btq96r

  If you're just looking for a place to dial in a long gun. test various ammo loads, or just get in some practice, Stones River is as good a place as any.   I'll keep an eye out for the sweet gun on a green bipod when I go next time!

Best wishes for everyone's Thanksgiving. 

http://www.primaryarms.com/black-friday/c/900000/   Primary Arms just got $250 (shipping included) from me for two items that have been on my want list for a while.   Raptor Ambidextrous Charging Handle by AXTS (.223/5.56)-  $59.99 Geissele Super Dynamic Trigger 3-Gun Version, Small Pin .154-  $182.00 Shipping Method: UPS Ground- $6.61     May your wives forgive you...

Been using Mechanix gloves since 2003 aside from being ordered to wear Nomex gloves on mission during my last deployment.  It will take as good a product at as good a price to make me switch.  I'm not seeing that from these gloves yet.

Beautiful gun.  You might have just put another project on my "To Do List" if I ever get the funding for it.    Stones River is where you shot it at, right?

  As I remember it, they pretty much had to fly straight through the Khowst-Gardez pass coming out of FOB Salerno, especially when they had stops was at COP Wilderness, a postage stamp size base in the middle of the road between Salerno and Gardez.  Those S-92's the contractors flew did not give me much confidence if things went bad, but I was stuck on one on average once a week to get around the AO.

  I'm honestly surprised those contractor birds haven't been shot down with some frequency.   When I was in RC-East, I had to fly a lot and I remember looking out at the mountains as we flew through the passes in a slow and lumbering way that if the Taliban had any idea how to camouflage a few teams with RPK's that they could down one filled with US troops and contractors quite easily. 

  Hoepfully this can be soothed over...but given how thick skulled the Turks can be, and how intransagent Putin is, I doubt it. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/24/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-idUSKBN0TD0IR20151124

  Not sure if it really works for a helicopter...but it might make a decent call sign if we ever get a Marine Raider type unit back in action. 

Regulatory oversight we can debate, but corporate taxes have been quite higher throughout history, and we did just fine. Then you can match the top rate against the top bracket amount by year. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=65 Can I blame Reaganomics yet?

  On everything.  If your country for corporate tax purposes isn't the US, you should need to pay to play.   The US is the only country with a high population, and high income levels.  If a business in another country wants to take advantage of that, we should make it worth our while.

  Illegal, no.  But there should be heavy tariffs enacted to put American companies first.  You want to set up HQ overseas, it should cost you to keep access to our markets, and the well to do population therein.     This problem is one associated with the free trade agenda, not our corporate tax rates.

  It's a CYA thing, mixed in with the .gov never missing a chance to promote paranoia they have an exclusive market on "solving."    You have far more to worry about from that assclown in front of you who insists on reclining their seat to get that awesome 2" lean for the entire flight than you do from terrorists.

If you watch football, you know that the Redskins are so consistently bad that they can't dismiss any idea out of hand.  This one though, won't last too long before being rejected.       Not for nothing, but those are all the names of the tribes or individuals, not a slang term for how those who oppressed them refereed to them.   I'm not jumping on the social justice bandwagon for this issue, but I can see how there is a difference. 

  Little of both, with more towards the latter if I had to gauge it.  The noise allowed in is adjustable, not just an off/on switch, so you can control how loud it gets.   One thing I love them for is when I take people shooting for the first time.  I make sure to turn them on so I can give them instructions and safety commands and have them hear it perfectly.

As seen here: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B001T7QJ9O?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00     I know that these earmuffs are a very common piece of kit, and a more than a few of you will either have a pair, or know someone who does.  So, why the review?  Simple, I've had my pair for over five years, and they've held up fantastically, despite me being an idiot recently.    Now, while I do rotate them with a Peltor 6s pair, my Howard Leight's have seen more than the expected use I thought I'd get out of them when I bought a pair in early 2010.  I bought them for use while traveling between Iraq & Kuwait, brought them back home and have used them at the range countless times, and even loaned them to others for shooting, but their toughness was recently shown to me.  I would have taken them to Afghanistan as well, but forgot to set them aside when movers packed up my apartment, so I had to get the Peltors to take there.   But back to the Howard Leight's.  I like to wear them with my earbuds on underneath while I mow the lawn.  Well, a few weeks ago, I left them outside after forgetting them when putting my mower back in the storage closet outside of my house.  Literally left them outside for a week an a half, and those of you in Middle Tennessee know we've seen plenty of rain and temperature changes.  When I saw them out there, I thought for sure the electronic features of them were gone, and at best they were just another normal pair...I was wrong.  They fired right up, and the noise reduction feature works just fine like before.  These things can handle my whoops moment and still keep going.   So, while I still use my Peltors as my primary range kit, my Howard Leight's have more than earned a place in my kit bag, and I wanted to share this in case anyone was wondering if they are worth the price.  Your results may vary, but I'd give them the BTQ thumbs up.

