MacGyver

Shoot.  With the business you send his way, Larry himself ought to be pulling your order and sending you a Christmas card.

I don't know what the burn rate on 6.5 Grendel is optimized for, but if you don't need the extra length for added velocity, there's a lot to be said for the rigidity of a shorter barrel.   My 700LTR in .308 with a 20" barrel performs just as well as its cousin 700 Police with a 26" barrel at 600 yards.

Seekins Precision makes the best bolt catch on the market.  Hands down.  Shouldn't matter on the Grendel.  Makes a big difference on the blowback pistol caliber uppers.

I don't disagree with that at all.  The problem is, I just don't know how you're going to get the average person to care.    Look at where we are today.  How much louder does the wakeup call need to be?   I do wish they hadn't agreed to back pay during this most recent shutdown.  It should have had some tangible consequences to get people off of holiday and maybe shake them out of their complacency.

I know plenty of liberals who got out and voted for McCain for that exact reason.  I actually remember being quite surprised the first time I saw the "big tent" of people the GOP had attracted to their primary.  It took me about a minute of standing in line to realize that the system was being gamed quite effectively.

I kind of find myself in a funny place with voting.  Part of me says that if voting really mattered, they'd have made it illegal long ago.  Part of me looks at the candidates and is absolutely disgusted at the entire ballot and the mockery they've made of our government.  Part of me looks at the whole of government as a Babylon of sorts, and I'm realistic about how little my vote actually counts for anything.   But, I've got enormous respect for the men who died to give us that privilege of voting. And, I've been fortunate to have been plenty of places where they don't have that privilege.  As such, rain, snow or shine, if the polls are open, I'll get out and vote.

Here's the problem with the whole system right now, as illustrated in almost caricature like form by the Tea Party.  Note, I think this is a problem with all of them - I'm just using the Tea Party as an example because they're illustrating the leading edge of the problem.   I think the root of our modern problem goes back to the late 60's and early 70's when we really stripped party bosses of their power in favor of a more egalitarian primary system.  With the party bosses, you certainly got corrupt politicians, but I think that you can look at them as mostly mildly corrupt.  It was sort of a, "make sure all your guys vote for me, and I'll make sure you get the county road contract - or whatever."  While corrupt, politicians had a broader constituency.   With the advent of the primary system, that's changed.  Today, if we're being completely frank, the middle, or the moderate voter that everyone talks about just doesn't care.  Period.  So long as their kids' schools don't absolutely suck, and there aren't potholes right at the end of their driveway, they don't care.  And it would take extreme circumstances to change that - most of them are going to stay home.  They might get out to vote in presidential elections, but local and primary elections - it's not happening.   So what we get with the primary system is a vastly changed constituency.  Candidates are chosen by 10-15% of roughly 50% of the electorate on either side.  Those are the people who show up to vote in primaries and those are the people who donate money to get these folks elected.  This is a problem because these 10-15% (~5-7.5% of the overall population) are these candidates' constituency.  And, it's an echo chamber.  If you've got the money, and you can get a few people to show up and vote in the primaries, you can control the candidate.  But, because these candidates are coming from the fringe of both sides, their positions are at odds with the "moderate voter".   Couple all of this with the polarization of the districts.  Let's just go ahead and face it.  The big cities and major metropolitan areas are trending towards the left on their own and are quite happy skipping towards Gomorrah.  That's going to continue without any help.  On the right, the GOP was so successful in their gerrymandering efforts in the 90's and earlier last decade, that in most house districts, the DNC couldn't rig an election and get a candidate elected.   So with the Tea Party, we've got candidates with extremely polar positions in "safe" districts with a constituency that in most cases has these same polar views.  This is how we get candidates like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Sharon Angle.  The problem with this is that they absolutely don't represent the views of the whole of their constituency, they only care about the constituency made up of the people who paid to get them elected.  These politicians are worse than the classic mildly corrupt politicians.  The modern variant has been purchased outright.   Here's the real problem from my perspective.  We're electing candidates who, because they exist in this echo chamber, have exactly zero incentive or motivation to negotiate - much less compromise.  In a lot of cases, these "constituencies" would just assume their candidates go ahead and walk this whole American experiment off a cliff.  They have no grounding in reality, and have no idea what they're wishing for.    This is the reason that I prepare.  This is the reason that I think we're heading for another "shutdown" in January.  This is why I fear that one of these idiots will eventually succeed in pushing us over the edge.  Our existing Congress is showing that they're increasingly incapable of governing at all - much less effectively.   I don't know what the solution is.  I've reached a point where I can't vote for either of the major parties in good conscience.  I've never aligned with the DNC, and the GOP left me long ago.  I'd love to see the Tea party separate from the GOP, and frankly a party emerge at the far left as well.  Good honest debate is important.  Add in the Greens, Libertarians and some others and maybe you'd have to actually have to get a coalition in agreement with your position to effectively govern.  It can't get any worse than it is now.

A guy in my neighborhood has one.  My two year-old gets fired up when he sees it go by.

I watched that whole video thinking, "this seems like a great way for a non-pro to really cut themselves."   I'm impressed, though.

The interesting thing to me is that the GOP establishment is screwed both ways with the Tea Party. They made some major tactical errors early on, and now the damage is such that I'm not sure it can be undone. The GOP has just assumed up until the shutdown that the Tea Party was going to caucus with them, and you see where that's gotten them. Yet, if they tell them to go take a hike, as many are encouraging, they won't be able to win without them. So in effect, that fairly small group definitely has a loud voice. And, they may wind up walking this whole American experiment off the cliff. They represent a big threat to the establishment on both sides of the aisle. It's too early to tell if they'll last or simply get purchased like the rest of their peers. It'll be interesting to watch.

