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You should check out the 111th Congress - where both the House and the Senate were under Democratic control for the first part of Obama's first term - including for a short time with a filibuster proof majority. You might also remember the 103rd Congress where Bill Clinton also had Democratic control in both houses. Carter had both houses his whole time in office. Kennedy and Johnson both did too. Roosevelt had a Democratic majority from 1933 that lasted until Truman lost it in 1947. Herbert Hoover was president in 1929. He was a Republican. So too were both chambers of Congress. In fact, from 1921 when Warren Harding had a majority - through Calvin Coolidge - all the way to 1931 when Herbert Hoover lost the Republican majority - that was the longest stretch in which the Republican Party would have unified control until George W. Bush (who had it in part of 2001, then from 2003 through 2007). Eisenhower had unified control from 1953-55. edit: here's the sourcing on that with a nice chart - history is cool.

I don't have the patience to read this whole thread but I feel confident people are being scared by hyperbole and misinformation. I can understand why we don't trust the government on the surface as its failed us too many times but I don't think we should apply that skepticism to the point of folly. We you say "we don't know the long term ramification of this vaccine" you haven't researched it very much. This is not new technology, its acutally over 30 years old. They've been researching this vaccine mechanism for a very long time. "So why haven't we had this type of vaccine before now?", because thankfully we haven't had a widespread pandemic significant enought to warrant the human trials. Ebola, Zika, West Nile are all candidates but infections were not enough to be able to study the results (thank God, aint nobody want Ebola). The biggest concern with the vaccine is allergic response. Yes you will feel bad the day after, especially the second shot, but no you did not actually get COVID-19 from the shot. Its just your bodies immune system creating the defenses it needs to make you resistant in the future. The vaccine made it to production so quickly thanks to the 30+years of research before hand, without that it would likely not have happened. I can put my tinfoil hat on a empathize with those that are skeptical about the viruses origin and certainly how the government has leveraged us for its own gain to the determent of thousands of small businesses and personal finances across the country. But none of that leads me to a point where I don't want a vaccine. Obviously because I took one and get my second shot next Thursday and anxiously wait the opportunity to be "immuno-prepared" (i know that's not a word) for getting back to normal.

I would walk over to my neighbors and say "Hey, you good?" Yep, ok? See ya, let me know if you need anything. What are you expecting to have to discuss? Barricading the neighborhood? What did you do before cell phones and the internet? You drove over to see someone if it was farther than just walking. Or get handheld radio's/cb's? I am with Erik on this. If all communications are down, I suspect that is the least of your worries.

I heard them complaining about metal detectors but I'm not clear why they are angry about them. I was shocked they didn't have to go through them to begin with. Apparently everyone else does except for the lawmakers which sounds so typical of them. "Rules for thee but not for me".

We need to remember this when things get back to normal, and stock up accordingly. There probably should be a sticky about being prepared in the ammo section.

This thread is moving too far from the original purpose. It’s not going to turn into the politics section replacement. I’m locking this thread until further notice and discussion with @TGO David

So with all thats going on in the world I got to thinking about alternative communications. What are folks here doing in the event phone and internet communications become unstable, unreliable, or all together non-existent? Read some interesting stuff online about IRC chat and direct dial BBS sites. Gawd, when was the last time... But with the current control and censorship issues, what would you do if it all went *poof* and your txt messages never got replied to. How would you communicate locally in your neighborhood? In town? Relatives nearby or across the state/country? We've become so used to the ubiquity of it all.... I know some folks are setup with HAM, I have a set of Baeofangs I'm trying to figure out... but outside a couple miles... what have some folks prepared for?

If the fluctuation of pricing on Bitcoin doesn't scare someone off, the fact that it really only exists at this point to launder money for organized crime should. We deal with a lot of ransomware/cryptolocker cases, and I can say that all the lawyers involved are growing increasingly concerned with RICO/trafficking/money laundering/OFAC stuff - since you basically know that you're sending large sums of money to criminals as a ransom payment. Then, you can add to that the "days since a cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $100M" sign hasn't reached triple digits yet. If you can get past all that, then I might suggest that in any legitimate market, you need both a party and counterparty to transactions. We have a ton of people putting money into the "market." But, when we examine the blockchain registers, we don't really see any of that money moving out. We don't have counterparties. This could legit turn into a case where you have millions on paper, but couldn't cash out if your life depended on it. Stay away from it.

It's registered with a registrar in Switzerland who has a very good privacy rating.

Not a gun, but just received these guys this morning. Will be going on two USAF (Not USMC) Rem 40XB 22's. If you don't have a classic 22 and scope to go with it you are missing out.

