In a somewhat related vein, the EUNavFor has attack helicopters to use against pirates around the horn of Africa, to protect shipping that bring pirated products from the far east to Europe, much of which is sold on the streets by illegal immigrants. It's a many-fold mess.

Can't you see why Jeremy Clarkson punched him in the face?

Video of Jeremy talking about hitting Piers Morgan...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_2ZsMFY0fg

The good, entertaining British journalists stay over there, and send the losers and wankers to the U.S. to bother the Yanks.

I don't want a car that can drive itself, until I get a car that can drop me off, and go find a legal parking spot, and park itself, and come pick me back up when I'm done. 

I can see a benefit to myself of a GPS network, where each individual car 'knows' where it's headed, and is 'aware' of congestion along the variable paths to that destination, and can suggest (not require) the creation of alternate routing per vehicle, or even the creation of 'smart convoys' based on car type and driving style.

Of course, this would have to be a private GPS network, that doesn't store user history in a retrievable format, and that protects the private users' data from prying eyes of government, (unless an actual, real life judge physically signs a warrant/subpoena requesting what little might still be left on the server.)

In that case... I want a car that could drive itself.

Peugeot gets around both tariffs and embargoes, and just has their cars made in house, inside Iran.  Now that's enough to make you pity even the leadership in Iran.

(I'm taking a jab at the suffering caused by having to drive French cars.)

Maybe the Republican leadership can lend them some, before they get accused of hoarding moderates.

If they know me, they know my face and usual aliases. If they don't know one or the other, I only want them making the connection if they're as good at what they do as I am.

The only thing us people from the coasts fear more than disappearing into the anonymity of flyover country, is that we'll like it.

I don't know many doctors, here in Spain, but one that I did hear in a group conversation, seemed to imply that lawyers had ganged up with politicians (the other elite class,) and managed to turn what once was an elite profession into just another league of 'funcionarios' [functionaries, or ¿bureaucrats?] Without making it any easier or cheaper to become one, so nobody wants to be a doctor anymore, unless they plan on trying to leave Spain, for at least a good portion of their professional career. 

I wonder if this person's resentment rings true for other European doctors, and if they would be surprised to find that even pre-Obamacare America's health and economic systems really aren't so different from the socialized systems they both claim as a human right, and as a woefully mismanaged mess, simultaneously. (Similarly to how many simultaneously hold the contradictory opinions that the US is a horrible place, with no culture, and love to incorporate any and all bits of American culture they can get, at an inflated price?)

Anonymous is as anonymous does. 

No one is anonymous in this day and age.

Everyone is anonymous in this day and age.

(But seriously, the people who make those moronic masks deserve to go the way of the coonskin cap.)

(Yes, I realize the coonskin had a brief revival in the age of black and white movies, but after that it went away again, at least for another hundred years.)

There is a paradox here, that wasn't obvious to me, when I was a young jerk, with a Canadian flag patch on my backpack, (which seemed like something clever and ironic at the time, but I now realize was foolishness.)

It's a lesson I wish I'd learned earlier; which is that people like you better when you like yourself. Consequently, when you like your country, and are even proud of where you're from, it doesn't make people hate you, at least not the ones that matter. It actually makes it easier for people to like you and respect you.  

Also, it seems the Spaniards that make the best friends and cow-orkers, are the ones who feel the same about their country and flag, and perhaps even feel a little antagonistic about using English in their own country, despite being able to. They also are the ones that like Americans, without envy, and wish it would remain different from the rest of the world. (Where else are they going to go, if it all falls apart? - I joke.) (So why aren't you fat? - they joke.)

I have no problem with Americans who want to give big tips. I just don't understand how it came to be something that even Spaniards notice is different about Americans.  Why do Americans pay so much in tips, even when treated "poorly" by the staff?  Why do American service industry employees put up with lousy pay, in lieu of tips?  How did other cultures manage to get it more absorbed into the price on the menu? Why tip in some restaurants, and not others?  Why do we put up with ridiculous markup on some things, and not others? (Personally, I'm glad that people pay what they do for SMS texting, or I would not likely have a job, and I'm sure restauranteurs are happy there's so much markup on beverages, in a similar fashion.)

It just fascinates me how different cultures vary (or not) on such things.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but anymore, the only items whose prices are expected to be directly negotiated in the U.S. are used cars and salaries.

(¿Have home prices and union bargaining returned to the "directly negotiable" realm again?)

eBay still leaves many purchases made by Americans in the indirectly negotiable arena, but "Buy-it-now" still accounts for at least a quarter of domestic sales.

And how does it all jive with the ridiculous amounts Americans pay while tipping?

I still miss line-shaped lines, and 24-7 stores. A lot of Spaniards, especially ones that have been to the U.S., also would add another, one-word generalization for Americans... "Big."  

It's a double-edged sword, "big," but I tend to agree.  I need big.

The worst part of killing a terrorist with a drone, instead of water-boarding him, is the fact that water boarding at least has been proven to give some worthwhile intelligence.

Didn't they say they got rid of all the spooks?

It's getting more and more difficult to be an American in Europe, (as if it weren't hard enough in its own sake,) what with serial child rapist football coaches, labor unions stealing money from disabled children, border police put in jail if they do their job, and now hate-crimes for beard-cutting.

I tell you, they're laughing at me, and especially now, since there's a few Spaniards who still thought the Amish and the Mormons were the same thing, now they're asking me when I'm going to grow mine out.  (I'm Mormon, not Amish.)

And now that they're on their way back towards the political center, with the Popular (People's) Party, I can't make fun of their Socialist Spanish Workers Party anymore.

At least we'll always have bent bananas and dehydrated water.