You're welcome.

There you have it.

Does your local Ace not stock individual bits anymore? I know most used to.

My wife leans towards this position as well. And, she's got a masters from Peabody in early childhood special education. I think something that really is lacking in discussions like this sometimes is that raising/educating a child is a responsibility born by the parents first, the community second and the government when all else fails. So often, the first two are lacking, so can you really expect any school to pick up all the slack? We're so blessed as a family with a great community. Our church, our friends and even our neighbors are all great. But, at the end of the day, my children are my responsibility. We will probably choose a private school as my kids get older, but I'm fairly certain that our kids would do okay in public school. We're not depending on them to pick up our slack.

I had a colleague who was interviewing for some open developer positions earlier this year.   He had a kid who was out of college and in his 20's show up to the interview with mom in tow.  He almost cancelled the interview right there in the lobby, but was intrigued.  He said that in a thirty minute interview the kid tried to answer several questions, but his mom kept cutting him off.  He obviously didn't get the job - and though he didn't cite any particular reason - the mom threatened him with counsel.   How'd you like to be that kid's girlfriend coming home for Thanksgiving dinner?

I don't buy too many albums these days with the advent of Spotify and the like, but Dominican Sisters of Mary are going to get my $12.   Their Mater Eucharistae is well worth a listen even if like me, sacred music not your normal genre:   On Spotify:  Bogdanowicz, OP, Sir Joseph Andrew – Bogdanowicz: Holy Mary, Mother Of God   On YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=209u7A_MwD8

So, I know we've got several members that homeschool their kids, or have in the past.    I saw this blog post from a friend on Facebook and part of it stood out to me.   http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/10/23/we-are-going-to-home-school-our-kids-but-thats-only-because-we-hate-education/     Mind you, I wish we'd take this approach more often when discussing matters of politics.  I'm interested in opinions here.   Thoughts?    

I might add that not only are good tools worth it, but when you've dinged a top-shelf billet receiver, it's too late...

Yeah, I tend to agree with you.   Our old neighborhood had parents lined up every afternoon.  So much so that I felt like all the parents in cars were probably more of a problem than other cars.   The kids I see getting off the bus now don't have a parent in sight.   Being in my kids' school every morning, I do hear bus drivers talking about kids fighting at bus stops, goofing off and doing stuff that kids will do when parents aren't around.   I'll ask one of our bus drivers next week.

If there's a law, it's unenforced.   I take my oldest daughter to school, but once a week we pass an apartment complex where kids are waiting for the bus.  There are so many kids waiting, that two buses are required to pick them up.  There may be one parent out there waiting with them on a good day.   Mind you, I'm in Brentwood, but within our neighborhood parents waiting with kids is a rarity (and one I'm kind of thankful for).  Kids wait at the end of our street on their own.   It's kind of funny.  I take my first grader to school because I like to walk into her school and actually see what's going on and I figure she's only going to tolerate it for so long.  We live less than a mile from her school, but she's dying to ride the bus.

Here are links for each of the three bureaus.  Unfortunately the lobbyists have persuaded our lawmakers to make this way more difficult than it needs to be.  Right now you have to go to each of the three bureaus:   Experian - http://www.experian.com/consumer/security_freeze.html   Transunion - http://www.transunion.com/personal-credit/credit-disputes/credit-freezes.page - This is the bureau most commonly used to pull consumer reports right now   Equifax - https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp   Also, if you have children, this is well worth doing for them as well.  Though in the case of a minor, you'll have to write the bureaus first to see if your child has a credit report before you can place a freeze.  With recent changes in the law, it's not uncommon for minors to have some form of credit report.  Criminals know this, and we see cases all the time where family members take advantage of their young family members' credit to finance their bad habits.   Here's some info on that through Experian that's applicable to all three bureaus.

As a forensic professional, our experience is that credit monitoring is non-responsive to the problem of identity theft.  It's kind of like a smoke alarm.  It's not going to prevent anything.  If it goes off, you're on fire.   Unfortunately, it's become sort of the defacto "give me something" response to data breaches.  There are two contributors to this.  One, our government sort of set the standard of giving it away in every breach they've had.  And two, it's cheap.  When a provider is buying them in bulk, credit monitoring costs a few pennies per person when you're buying them 100k at a time.  But, that gets sold to the company that had a breach to provide to its customers for several dollars.  There's a huge amount of money in it, so it keeps getting offered.   I wouldn't tell anyone not to take it, but understand that there's nothing being done there that you cannot reliably do yourself.  Open and read both your bank statements and credit card statements each and every month.  Get your credit reports at least once a year (you're entitled to one per year from each of the three providers for free - go to annualcreditreport.com - not freecreditreport.com where they try to sell you stuff).  Finally, put a credit freeze on your account with Experian, Transunion and Equifax.  This will lock down your credit so that no one can pull it without you removing it via a PIN first.   Then, know that if you get your identity stolen and actually become a victim, there are some great services out there that can take the burden of recovery off of you and get it resolved.

Man, the ELCAN Spectre is a great optic.  It's like mounting your living room window on your rifle.

Can anyone point definitively to when "reparation" language first entered into the conversation? I'm assuming this is a later development, as I can't see it as having gotten any traction in the post-war South.

For the record, I'm in agreement with Rob.  If you think that whites are the only ones with an interest in "preserving" America, then you really need to get out more.  You and reality parted ways sometime around 1955.