What are the benefits of living in the USA?

Dean wrote: Atavachron wrote: Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Plenty of good non fried/grilled food on the east coast. I do like living by the ocean in a compact city, Boston One of the cities I must visit someday. My thoughts exactly. I knew that New England was famed for its baking but (naively perhaps) assumed this was only for sweet dishes... but of course there's Boston baked beans (though a tad too sweet for me, I prefer a nice French cassoulet with pork, confit duck and sausage

Never thought of it as an eating city but I suppose it is.   N'awlins is where I'd like to take an eating tour, the whole south actually; Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas

TeleStrat wrote: Guns, food and booze. That's interesting. The gun control controversy will go on in this country forever. There are too many things to consider. Demanding more guns laws is ridiculous since there are already hundreds (technically thousands) of gun laws on the books. None of these existing laws matter to criminals and gang bangers who don't care about laws. Putting new restrictions on law abiding gun owners does little or no good at all.

Dean wrote: Finnforest wrote: Dean, there is good food, you just have to know where to find it.  But yes there is a lot of crap food too, no argument there.. The challenge is not finding good food (until my last visit that was relatively easy), the challenge was finding food that wasn't fried or grilled. Admittedly I was in Texas when I threw down that challenge to my work colleagues and the best they could come up with was pizza.

Well if you'd been here tonight with Heather and I, the Thai we had would have knocked your socks off....no fry involved.  Last night I had a great beet salad with sauteed shrimp and tomorrow we may try a new Ethiopian place.  The food in the TCs is pretty fcking awesome mate. 

Atavachron wrote: Dean wrote: Atavachron wrote: Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Plenty of good non fried/grilled food on the east coast. I do like living by the ocean in a compact city, Boston One of the cities I must visit someday. My thoughts exactly. I knew that New England was famed for its baking but (naively perhaps) assumed this was only for sweet dishes... but of course there's Boston baked beans (though a tad too sweet for me, I prefer a nice French cassoulet with pork, confit duck and sausage Never thought of it as an eating city but I suppose it is.   N'awlins is where I'd like to take an eating tour, the whole south actually; Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas

Oh N'awlins is a superb eating and drinking city.

Dean wrote: I would have crawled across the desert for a steak and ale pie with boiled carrots and mashed potatoes

The simple comforts of home.  I think there was a time when many Americans ate just like that.

Finnforest wrote: It was bun not stir fry....but maybe that's Vietnamese.  this place does multi Asian cuisines.  I love bun, no pun intended

Having grown up in SF, the bun, or "pork bow" as it's called on the westcoast, was a childhood favorite but became cloyingly sweet to me.  Or maybe the quality just went south.  The only city I know left that has truly good Chinese food is NYC.

Atavachron wrote: Having grown up in SF, the bun, or "pork bow" as it's called on the westcoast, was a childhood favorite but became cloyingly sweet to me.  Or maybe the quality just went south.  The only city I know left that has truly good Chinese food is NYC.

The only problem with New Orleans was getting propositioned to go into a strip club at 10 in the morning when I was with my wife and her friend.

We grew up in the 60s and 70s somewhat immersed in "gun culture".  We all played with toy guns.  Our Dads and all of our uncles hunted, we learned to hunt, we were taught respect for weapons and each other.  According to Slate , not right wing by any means, higher percentage of households owned guns in my childhood 1970s than now despite handgun proliferation in our cities.  They were all around me.... And yet we never shot anyone.  We did not see this craziness going on.  I think to blame recent events on inanimate objects is going to simply delay getting to the real reason some young people come of age able to commit such vile acts.  My cousin and I could walk down our street with a gun, toy, bb, or 22,  and nobody would even bat an eye....why?......because back then it was so incredibly unthinkable that we would be off to commit violence.  Today you can get in trouble for pointing your finger at someone in school.  And yet look at the irony of the result on the front pages. 

I have no problem with more restrictions on sales but that does nothing to fix broken minds capable of harming others with the complete lack of feeling we see these days..  In my lifetime we have moved from families completely capable of owning guns responsibly (Sorry, but I saw it with me own eyes in almost every family I knew) to this madness, all while the media pretends families and neighborhoods like mine apparently never existed.  That is not the result of any "gun culture" that existed in my father's day.  It is the result of this broken culture spawning sociopaths.  Just my opinion but I would be curious to know if anyone out there agrees with me.  That broken minds are more the problem than inanimate objects.

By the way I consider myself a moderate....and I realize that by PA standards that makes me a slobbering right winger.  But I am not a gun "enthusiast" or ideologue.  I don't mind restrictions and I don't mind if you wish to disarm criminals and ban assault weapons.  Go for it.  But I still wonder what are the unspoken changes that make today so different from what my friends and I experienced growing up.  And I wish we could start having that conversation in our politics rather than the useless one we are having.