[geeks] FYI: CompUSA is offering OS X 10.5 for $99 (after rebate)

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Oct 29, 2007, at 9:46 AM, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> You and your neighbors voted in the spineless twit politician that  
> caved to Wal-Mart and picked up their gun (in your example), that's  
> a big difference - you could have voted in politicians with spines...
>
> People tend to get the government they deserve here in America, not  
> the government they want.

I disagree with that rather strongly.

I certainly don't deserve the government I got.

The problem with your idea on voting is that voting only works if  
there are valid choices to vote on.

I can't remember the last election where I had the chance to vote on  
a politician with a spine.  Most of the time it is very difficult to  
tell any real differences between them.

What *would* allow us to change things is to be able to vote no  
confidence, or vote that none were acceptable.

Until we can reject the choices, we will be limited to choosing the  
least crappy one, which is not going to yield good results.

In the last 20 years, I've been able to vote about 6 times for a  
candidate that I thought was a good one.  I almost always vote, but  
most of the time my vote doesn't mean a damned thing, because they  
are all the same.

>> Activist Judges are bad, period.

It's also illegal.

Then again, so is violation of jurisprudence, which federal judges  
get away with all the time.

No one is guarding the guardians...

> Many decisions the Supreme Court makes are bad, esp. when they look  
> to foreign countries for guidance, rather than oour own documents...

Ah, you've seen that too.

> Agreed - plenty to go around, but it takes both to achieve their  
> result, we can't just focus on one or the other...

True, but sometimes you get more results if you focus on one or the  
other.

One of the problems is that activists can't really focus on the  
problem forever.

By contrast, bad politicians and corporate lawyers do this for a  
living, so they generally can outlast most citizen groups.

There are, however, some ways to combat this:

- elimination of career politicians
- severe term limits
- require political positions to be staffed by non-legal professionals
- politicians can only use services all citizens have access to
- removal of citizen status for corporations
- removal of limited liability companies over a certain size
- only citizens allowed to address a government body (effectively  
eliminating
   the ability of a corporation to address a government body)
- reverse recent changes on eminent domain
- eliminate WWII zoning laws

That last one is very important, even though it might seem out of place.


-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."