Good ones like at Nick's Boots are going to cost you a pretty penny...

But they'll last forever and can be resoled as needed....

Why would anyone want to remove the punctuation keys to begin with???

My country is about to destroy what we call the voting rights act

You are NOT AN AMERICAN and do not even live here in the US.

Please quit trying to portray yourself as such....JFC.....this gets old.

You have no say in how we run ourselves....

Same here...I don't watch them and they clutter up my subscriptions tab...

I want a way to TURN THEM OFF completely.....

Hell my first thought was "SMART BED....is this really a thing?"

I had to double check to make sure it wasn't April 1st.

Seriously, WTF would anyone need a bed hooked to the fucking internet?!?!?

Maybe the US needs to start electing adults to fix things. Although you may no longer have that option.

Govt. Ineptness is NOT a new thing in the US....it's been around since I was born.

And seriously, you can drop the stupid "kings, no more elections " thing....it's getting old and it's just not even a concern.

If it were the case, it's the worst attempt at a dictator ship I've ever seen.....this administration is freeing up oppressive gun legislation the libs have been pushing for years.....protests are still allowed (except when they turn violent).....and I see no suppression of speech, unlike the previous admin.

If for some reason Trump was trying to overtake the govt....he really isn't doing the first things you'd need to do for that end goal.

Imagine being able to get the medical care you need without having to worry about it bankrupting you.

That's already the case with me. I have decent insurance through work....

Hell, I recently had to have surgery, and it didn't break the bank at all.

And I guess you're lucky over there for here dealing with the DMV is generally an all day cluster fuck, if you can get lucky and only deal with it 1 days.

There are some things the govt needs to do, by necessity that private could not do it...ie Defense, etc.

But I have yet to find anything offered or managed by the govt. (City, State or Fed) in the US that they do better and more efficiently than the private sectors.

BMVs/DMVs are state level, not fed. Only thing the fed has involvement in at that level is interstate CDLs.

It's an allegory, just an example of "A" govt entity that is almost universally known to be bad, inefficient and generally crummy.

The fed offices are not any better...last time I had to go into the Social Security office, I think for Real ID....what a fucking nightmare...took almost all day just to get an official copy of my SS card lost in Katrina.

There are a number of other agency examples....none of them positive.

Peak stupidity is allowing, let alone supporting private companies to have control over your health care.

Still....better than having the Federal bureaucracy in charge of it....

Ugh....can you imagine health centers ala DMV?

*shudder*

Don't forget....booze on an airplane also seems to be exceptionally good too!!!

Something about some beer or a good mixed drink just seems to make the works GREAT at 30K feet....

Seems to be missing the point on this thread....

Let's think practical about this new "ice".....

As in...will this keep my cocktail cold longer?

Will this keep the beer in my ice chest colder for longer?

;)

It just sounds like the greatest nation in the world is incapable of doing what other smaller nations do

We just don't want it...nor need it.

Then I travelled the world and actually looked at how things work and now I'm just sad that I lived with my own narrow minded view. Stay ignorant buddy, you'll kick yourself if you actually experience something that changes your world view, it's not a nice feeling

I've been to Europe and some other parts of the world.

While visiting I had fun and thought it was "quaint".....but it's not how I would like to live.

As I've mentioned before, I don't want to share walls with neighbors or live in tower apartments....

I like to have a yard to enjoy....I've always owned FUN sports cars and motorcycles, I love to drive them....every time I jump in my car or on my bike, I get a big stupid ass smile on my face 'cause I'm off on a new adventure.

I think much of the difference is due to mindeset of nations. The US has long been a country of the "individual". Places like the EU are more group think...."the needs of the many".

And those differences lend themselves to different lifestyles.

Different strokes for different folks.

And again...in the US, if you don't like the lifestyles,, laws, etc of where you live...you CAN move to where things more align with your life preferences.

Here we don't have to depend on one size fits all....and, isn't choice the best thing?

You know what is unreliable? Cars. I have no idea what traffic will do. Will I be there in 35minutes or an hour and 10mintes?

Sounds like poor road design if that's your problems.

I rarely run into "traffic" that is in anyway bad ....it's not something I have to plan for...and I can get to where I want door-to-door in minutes anywhere in the city.

And I live in New Orleans....so, quite often there is going to be drinking involved, and in my older years, I just don't bother driving after adult beverages anymore, so I just call an uber for those times....again, door-to-door.

No needing to deal with the elements walking to a train station, etc.....we might not get THAT cold down here, but a large part of the year is very HOT and HUMID.....and at times you really wanna limit your outdoor time, especially if you are dressed nice...otherwise you show up at your destination as a sweat stain.

Public transport...it just really isn't a thing here, nor in most cities I've lived in in the US, but I'm not felt my life has suffered in the least because if it.

I've always had a car or motorcycle that is FUN to drive and I hop in and enjoy it....

Obviously even Americans prefer walkable cities.

Obviously we don't....if we did, we'd either have more of them or would have more in the works.

That just isn't our mindset.

We generally don't like to be clumped all together, we prefer more open spaces and elbow room.

I prefer to have a yard where I can, in the back, set up my large log burning offset smoker to do BBQ, or set up a large 100 gallon pot for crawfish boils.....and have friends and neighbors over to enjoy a nice day with me.

And going out to see things?

I live in the New Orleans area....we only have 52 weeks a year, and there are FAR more fests (music, food, etc) that you can attended if you tried annually.

And yet, I don't live in "walkable"....nor do I want to.

I have my nice yard, my friends have places to park their boats and we go out on them fishing or just for fun....and again BEST of all, I do not share walls with anyone. Over the years I put a LOT of investments into building my AV system and I occasionally like to exercise its decibel range....with no shared walls, I don't disturb the neighbors and they don't bother me.

I do walk my dog...daily and meet my neighbors as I do...the nice thing is...it's not all concrete like an urban city where you have limited green space.

And guess what - they serve wine on all those occasions.

LOL, I live in fucking New Orleans....we have wine....beer and hard liquor cocktails anywhere here you want, 24/7.....no open container laws either.

Try THAT in your urban paradise.

You still can. Just look at the Netherlands. In the 60s the Netherlands was a car mecca. It was following American style city design (including actually importing American city designers). They had grand plans to bulldoze poor neighbourhoods to build highways, heck at one point even the IJ in Amsterdam was proposed to be filled with concrete and turned into an inner city mega highway.

Well, there's no need to in the US.

The Netherlands is SMALL....and US is quite large and well, for the most part, if you want to live careless in a dense urban city, we have them and you can move there.

If you don't want this, and to date many if not most in the US do not want it....you can live in other cities were you don't share walls and have the independence of a private vehicle.

If more people in the US actually wanted less cars and "walkable cities"....we'd have them.

We have voters and if the voters wanted that, they'd elect people to help implement it.

Buit just face the facts,most people today do not want that car-less utopia many of you are promoting.