headfirst into the concrete wall of a holding cell." Mosley was rendered quadriplegic, sued the city, and was awarded $44 million in damages.[29]
44 million dollars. sheesh.
On a last note... February 25, 2007.* Metropolitan Airports Authority Police beat up Robin Kassner, a 31 year-old New York City native at Reagan National Airport, throwing her across the room into another woman and a metal chair. They, then, bashed her head into a metal table, giving her a concussion and permanent brain damage. Police Officer Michael Jose Urbina, who delivered the concussion blow to her head, filed false criminal charges against her for disorderly conduct. Kassner is suing the police for assault and battery.[11] Surveillance Video
Exactly why do the police need to beat up a 31 one year old woman? Is she perhaps some kind of ninja trained assassin?
Are United States Citizens required to carry an ID at all times?
No.
However, it references to john gilmore case which shows you either do or do not need an ID to fly because of some secret laws and the mood of the TSA at that particular airport.
Interesting comments here-- a statement that you don't have to have id and some commentary on how the police can pull you over legally in a car for no reason at all and the court even says that the laws are now so complex that you can't obey them all- but "a violation is still a violation". http://www.thewashcycle.com/2009/02/possible-police-harassment.html
Question police stop: do the police have a right to stop me and ask for Identification while I am walking down the street Lawyer's answer: Yes they do and you have the right to say no and walk away. Unless they have reasonable suspicion you have committed a crime they have no legal basis to stop you.
But note John M. Kaman's reply... The cops nightsticked his client from behind as he walked away and then charged him with resisting arrest.
---
On a related note (and a relational note), I had a younger cousin who became a cop. I got to see a nice young man turn into a thug with "funny" stories about abusing his authority over civilians. power corrupts.
We've just about sold ourselves down the river where we can't fight back any more. It's come so far since the 1950's.
If he had respectfully refused and said, "I haven't done anything to earn this yet" then he would have been the man I hoped I voted for.
Given McCain/Palin, I really didn't have a choice, but Obama is turnout to be much more of a tool of corporate interests and a lot less effective than Bush at getting *ANYTHING* done. I mean come on, we are closing on a year now. I could cut him some slack for the first 6 months because that was really Bush's policies playing out.
Slashdot Mirror
If the original coders back in 1960 to 1980 felt the same, you wouldn't be able to do a directory listing and windows would be a mythical dream still locked up in a Xerox research lab.
Code should be reused. ANY code built on something that was given to the public domain should be free and public domain.
Otherwise, they should buy every tool and properly license every library before releasing anything.
I think the parent is both insightful and informative. Mod+, Mod+!
More personal choice and liberty?
Please.
Perhaps if you are church going conservative businessman.
Or if you mean the freedom to be crushed by the wealthy.
Double Whoosh!
I think having millions more people making 10-12 million a year would be much healthier for the country than a few dozen making billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Clear enough?
I think having 1% of the population owning everything and getting a majority of the income is destabilizing and sets us up for a violent, bloody revolution.
---
However...
http://mediamatters.org/research/200801060004
In fact, contrary to Gibson's suggestion that $200,000 is a typical, middle class household income in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau's data for 2006 -- the most recent year available -- place the median household income at $48,451, and the mean household income at $65,527. According to the Census data, only 3.4 percent of U.S. households have an income of $200,000 or more.
3.4% is getting into outlier territory. So compared to most americans, they are wealthy. Not fabulously wealthy or millionaires but it's hard to say they are middle class.
Edwards said..
EDWARDS: Thank you. What you see happening in America today -- if you're president of the United States, and you're looking at this from altitude -- is you see very few Americans getting wealthier and wealthier. You see the biggest corporations in America, profits through the roof. Exxon-Mobil just made $40 billion -- record profits. All of that happening at the same time that we have 47 million people with no health care; 37 million who will wake up in this country tomorrow worried about feeding and clothing their children.
