Murgatroy

I whole hardheartedly agree, if you draw benefits (other than disability, SS, SSI, etc...) for being unemployed/underemployed then you should have to work a minimum of ten hours a week of community service. I do think that everyone should be given a year though, total, across life. Because no one knows what tomorrow brings.   The only exception to that would be if you were currently attending a program for job training, or high school equivalency. 

No offense taken, I knew when I made these decisions the consequences. The big difference is the education and two decades of experience I bring to my field. I am not exactly a snot nosed punk like most think of when they think of a tattooed and pierced person.   However, things are much less drastic than you might think. The big thing is that your generation is retiring and is no longer the generation making all of those decisions. My generation is now the generation is or will soon be completely running things. I don't know what these so called 'Millennials' will come up with to be drastic, but I am sure they will, and myself and my heavily tattooed peers will glare down at them because it was not how we did it when we were that age. That is not to say that everything was wine and roses on my first day of work, or my second. It might even have taken a year or more, and several promotions before I got the biggest dog in the kennel to realize that I wasn't a moron. Guess who tells him what to do now?     Now at the end of the day the big question probably comes down to whether or not it bothers me. I know a lot of folks like to go out and do stupid things, then stand around and play the victim when they don't get what they want. Me? Not really. I have thick skin, because I don't really care. I have a great job, a great family, a great dog, a great things going for me. If someone wants to judge me based on my appearance, that is most likely someone that I would choose not to associate with anyways. I go to work, I go home. My hobbies keep my solitary. After all, lets be honest, I am an abrasive SOB and I ain't exactly friendly looking. Which is kind of the way I want it.   I think it also might have something to do with my raising. I have mentioned it, I didn't grow up on the right side of the tracks. I am a self made man, by the skin of my knuckles and sweat of my brow. When you grow up that poor and dejected tattoos and piercings are rank, and uniform, for all of the oxymoron there, you know, being different and all. I think I might have been ten when I got my first one. But hey, you live in the trailer park behind the projects outside of Fort Riley in the early `80s and you would make bad decisions too.   I guess the reason I get riled up about it, and I do, is that I don't like to stereotype, or be stereotyped. Not that we don't all do it, but that it is wrong. That and for the majority, I don't regret any decision I ever made, right or wrong. Because of those decisions, I am the man behind this keyboard right now, that you can't see. Cause I am really a dog. And I know how I got here, and who I am.   But that is enough off topic.   The point though, I ain't butt-hurt, I don't typically get butt-hurt. But I do like a good discussion.

See that is the problem and what most folks are missing.           I wholeheartedly agree that using drugs, buying drugs with government money, while on the dole, in government housing, etc, is wrong and should be grounds to lose the benefits. There is a great big piece of the puzzle that was hit on a time or two here.   A lot of money will be spent on drug testing. An amount rivaling welfare alone. New government employees, Washington would shut down while it was debated, and they would make sure they were exempted. The list goes on. So now, our taxes, we being the middle class, just doubled, to throw folks off of welfare.   Now, let's assume that ten percent of the over half of the US population that recieves some sort of benefits just lost all benefits, I am making numbers up for the sake of discussion, though I do believe that the over half of the population thing is true.   So that now gives us over five percent of the population, or one in twenty with no way to make a living. No marketable skills, chances are this person is illiterate and a drug user/addict.   That means that not only did we just double the taxes on the middle class, we just turned one in twenty into a desperate criminal. If that desperate criminal commits multiple acts of violence to feed themselves, a family, or god forbid a drug addition, that means that at three crimes, with all different victims, your odds of being a victim of a violent crime just went to one in six. As well as increased taxes.   So now this person is arrested. They now go to prison, after a lengthy trial, and retrial. They get three hots and a cot. That you pay for. So let's increase those taxes again. Say another thirty percent over original?   So now, instead of an overhaul, we just used a blanket to throw everyone off that uses drugs, and in the process made our nation considerably more dangerous, and taxed ourselves well out of middle class. I guess I would need benefits too now? I suppose it is awesome that I don't use drugs or even alcohol for that matter, but I do have pride, and being on the dole hurts it. A lot.         I suggest that if you are on the dole, in order to receive benefits you must either be actively searching for a job or be attending a program for job training and/or high school equivalency. If after a year you still haven't found a job, you should be required to perform ten to twenty hours of community service.   Now here is where it gets tricky. What about the parents who do work, say a single parent, working forty a week for a major company that doesn't really pay enough to support the parent and the two children? Do we raise the benefits? Or do we cap the benefits at a certain percentage? Do we hold the employer accountable? Do we require the minimum wage to support a parent and a child, or two parents, at two incomes, and two children? This is where things get tricky. Ten folks will see it ten different ways.   As for me? My wife and I decided to have one child. With our one child we could afford to support her for as long as she needs it. Emotional support, parental attendance, college, clothes, a car, fancy toys, etc... Does that mean we expect to? No. But it also means that we never have to worry, and that with our concentrated effort we have a good chance of raising a well balanced and successful member of society. Which in my opinion is the best any of us can hope to do on this earth. It is leaps and bounds above what the drug addict career welfare collecting prostitute that whelped me and five clones of herself and morals did in this life.

