TGO David

In another year or two, we're going to need to keep our wives well clear of anyone else who has just had a baby. Newborns sell themselves!

Sooner or later, we do tend to forget how gruesome it looked during the labor process and start becoming enamored with that region of the female anatomy once again. Just the same way that our wives forget how mind-bendingly painful it was and start wanting to have another baby.

They aren't running anything here. They are loaning money to these businesses to keep them from tanking. It's not a government program. Actually they do not have to seek congressional approval for this at all. It does suck that the people at fault are likely going to just walk away fat and happy, but not from this particular deal. Rather they already profited. But if any wrongdoing took place, it could catch up to them. Remember ENRON? As for us being left holding the bag, again this is a loan. It's not a handout. The taxpayers shouldn't get stung for the difference unless these companies default on the loans. In which case the government will seize every asset they have and liquidate them, which should offset the loan amount. This contributed to the devaluation of the dollar a long time ago. We're just seeing the public face of it finally.

I would suspect that the Fed is paying out a lot less by propping out these companies, which is money that they will get back as it is a loan and not a gift... than they would have paid out in welfare, unemployment, medical assistance, housing assistance, etc. if they had allowed these companies to collapse and displaced hundreds of thousands of employees and rendered void hundreds of thousands of insurance policies and mortgages. It's the lesser of two evils. On a more positive note, the ridiculous glut of cheap housing seems to be drying up finally and the builders responsible for flooding the market with houses built w/o a contract on them are going out of business like crazy. Soon, it will be a seller's market again. All of this is just the economy correcting itself for the past 15 years of artificially overinflated wealth. It happens every so often.

I tend to be pretty against subsidizing anything, but these bailouts aren't protecting the companies so much as they are protecting the customers (mortgage and policy holders) and the employees. It's in the best interest of the economy to ensure that we don't end up with a bunch of unemployed people who's mortgages are suddenly being called due. I blame the big-wigs at these companies and think they should lose their jobs. But I don't blame the workers or the consumers.

Understood. Mine is in component form also with the upper and lower being about 30 miles apart from each other. This is our first together but I've got two from a previous marriage a long time ago. They're the perfect age to babysit.

I try not to look at it from the angle that the Government is bailing out the bad investments but rather that the government is protecting a few hundred thousand gainfully employed citizens from being thrown out on their asses if AIG were left to close the doors. AIG employs a lot of people. Quite a few here in Nashville. If the company goes belly up, those people are suddenly without jobs.

Congratulations!!!! On both the birth of your son and the delivery of your Form 1. I'm anxiously awaiting both of those things myself, but it looks like Form 1 will come back to me much sooner than my son's due date. That being said... Pics of your SBR???

Wow... just for all of you who are getting your permits suddenly, I am going to smack my wife. Apparently hers was jamming up the whole damn system all along.

For what it's worth, JWP has always treated me right and he's never advertised a 30/30 lever action as being used by US commandos in Equador or anything like that. I tend to look past some of the comments made by any company stating that their product is the best out there but don't find it to be too peculiar when they do. If a company doesn't have faith in it's own products, then why should the consumer. Some companies are just a little more vocal.

DOE funds a lot of pretty cutting edge research to this day. I can't see them as being a bad agency to have around, despite how they may have missed the boat on cutting our dependence on foreign oil.

Going back to school with a cast on my arm was one of the more fun things about being a kid. Everyone wants to sign them. Be sure to warn him not to stick a ruler down in there and scratch no matter what the other dork kids tell him to do.

Make friends with Kool-Aid.

Antipersonnel over penetration, perhaps... but when you start talking about penetration through walls and such, not so much. The 7.62 punches through cinder blocks with ease and keeps on going. The 5.56 loses a lot of it's velocity and fragments when it hits hardened barriers like that.

That's serious stuff too.

There used to be this little greasy spoon that my parents went to religiously every morning. One of the regulars there was a serious, authentic, genuine Hell's Angel. There wasn't an official chapter in town but he'd moved in from somewhere else and I guess more or less "retired" but still rode with a local out of Indiana if I remember correctly. Hell it's been more than 20 years since I saw the guy and he's probably dead by now. Anyway, dude was probably one of the scariest, meanest looking guys I've ever seen but was a freaking teddy bear around kids. Loved kids. Loved letting kids hop on his bike, make engine noises, etc. Just ate it up. But he'd probably kill a grown man who dared touch his horse. Totally worthless contribution to this thread, but just a random memory that I guess will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Because the real 1%ers will kick your asses.

Yep. Games are fun but they can also teach bad habits, which is particularly troublesome if the participant uses the game as training. But frankly, even if they do use it as their only form of training, I suspect that the vast majority of IDPA/USPSA shooters will thereby be better "prepared" at least marginally. Especially if contrasted with the gun owner who does neither train nor game but lets his or her firearm sit and collect dust. A person who has decided to go armed should always strive to improve their abilities through whatever means are available. If gaming is the only means available, well... it's not the best solution but for them it might be the only solution.

HOOOOOO BOY! You sure do use your tongue prettier than a $2 whore! Just so you don't go to bed tonight feeling more important than you usually do, I honestly could care less about you. I could care less about buying and selling privately. I could care less about how tightly you wind the tinfoil around your head. I just think your inordinately severe distrust of the government is laughable and makes you look like a complete kook. But that's just me. And you're free to be a kook.

Did I say you didn't know that? I was just pointing out the obvious fact that this sucks and there's nothing we can do about it as non-union employees. I hate unions even worse, so I guess that leaves me with being self-employed if I ever decide to stop playing the corporate game. I especially loved the open-endedness of their wording in the snippet you provided.

Didn't the same thing happen when Homer joined the Hell's Satans on the Simpsons a few years ago?

Tennessee is an "at-will" state so they can pretty much fire you just because the sun rose this morning. Nothing new there.

I'm ahead of you.

They have a notice on their web site about this. It's a little thing called Hurricane Ike and the fact that Comp-Tac is in Texas.

At the risk of sounding like Bill Clinton, it depends on the definition of the word and the type of .223 round that we're talking about. But typically, no.