  How does the President come into this?  College students have been protesting for dumb reasons since at least your generation.  What we're seeing today isn't something new when you break it down.       I can tell you. :)   You have to look at the scope of things to understand how the revenue vs. expenditures thing goes.  I'm more familiar with MTSU since I go here and work here, but since you talked about UT, we'll stay there.  Thing to remember about UT is it's the entire system, not just Knoxville.  For budgeting purposes, they break out the different schools, but have a total budget number.   With athletics, the money is coming in, no doubt...but it's also going out at roughly an equal rate.  The biggest thing they want is for the athletic program to at least pay for itself, and that means the whole athletic department, not just football.  Problem is, the schools have all the different sports programs, and let's face it, only football and basketball are money makers for college athletics.  That means they are subsidizing soccer, track, tennis, golf, and all the other sports the schools operate at a net loss for men and women, because of Title IX.   So, this is UT's proposed budget for FY 2016, realistically, we have to look at the data for FY 2014 since that's the only year in the document that has been audited.  Skip to page 33 in the .pdf/ page 30 in the document, and you will see the layout for athletics.  Very easy to see that UT Knoxville is was slightly in the red for FY 2014, but only by what amounts to a rounding error in the overall budget when you remember that for UT, their annual budget is in the $1.2/1.3 Billion with a B, dollar range.  Not out of the norm for large budgets that run in a three year cycle like that.    As to what else is at play here...   1)  There is a somewhat funny "color of money" shell game being played for tuition.  The school actually factors in the money coming from the athletes as they would for any other tuition/enrollment under the line item for that early in the budget, but since the athletes are on some form of scholarship (football is allowed 85 players out of 105 roster slots being on full scholarship, to include room, board, and food...not sure about the other sports) that money comes out of the athletic department's budget, and as you can see, the item marked "Student Aid" comes out to  ~15% being gone just so those kids can go to class (when the do...lol) and have a dorm room.  But I find it funny because it's the university paying the university in the end in a circular method.   2)  Salaries and Benefits:  I know people will look at that and scream bloody murder about coaches salaries and those are a noticeable chunk of that part.  But that line item is also the paycheck, health insurance, Social Security/Medicare contributions that UT is on the hook for as an employer.  Take that and compare it against all the people that make up the entire athletic department from the equipment staff, to the trainers, to the administrative people who work in the compliance office (paperwork with the NCAA), and all the rest.  A lot of employees you never see on game day contribute to getting it done, and as most people in business know, salaries and benefits are always a large part of the budget.   3)  Travel seems high until you realize that is the airfare (chartered flights), hotel rooms, per diem (for employees), and cost to move all the team equipment from point A to point B and back for away games (usually an 18 wheeler truck).  Also, the team "travels" for home games, bringing everybody suiting up on game day to a hotel the afternoon before so they can make sure they eat the proper nutritional meals, get enough sleep, and are ready to play the next day.  So, even home games have a travel budget.   So, that's where the money goes...crazy, huh?

That puts the whole story in perspective.

  Just to wrap up this loose end, we can hope that all criminals or potential terrorists are this dumb... http://www.wcvb.com/news/man-arrested-in-worcester-armory-weapons-theft/36539670?utm_campaign=WCVB%20Channel%205%20Boston&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_source=Social

I'm very glad the judge went above the plea deal cap (Fogle agreed to 5yrs minimum, the prosecution agreed to seek 12.5yrs max) by giving him 15yrs, 8 months, and saying that he isn't even eligible for release for good behavior until at least 13yrs have been served.

  Yeah, that's my takeaway as well. 

The universities can't afford to alienate their students, because the students represent revenue.  Both in tuition, and as an overall number (attending or graduation rates by state) which determines how much aid they get from the state if they are a public school.

  They don't even need to use Black Friday to get the intended results.  Pick a random weekend in the first three weeks of December, and any place like Opry Mills is packed with slow moving, baggage laden targets practically herding themselves into kill zones within the stores.

I pretty much look at it as what threats are we under all of a sudden that we haven't been under for almost two decades?  It's just fresh in our minds after recent events.   I'm going to continue my normal personal security measures, but I'm not letting the possibility of a random event happening around me dictate my life.  I'll carry on (literally and metaphorically) react to contact as needed.

Anonymous is also trying to make themselves a force in the protest scene, as seen with their OpFerguson efforts.  Essentially, they want to stir things up, then watch what burns in some kind of anarchy theory.  While their results are so-so, their ability to help push information or disinformation as you see it is through social media is legit.