I am certain I am not alone here, but I am covered in tattoos, have had over thirty piercings and currently have holes in my ear large enough to hook thumbs through.   I also have a college degree, and work in a really comfy office at my white collar job telling lots of folks what to do all day long.   I know there are lots like me, on this very site.   Stereotypes are bad. Okay?

So what happens after they fail a drug test?   They lose all their benefits, right?   No food, no home, no medical, nothing.   What do they do then? Rob, steal, etc... Then they go to prison and we still wind up paying for them.       The problem is the institution and what it has become, three, four generations living on the dole and knowing all the ins and outs. If the system were overhauled to be beneficial, it would enable these folk to empower themselves and better themselves. As it is now, the system IS a career choice.

I use iHeartRadio, have pretty much every day for a handful of years now. It has introduced me to a lot of new music I doubt I would have found listening to traditional radio.   You create seeds based on a song, an artist, a genre or you listen to live stations, local, national and custom from iHeartRadio.   It is free, the app is widely available, but it will require streaming, either WiFi or data.   I tend to be connected on WiFi, though in the car I use it on road trips and use my data.   You might check with your provider, I know that some providers allow streaming music to be exempt from the data usage.

There were at least fifteen commercial breaks, if not more tonight. Way more than normal.

No, it is not normal. Tonight was like the Walking Commercial.

The door handle has a cap, you remove the cap and there is a key hole.

I have been getting hosed by the IRS for years, I don't see this year as any different. The insurance is what pisses me off, it has tripled in price the last three years.

A couple of months of vaping and I quit smoking after 20 years. That was over a year ago.   I used it as a tool to get where I wanted to go, not a replacement habit. I have a lot of friends that 'gave up' smoking to start vaping. And are still vaping high level nicotine several years later. 

It has been the Korean service weapon for a couple of decades now, I think they just recently hit the states within the last year.

He is a kid who thinks he is making a good stand, just like that good ol' feller in Nashville that is too stupid to see the harm he is causing.   I guess he doesn't realize that the laws will be enacted in days to change that. If he has a city official living on his block, he had to know that would happen.

Got a hammer, a punch, a razor blade, a screw driver, painter's tape and a clamp/vise of some sort?   The stock wrench/spanner is the only specialty tool, and it is cheap, and nice to have. I think I paid $6 for mine at the gunshow.   I have built several now with a c-clamp and the tools mentioned above. Takes less than an hour.   If you go with some specialty items, like Magpul trigger guards or KNS pins you will need hex keys too.

My daughter has been accompanying me to the range since most of her life. She was four when we started working with her single shot .22LR. I think she was six the first time I let her shoot a single action .22LR revolver, and last year right before her eighth birthday she asked to shoot my AR.   I agree, it depends on the child, the aptitude and the interest.   BUT...   My daughter has never pulled the trigger on anything without me being a step away and paying close attention.

The comments make me sad for this country...     Once again, someone that has no clue about the laws that exist, demanding that the existing laws be enacted...

Wasn't someone supposed to be bringing us a rimfire MP40?   That seems like the better purchase.

I have one in the bottom of my safe. Traded a pocket knife for it.   I think you are going a little overboard thinking that it will explode on the first shot. Shave lead, sure, but explode, no. Do you have any real world experience with these?

That is more than a little impressive.

Pure awesomeness is that that is.

I think if they can keep up with production and demand, I might buy one of those.

We are sitting in 3" last time I let Bandit out to go play in it. We are supposed to have a couple hours more, so it will be interesting.

I really like the look o the upper and lower, but at $500 for the pair, that is too rich for my skinflint posterior. 

Century makes an all American AK now. Not just assembled.

I thought IO had been doing this for years too.