---
Arguing about the tiny percentage there at $200,000 is the conservative version of "protect the children and save the old people" game by the liberal side. The fact is the folks making $200,000 are a tiny slice and just past them, there is a population of people who are taking all the wealth of this country. Whose income has gone up 20 to 30 times since the 90's while the other 99% of the country (including the $200k slice) suffers a slow death of a thousand cuts. While bread, gas, housing have gone up 200% to 400%, the other 99%'s wages have only gone up 50%.
The wealthy have successfully propagandized a large block of the poor to voting against their own interests and voting for the interests of people shipping their jobs overseas. I'm not sure how much longer this will go on before folks wake up. I get the impression they are starting to wake up in Michigan at least.
There is nothing wrong with having a smaller battery form factor.
You could have a standard specification for the smaller form factor.
Standards do not kill progress. As others have pointed out here, phillips head standards did not stop screw developments. There are several other screw head types. But there are not *hundreds* of other screw head types.
Out of the scores of battery formats, few make any difference in performance. It's still essentially 3-5 hours, depending on what activities you are doing. If there was a laptop/battery that had a 24 hour lifespan under heavy use, now that would justify a different format. But having one battery with 3.1 hours of load and another with 3.11 hours and another with 3.09 and all have different shapes and plugs is wasteful.
All the executives at my company get a plan that is double mine in cost.
I have no problem with that. It's their right- it's a capitalist system and I'm fine with capitalism.
However, I share jefferson's view of many mildly wealthy people over the current view of 1% of the population having most of the wealth and a majority of the income. I think that much concentration is *bad* for our country's political and judicial processes and I'm fine with raising taxes to 50 to 70% on income over a dozen million a year. I'll vote suitably.
I can see your point about the other issue and it should be considered. It's not what most people are talking about when they refer to gold plated plans however. Our executives have options not open to us on our standard plans. For example, 2 grand annual physicals that check *everything* as opposed to our $300 physicals that test a lot of things.
When people start dying for lack of a TV, I'll back your argument.
I think that it's not right for one person to have a gold plated plan and millions (billions?) of dollars sitting in the bank while others are dying for lack of health care and food. So I'll vote accordingly.
It depends on what you buy them for.
I've made a profit on my car warranties ( a huge profit actually ).
I've made a profit on my home warranties ( I use american home shield- every year they cut some benefit- at some point, I'll stop using them- but for now, I've saved more ($350-$1100 a year) than I spent ($480 a year). And it gives me great peace of mind.
My one TV warranty saved my ass on a big screen TV.
I don't buy warranties for electronic objects that cost under $500.
I typically won't pay over 8% for a warranty either.
Part of the issue is a lack of government enforced standards since the phillips screwdriver.
Capitalism works well when vendors can't form monopolies easily. Due to legal changes, it's become increasingly easy to form monopolies.
Imagine if the form factor and plug type for lithium batteries was legally mandated to be 3"x1"x8" with a standard six wire plug.
In this case, standard lithium batteries would compete based on cost and charge duration. Given standard batteries, it would be very likely that recycling and reuse programs could develop.
Another perfect example of this is many car subsystems. You don't need 1200 Alternators and Voltage regulators. You probably need at most a dozen alternators for normal cars and trucks. If these were standardized, the cost would be lower. But we've let car makers take the same basic object and attach different custom fittings to it so it can't be reused and you must pay a premium for it.
Heck, why stop there.
It means you don't get food or water to live while a rich person somewhere is throwing food away.
It means you don't have a right to keep your property or your family if someone else is powerful enough to take them away from you.
Which means by hobbe's leviathan, you and your 19 best poor buddies rise up every time it gets unfair enough and cut people's heads off, beat them to death in mobs, and other behavior. Because the asshats didn't have enough sense to keep things even remotely fair. So you are morally justified in doing any damn thing you please.
So?
It's sad. They even view this as correct behavior in the U.S.
It's a large part of the reason our justice system is broken with regard to the wealthy and powerful and corporations.
It's a large part of how RIAA succeeds. They just sue you to death until you are out of money and can't defend yourself.
This is an ironic point, and I'm Openoffice these days, and I know about the hundreds of special features that require code to preserve the document perfectly... but given OOXML, couldn't you still get the content out of most documents but just lose some of the more arcane formatting?
