Croc

Huh? The draw is that of freedom...that you can do your thing without risk of gross persecution by the government. Wouldn't that encourage cultural retention? By the way, all research shows that the second-generation immigrant family is HIGHLY Americanized.

Love Yellowtail white wines. In fact, I love a lot of white wine. Red, not so much. Gives me headaches. I've yet to drink a white wine that didn't taste great with a cigarette. Belvedere is the best vodka hands down, everything else (yes, even Grey Goose) is undrinkable to me. Love Bombay Saphire gin. Southern Comfort? Check. I once christened an entire street block off that stuff. Jack Daniels Single Barrel is my favorite, but I'll drink Maker's Mark on occasion. Tortuga rum is amazing, as is the rum liqueur. God I miss the Cayman Islands. Mixed drinks? Love the Long Island. I'm also a fan of variations of it, like instead of the coke, a splash of 7up and Chambord (or just Chambord). Is there a name for this?

Hooters girls have nothing on the Raisins girls.

Dude, SHE KNOWS! Go in there at the end of shift and get his number. The girl's reaction more than implies there may be something mutual going on.

I looked at the before and after photos and really didn't see much of a difference. The eyes were moved a little further apart in one, and another got a much fuller lower face. I'd like to see more examples before I comment on what this software can really do, but the three examples all seemed to make the women look more "white" and less "ethnic," which really isn't what I personally find attractive.

I have no plans to remove my Obama 08 sticker anytime soon because it covers up some paint loss on my rear bumper from a parallel parking incident or two.

Well you can go ahead and believe all the conspiracy theories you want. You're not in the industry. I'm telling you, as someone IN the industry, that funding infrastructure, not "social manipulation" is the reason behind raising the gas tax. Ignore the pundits--they are the dense ones, even if they have an open-letter-writing column. And moltar you are correct, the gas tax has not been raised in a looong time (early 90s) and therefore has not kept up with inflation at all.

She looks like Avril Lavigne.

Bring it to the States as a Blazer. Couldn't possibly hurt. Captiva could be the Equinox.

So sorry to hear! Hope everything ends up OK...

No kidding. So Camino, please tell us about these "social manipulations." When did they begin? Did the "social manipulation" begin in Oregon in 1919? Or was it when all the states and DC adopted a gas tax within the following decade? Or was it in 1932 when the gas tax went federal? Clearly the gas tax has hampered auto manufacturers and manipulated consumers' buying decisions since 1932. What an evil tax...paying for all those interstate highways and maintaining the nation's road network as car ownership grew. Shame on it for killing the muscle car, the pillarless hardtop convertible, for bankrupting Chrysler in the 1980s and GM in the 2000s...oh wait, it didn't.

NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!! The sole purpose of raising the gas tax is BECAUSE THE GAS TAX IS NOT TIED TO THE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX AND THEREFORE HAS NOT RISEN WITH INFLATION OVER THE YEARS; AS A RESULT IT DOESN'T PAY FOR JACK $h!! I don't give a rat's ass what some random guy with a column says, THIS IS THE REAL REASON AS SOMEONE IN THE TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE FIELD. Want to know how I know? Because smaller cars get better fuel economy, and when the overall fleet gets better fuel economy, less gas tax revenue per mile driven. Simple economics. You can bet there will be a comparable gas tax on alternative fuels in the post-gasoline era, though I'm sure the gas tax will be less initially as an incentive to "socially manipulate" consumers to buy alternatively-fueled cars.

Maybe there was something worthwhile after the Obama hit job I turned off after 10 seconds? Here I figured this would be about how GW Bush has ignored the Constitution...

Well, the Lounge largely overtook the site around the time I began my hiatus, three years ago. I'm not sure what exactly happened in the interim, but the front page is fairly worthless, and I just link into the forums. But there really isn't much in the way of news.

What about children born in the US? They get US citizenship.

Dodge and weave, dodge and weave.

That was PCS. He likes to mindf@#k people here, so I wouldn't put blind faith into it until Friday comes along.

Too bad, so sad for all the gay people who were hoping Prop 8 would fail in California. Clearly the people have spoken, and unless you hit the genetic jackpot and are born straight, you are not entitled to complete happiness with the person you love. Maybe you should move to a country that actually allows it, instead of trying to make us kowtow to your homosexual agenda. The above is why it is of utmost importance to stand up for a disenfranchised minority...because your minority group might be next, and who will stand up for you? "Too bad, so sad for them" could have been applied to so many things throughout history: the Jews in the Holocaust, African-Americans throughout pretty much ALL of US history, or homosexuals during the AIDS epidemic. Apathy sucks.

Huh? And how exactly do you measure effort? How many foreign languages do you speak fluently? I'd love to know the answer to that one. Kowtowing? Who's "kowtowing"? I see very limited efforts at accomodation, but almost no "kowtowing." Maybe you do not know the meaning of the word? Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) kow⋅tow    /ˈkaʊˈtaʊ, -ˌtaʊ, ˈkoʊ-/ [kou-tou, -tou, koh-] –verb (used without object) 1. to act in an obsequious manner; show servile deference. So you're really telling me that there are "enablers" (to what, exactly? Enabling people to not have to learn English to survive for a day in America?) showing "servile deference" to non-English speakers? Really? Servile deference? Is that your final answer? Thanks for the lovely bedtime story. Sounds like your ancestors were just wonderful Horatio Algers! That said...when do non-English speakers expect Americans to learn their language to comunicate with them? I've never met a non-English speaker who didn't feel embarrassed and ashamed when it occurred that he/she and I could not communicate well. How would you feel if you tried to say something to people every day, and 1 out of 10 just gave you a blank stare in return? You wouldn't feel frustrated and inferior? Really? Try to think outside your bubble sometimes.

+1 Props for the Sim City reference. You've gotten in some good one-liners here today

Dude, he's President of the USA, not Lord of the Universe. He couldn't possibly have all the answers on everything, and just like every field, there are false starts. Remember when electric vehicles were the wave of the future back in the early 1990s with the EV-1? False start. Remember when cars were going to parallel park themselves by simply swivelling their wheels and driving into a spot sideways? False start. Remember LaserDisk? False start. Betamax? False start. Do I need to continue? He did not reneg on any promise. He did not backtrack on any campaign goal. He simply reiterated what he said in the 3rd presidential debate: that he has his goals he wants to do, and he is not willing to comment on any which may get cut due to the national budget, which he won't be seeing until January 2009. That kind of thinking is prudent. You know, making a decision on what makes the cut when he has all the information, like the actual budget, instead of spouting off beforehand what will or will not be postponed.

No, what's unpatriotic is to stand on a soapbox for tolerance in many cases, but exclude other instances involving already disadvantaged minority populations. You think those Mexican-Americans are having one big party being in a country where the vast majority of everything is in English and they can't read a damn thing? Anything treating different groups of people as different classes of citizens is unpatriotic if you've ever even just skimmed over the Constitution.

+1

Does that argument extend to dyslexics? That's a portion of the population that, depending on the severity and degree of it, has real problems comprehending written text. Are they less of Americans, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to vote? What about blind people? Would you balk at a Braille ballot? Get over yourself.

Well haven't we all learned to question Wall Street's collective judgment over the past few months?