Why is THE MAN guilty? 

Who should your role model be? 

1) Choose someone who has a lot of confidence in themselves and their abilities. A good role model would be someone who knows who they are. You don't want someone who is down and who will bring you down. You want someone who won't pretend to be someone they are not, and won't be fake just to suit other people.

2) Consider someone who thinks it is alright to be unique; even if that means accepting some ridicule. They should make you feel good about being yourself, they shouldn't make you compare yourself to them and wish you were pretty.

3) Think about someone who interacts well with others', and someone who is kind and can communicate well with people.

4) Look for someone who is living life the way you would like to. If you want to be a famous author, your role model could be someone who has been successful at writing. If you have always wanted to be a nurse, your role model could be someone at your local hospital who is dedicated to their job and someone who you look up to for their achievements.

5) Find someone who doesn't always take credit for what they do.

6) Choose a role model who may have done something you find admirable, such as raised a lot of money for charity, saved lots of lives, helped people in need or discovered the cure for a disease.# true role model are those possess the qualities that we would like to have and those who have affected us in a way that makes us want to be better people. to advocates for our gols and ourselves recognise leadership on the issues that we believe in. we often don't recognise our true role models untill we have noticed our own personal growth and progress. i think that i serve as a temporary role model to my mother but she just doesn't want to admit it!

PHOENIX -- A proposal by the Obama Administration that would require all Internet-based communication providers to give access to the government has drawn opposition from some Valley experts.

"The bottom line -- you can quote me on this -- this is just plain stupid," said Ken Colburn with Data Doctors, who hosts a computer show on Saturdays on News/Talk 92.3 KTAR.

"They want us to create a backdoor for these technologies that supposedly only the government would use... It just opens up the whole hacker community to say, 'Okay, there's a back door on every one of these. Let's go find them.'"

Colburn said, "The laws and the unintended consequences of these laws are just a disaster waiting to happen."

Companies already have the capabilities to eavesdrop on what employees do online and through their phones, but the government wants access to all of it, including e-mails, in the name of national security.

Colburn said, "All these folks who have created any kind of secure communication -- encryption -- they want those companies to hand the government a special key so only they will have it and nobody else will see this."

The American Civil Liberties Union also opposes the proposed legislation, which the Administration plans to introduce next year.

"The government already has extraordinary powers, through the FISA Amendments Act that was introduced in 2008, to conduct warrantless surveillance and to access wireless and Internet communications," said Allessandra Solare-Metz with the ACLU's Aricona chapter.

"The government has not presented its case as to why there is a legitimate law enforcement purpose to be able to give the government essentially a backdoor way to access our Internet communication.

Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the government already is "drowning" in information that it can collect and that Americans would give up too much with the legislation.

"I just think that the price and the cost, the downside, is too high in order to give the FBI what I think they're looking for, which is sort of a perfection," said Dempsey.

He said the FBI wants everything neatly tied up in a nice bow and delivered to its doorstep.

Dempsey said his group will scrutinize the plan all the way.

"We really don't have the details about how this really is supposed to work. There's a log of questions that need to be answered here and we really need to be careful and go slowly on this thing."

Dempsey said the United States has a system that believe in limited government, and that's the way he wants to keep it.

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The recession took a dramatic toll on the institution of marriage in America last year, new figures show, with weddings for people 18 and older at the lowest ebb in over a hundred years.

A broad array of new Census Bureau data released Tuesday documents the far-reaching impact of a business slump that experts say technically ended in June 2009: a surging demand for food stamps, considerably fewer homeowners and people doubling up in housing to save money.

The new figures show, among other things, that marriages fell to a record low level in 2009, with just 52 percent of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57 percent in 2000. Many young people, at the same time, struggled to find work and achieve economic independence.

On the positive side: Americans spent about 36 minutes fewer minutes in the office per week and were stuck in less traffic, although the reason was largely because millions of them had lost jobs or were scraping by with part-time work.

The government revealed that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, stark evidence of the impact the long recession starting in 2007 has had in upending lives and putting the young at greater risk.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans- those making more than $100,000 each year- received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to the newly released Census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, government data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Three states- New York, Connecticut and Texas- and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps in rich and poor, disparities that exceeded the national average. Similar income gaps were evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents.

On the other end of the scale, Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Hawaii had the smallest income gaps.

"Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more," said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. "More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy."

Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available, Smeeding said. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don't get needed training for future jobs, he said.

Rea Hederman Jr., a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, agreed that Census data show families of all income levels had tepid earnings in 2009, with poorer Americans taking a larger hit. "It's certainly going to take a while for people to recover," he said.

On the issue of marriage among adults 25-34, roughly 46.3 percent reported they had never wed. It was the first time the share of unmarried young adults exceeded the 44.9 percent who were married.

Homeownership declined for the third year in a row to 65.9 percent, after hitting a peak of 67.3 percent in 2006. Residents in crowded housing held steady at 1 percent, the highest since 2004, a sign that people continued to "double up" to save money.

Average commute times edged lower to 25.1 minutes, the lowest since 2006, as fewer people headed to the office in the morning. The share of people who carpooled also declined from 10.7 percent to 10 percent, while commuters who took public transportation were unchanged at 5 percent.

The number of U.S. households receiving food stamps surged by 2 million last year to 11.7 million, the highest level on record, meaning that 1 in 10 families were receiving the government aid. In all, 46 states and the District of Columbia had increases in food stamps, with the largest jumps in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.

The census figures come weeks before the pivotal Nov. 2 congressional elections, when voters anxious about rising deficits and the slow pace of the economic recovery will decide whether to keep Democrats in power.

The 2009 census tabulations, which are based on pre-tax income and exclude capital gains, are adjusted for household size where data are available. Prior analyses of after-tax income made by the wealthiest 1 percent compared to middle- and low-income Americans have also pointed to a widening inequality gap, but only reflect U.S. data as of 2007.

___ Online:
http://www.census.gov

Link:

Use a special property of the number nine to wow people with your psychic skills.

Link:

Inspired by Lady Gaga

Link:

Send Christmas wishes by making friends and family a holiday food basket.