When I take one of my old word documents to work, I usually strip out all sections (5 minutes) and put them back properly because Openoffice doesn't import complicated sections well (and to be fair, word 2007 can't even print these word 2003 documents any more-- I'm pretty sure due to overlapping elements).
I get your point but this is a little different.
Not having perfect page layout might take you 30 minutes to fix. Worst case, the text is in a zip file and can be pulled out.
Not being able to read encrypted data would be a little bit more serious.
If you have Office 2003 and no web access, are you hosed?
For bonus points, you got with a girl you just met and at some point*, the people on the screen get naked and have sex... that always felt a bit weird.
* have you noticed that most movies have sex at 40 minutes in? The exception is if sex is a big focus in the movie so it opens with it.
Wow!
Your post is so specific and yet almost completely unhelpful at the same time.
http://www.chuckxc.com/gipseegal/ABORIGINAL_LEGENDS
Flood myth, inner sea.
http://www.theancientweb.com/explore/content.aspx?content_id=4
Aborigines have occupied Australia for at least forty thousand years
http://www.ncsec.org/cadre2/team2_2/Lessons/howDoesWoodPetrify.htm
An unrelated but interesting story about how wood has been observed to petrify in Australia in decades (not thousands of years).
Couldn't find anything about seeds tho. Apparently one of the salt lakes was thought to be an inland sea once.
There is apparently one tree that covers a hillside and is 10,500 years old.
It can take a year to bring up a new person to speed. And they can make some horrific errors while coming up to speed.
Anyway... the entire game starts to change in 2012.
2012 to 2027 are going to be awesome for workers.
Thank you!
I really like this music source.
Well... what we need.. is a CAR analogy!
Google is like the car that you get in and drive around town in.
While driving, you see a sign on the side of the road-- someone selling hand-made CD's on the side of the road and get some.
Then you see a billboard for a strip-joint, so you pull off the road and help a girl with daddy issues get through college.
Back in your car, you see a sign for some roses and get some for your wife.
So your wife includes Google Auto company in the divorce lawsuit when she discovers lipstick on your collar since the auto helped you get to the club.
But on that basis, the pirate bay is just a map of strip joints (no actual nudity- more of a yellow pages) or a map of high crime areas (they sell drugs in this part of town).
There is really no essential difference between google and tpb. One is just easier to use than the other. And one is richer than the other.
http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~agsafety/IRSHC/Docs/Fatality/Fatality.Summary.2006.pdf
Looks like 8 in indiana in 2006.
But the report does say "Since several other Midwestern states are reporting 3-5 times more fatalities than Indiana, it might also be concluded that we are doing something right. Is it a reasonable goal to de-clare that we never want to go back to the "good old days" of agricultural production when 60, 70, even 100 farmers a year died due to farm-related injuries, 30 or more farm chil-dren died annually and over 100 farmers lost hands or arms to corn pickers, balers and PTOshaftseachyear? Let's hope so!"
Here...
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/childag/docs/2001131a.html
It looks like an average of over 100 people under 20 die in farm work per year, every year. No national news for them tho like cops.
(also reported here http://kidshealth.org/teen/safety/safebasics/farm_safety.html)
Here...
http://www.agsafetyandhealthnet.org/Myers%20Old%20Farmers%20Conference%20Version%20071015%20Final.pdf
CFOI data show
that farm workers aged 55 years and older accounted for over half of all farming deaths between
1992 and 2004 (3,671 of 7,064 deaths), and had a fatality rate of 45.8 deaths per 100,000
workers compared to the overall farming fatality rate of 25.4 deaths per 100,000 workers. Most
common sources of fatality were "tractors" (46%), "trucks" (7%), and "animals" (5%).
---
Having a devil of a time breaking out farmer fatalities as one number. all the studies are picking slices.
---
There are as of 2006, 683,396 full time state, city, university and college, metropolitan and non-metropolitan county, and other law enforcement officers in the United States. There are approx. 120,000 full time law enforcement personnel working for the federal government adding up to a total number of 800,000 law enforcement personnel in the U.S.
