BarneyPiccolo

America is a BIG place, with a lot of miles between cities. Most people in America don't live near any kind of a decent mass transit system, so they have to own a car to get to work every day. Because we are so spread out, many people have long daily work commutes of an hour or more. 2 income households are extremely common, so each one would need their own vehicle to get to work, and there might even be more cars in a home if they have older teenagers who need a car to get to work or school. A household with multiple cars might burn up a few hundreds miles every day, just going to and from work.

However, over the last couple of years, cars have become very expensive, both to buy and maintain, and many people are turning to more affordable alternative modes of travel like e-bikes and motorized scooters. Many states and municipalities are wrestling with new restrictions (age, registration, traffic laws) for these new types of transportation. Now that gas prices are exploding, there will be even more of a demand for personal electronic travel devices. Those are good for light travel, like getting to work, but they aren't very good for serious travel, like long distances, or carrying cargo.

If you drive every day, you're probably going to buy gas at least twice a week, especially if you don't like being too low. Plus, traffic is terrible where I live, and you burn a LOT of gas just sitting.

We might be willing to recognize AI as a boon to society, if it came with systemic reforms to balance the losses of jobs and tax base. Sociopathic Oligarchs shouldn't be allowed to increase their profit margins by irreparably damaging society.

Gas prices are symbolic of much more than just the price of gas. It's the one item that people have to buy multiple times a week, so they automatically keep track of the price, since it is such an integral part of their life. The price is also displayed on big lighted signs all along every roadway. What other consumer item has that much broad public awareness? With that much awareness, gas prices begin to become symbolic for prices in general. When gas prices go up, people instinctually feel like EVERYTHING is going up.

There have also been reports of sailors flushing all sorts of things down toilets to clog them. These guys are doing everything they can to sabotage their ships and get out of there.

The government is an inherently political system, you can't avoid that. The Founding Fathers tried to split the approval responsibility (for many offices) between two branches, to avoid these issues. They were counting on the voters and the integrity of the members to keep things within reason, and it was a reasonably successful system for a long time.

The problem is that it relies on the good faith of the people managing it, and they Founding Fathers never anticipated that our country would be taken over be an international cabal of Sociopathic Oligarch pedophiles and traitors, who would exploit our nation's honor system.

That's what they said about the Literacy Tests, too. Who decides the level of education required, and what "correctly" means? There's a LOT of room to abuse this strategy, which is exactly why is was made illegal.

We aren't going back to literacy tests. Move on.

People are so weird. I once worked closely with a single woman, and the boss had a big Christmas party for the managers, and she brought a guy that she'd been dating for a couple months, and was getting close to.

For some reason that none of us ever learned, he decided to completely ignore her that night. He knew nobody at that party but her, and yet he pretended like he'd never seen her before. It wasn't a big party,maybe 20 people, so we ALL saw what was going on. Eventually, he took her home, but they never went out again.

I asked her about what happened, and he wouldn't discuss it. He dropped her off at home, and they never spoke about it on the ride home or after. The guy just decided to turn into a different person that night.

BTW, she was a really cool person, pretty, fashionable, great hair, super smart, funny, great job, owned her own house, etc. The loss was entirely his.

Basically, it's like you, it's proved by your residence. That way people can't vote twice. It used to be that you only had to show up with a utility bill in your name, at your address, and that was enough ID, and that worked just fine for decades. They would check you off their list, you'd vote, and go about your day.

Yeah, and Dem voters are pissed as Hell about it. If we hand them the House and Senate in November, and Schmuck & Jeffries continue with their MAGA comedy act, then we'll be forced to take matters into our own hands, and when that happens, any treasonous Democrats like them will go down right along with the MAGAs.

Wanna bet? That's the new thing I hear.

He can't, he can only nominate them. Then the Senate, a separate branch of government, investigates, and approves them. It doesn't have to be a rubber stamp, and in the past it often hasn't been.