While I believe (as a "leftist") that being rich is not evil, I do recognize that over the last 30 years it has become far harder to break out of the class that they're born into. While at one point in US history economic classes may have been fluid, that's no longer the case for the most part. And that is why I think our current system is so farked up.

It's a lot easier to get the time and attention of a parent if they're not working two crappy minimum wage jobs to try and make ends meet. Privilege is incredibly relevant.

I left T-Mobile at the end of last year when my contract expired, and have been using the MVNOs that use the T-Mobile airwaves on pre-paid (PTel specifically) to save money. It's been working well, and was much cheaper than T-Mobile's previous pre-paid offerings for what I needed. However I discovered there's some missing features that pre-paid doesn't give you and no one really points out until you already switched:
* no call forwarding (for google voice voicemail)
* no visual voicemail
* no short code sms texting (except often they'll allow Twitter and Facebook)

Now that T-Mobile's prices are more in line with their MVNOs (and cheaper if you have multiple lines) and they don't even offer contracts, does this mean all those features that you lost going pre-paid would be available again? While none of those features would have been worth the extra cost of a contract, it would be a great reason to pick T-Mobile over the other smaller pre-paid operators. I'll have to call them and see if their CSRs even know the answers to these questions (I doubt it yet, someone will have to be the guinea pig), but it does make me want to switch back if that's the case.

I actually still use one of those keychains today. Got it in my pocket as I type this.

That and my giant Itsakey metal USB stick gets peoples attention when I hand them my keys.

They did respond to the marijuana one. They just didn't give the answer the people who signed it wanted.

I'm kind of baffled why people were shocked they got a response that said they weren't interested in legalizing marijuana, when that was ALWAYS his point of view. It's not like they didn't already know some good percentage of people want it legal, but a petition of 25,000 people isn't going to automatically change policy all of the sudden if they don't want to do that.

I always saw the petition site as a way to force a response from the administration on some topic, not a way to force them to change their minds on that stance.

Especially after I got it for the $140 re-furb sale they had a few weeks ago, and threw Ice Cream Sandwich on it. Wish it had a camera sometimes, but otherwise I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap tablet.

It's called crossing the street in Vietnam

Just keep slow and steady.

It's the latest talking point to people who mention Romney sticking their dog on their roof as it crapped all over himself.

He did actually mention eating dog in his biography. When he was 6. In Indonesia.

How do you figure this? A Dem sponsored it, while no Republican are on board, while a bill explicitly prohibiting this has 27 Republican sponsors.

Obama actually campaigned on doing exactly that, but Republicans think it's a tax conspiracy and refuse to do anything useful. ::sigh::

I've never noticed ads for gift cards, but there are "groupon" type ads which claim 50% off massages, cupcakes, destination vacations, etc (typing this, I wonder if my Kindle thinks I'm female...).

So they're not as worthless as a TV ad, but on the other hand, there hasn't been anything interesting enough for me to bother clicking on. I don't regret saving the money though, the ads don't bother me at all.

Considering the top 1% control 33% of the wealth in the country, and the bottom 50% only have 2.5%, I'm pretty OK with that distribution.

It's a good thing business have never scammed anyone or gone after short term gains instead of long term stability then.

With upstanding businesses like Enron and WorldCom looking out for their reputations, I'm confident we'll never need any sort of regulations either!

..but not even reading the summary before being pushed to the front page?

I guess it is Friday afternoon, but still

Which is essentially what Better Place has planned.