The EPA states:
There are only about 960,000 persons claiming farming as their principal occupation and a similar number of farmers claiming some other principal occupation.
That would make around 1.9 million primary and secondary occupation farmers.
So this means that farmers are dying at a higher rate than cops and in higher absolute numbers.
---
I tried to find some links on "Farmer Brutality" but apparently they don't stop and beat people up because they die a lot in a high risk occupation.
lol.
Okay how about...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality
This is a great one here!
November 17, 2007. Angela Garbarino was taken into custody by a police officer in Shreveport, Louisiana on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. In the interrogation room Garabino acted frustrated and in emotional distress, screaming and protesting. The officer in charge turns off the camera. When the camera is turned on again, Angela is lying on the floor, severely beaten in a pool of blood. The officer claimed that she had fallen into a shelf. He was eventually fired. Garabino sustained severe facial injuries from the abuse. [1]
On the main police brutality page it says...
Other studies have shown that most police brutality goes unreported. In 1982, the federal government funded a "Police Services Study" in which over 12,000 randomly selected citizens were interviewed in three metropolitan areas. The study found that 13.6 percent of those surveyed claimed to have had cause to complain about police service (including verbal abuse, discourtesy and physical abuse) in the previous year. Yet only 30 percent of those who acknowledged such brutality filed formal complaints.[15]
This is why our police *NEED* required 24/7 multiple cameras and recording devices. To protect them from turning evil. To protect them from false accusations. To protect *US* from paying millions of dollars to for their abuse.
June 25, 2003. Albert Mosely was picked up on a probation violation and brought to the Baltimore's Western District police station where, after getting into a shouting match with police officers, he was picked up (while handcuffed) and thrown "headfirst into the concrete wall of a holding cell." Mosley was rendered quadriplegic, sued the city, and was awarded $44 million in damages.[29]
44 million dollars. sheesh.
On a last note...
February 25, 2007.* Metropolitan Airports Authority Police beat up Robin Kassner, a 31 year-old New York City native at Reagan National Airport, throwing her across the room into another woman and a metal chair. They, then, bashed her head into a metal table, giving her a concussion and permanent brain damage. Police Officer Michael Jose Urbina, who delivered the concussion blow to her head, filed false criminal charges against her for disorderly conduct. Kassner is suing the police for assault and battery.[11] Surveillance Video
Exactly why do the police need to beat up a 31 one year old woman? Is she perhaps some kind of ninja trained assassin?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080806085036AAUQ7oh
Are United States Citizens required to carry an ID at all times?
No.
However, it references to john gilmore case which shows you either do or do not need an ID to fly because of some secret laws and the mood of the TSA at that particular airport.
Interesting comments here-- a statement that you don't have to have id and some commentary on how the police can pull you over legally in a car for no reason at all and the court even says that the laws are now so complex that you can't obey them all- but "a violation is still a violation".
http://www.thewashcycle.com/2009/02/possible-police-harassment.html
okay... finally a legal site,
http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/probable-cause-under-wa-state-laws--can-police-ask-7100.html
this may be valid in washington only not in some states... but for what it's worth...
Question police stop: do the police have a right to stop me and ask for Identification while I am walking down the street
Lawyer's answer: Yes they do and you have the right to say no and walk away. Unless they have reasonable suspicion you have committed a crime they have no legal basis to stop you.
But note John M. Kaman's reply...
The cops nightsticked his client from behind as he walked away and then charged him with resisting arrest.
---
On a related note (and a relational note), I had a younger cousin who became a cop. I got to see a nice young man turn into a thug with "funny" stories about abusing his authority over civilians.
power corrupts.
We've just about sold ourselves down the river where we can't fight back any more. It's come so far since the 1950's.
I don't agree.
If he had respectfully refused and said, "I haven't done anything to earn this yet" then he would have been the man I hoped I voted for.
Given McCain/Palin, I really didn't have a choice, but Obama is turnout to be much more of a tool of corporate interests and a lot less effective than Bush at getting *ANYTHING* done. I mean come on, we are closing on a year now. I could cut him some slack for the first 6 months because that was really Bush's policies playing out.