Your intuition is the right one. We can always open something back up later if we decide to.

I had to get a COVID test. Luckily it came back negative.

In 50 years, our grandchildren will look at our use of social media and it’s balkanizing effects in the same way we look at our grandparents who smoked 18 hours a day - sort of a “how could you not have known that stuff was terrible for you?” Hopefully its not preceded by “back before the war.”

The flu vaccine has been around for almost 75 years, and is no more effective than around 60-70% at best, usually less, sometimes far less. AIDS virus was first identified 37 years ago, and there is still no vaccine at all. Not mention the common cold. So I'd opine that the Covid vaccine is quite the success. - OS

Anybody who has been around this game any length of time has already heard this advice repeatedly. If they didn't heed it before, they're not going to now. People have short memories ...

It would be interesting - and I don't have time to do it this afternoon - to post a chart of GDP or the S&P500 or whatever metric you want against control of the government. I expect what it would show is that the economy is largely going to economy and doesn't particularly favor unified government. The 4 biggest drops of any of our lifetimes (1929 crash, S&L bust, dotcom bubble, and the 2008 recession) have all officially occurred on Republican watches - but that's kind of disingenuous to make that argument. Just like the economy under Trump has benefited from some of Obama's policies - Bush too took the hit from some of the rails coming off during Clinton. Etc. Standard disclaimer - The stock market is not the economy - please don't take investing advice from me or anyone else on the internet - unless it's about Bitcoin in which case I know what I'm talking about - consult your financial professional.

The same way it did for the previous three years.

In the same vein of mesh networks, I've thought about a project where people turn their home into an xbee node. Each person involved has a 1k or 10k xbee transceiver in their home with a unique ID and information travels between the nodes in the network. You could think of it as each home hosting one of these becomes a router in a low throughput network. If the internet goes down or cellular communications aren't possible you could still pass messages to various recipients in the network or send out a mass communication to all recipients. The transceiver in your home would communicate to your phone, laptop...whatever over wifi. You could have high thruput repeaters with multiple transceivers and some that are just single node end points that act as back-up for the high thruput nodes. In the event a node is downed the network could autoreconfigure so its hard to bring down conventionally. https://www.digi.com/products/embedded-systems/digi-xbee/rf-modules/sub-1-ghz-rf-modules/xbee-pro-900hp

Translation: Avoid bitcoin like plague ...

Please - for the love of all that's good - don't "invest" and tell the people you love not to "invest" in Bitcoin. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Marlin Model 60. Got it in 1980 for my 11th Birthday.

Can you ask your sources to point some of these antifa out in photographs?

Hopefully we don't have to resort to that backup URL ever... but it's now ours if we have to.

Wait, so how is it that owners of Backpage.com got arrested for what was on their site (prostitution) yet facebook and twitter get to remain free? They also allow all sorts of illegal radical BS, including things like calls for the eradication of an entire country, killing of homosexuals etc., and now they are silencing those who oppose these ideas. How are they protected???

So, here's my girl (again) posing for our snowy hike this past weekend.

Add me to the group that's willing to cut them a little slack. We saw levels of online shopping in 2020 never seen before. FWIW, I've talked to people recently that have also had packages lost and delayed via UPS.

USPS is currently in the middle of a perfect storm. Covid-19, still backed up from the holidays and an idiot Postmaster General appointed by Trump last summer. As soon as Louis DeJoy took office, he immediately instituted "cost cutting measures" that have done nothing but damage USPS. He stopped all overtime, removed many sorting machines and public mail boxes. He changed many work policies. the biggest being that any mail still in the sorting room at the end of the day was to be left until the next day. As a result, the back log has built up something terrible. Many people believe Trump appointed DeJoy for the sole purpose of wrecking the USPS before the election and mail in voting. Not to mention that DeJoy owns millions in stock from other carriers that are the direct competition to USPS. If Biden does nothing else, I hope he fires this azzhole. Despite all of that, USPS is still and always has been the highest rated government agency in customer satisfaction. They move millions of pieces of mail every single day. And most of it goes off without a hitch.

Me either. But, by the same token literally billions of people have been brought out of extreme poverty in the last 2 generations - in your and my lifetime. Some of the post WWII structures that are so popular to hate on right now have largely kept the continent of Europe largely peaceful for the last 75 years. Parts of it had basically been at war for the 500 years previous to that. So many diseases are treatable that would have been deadly or terribly debilitating only 75 years ago. Many of us have traveled farther in a day than our forefathers did in their entire lives. I could go on - but there’s reason for hope, too. The world and the people in it really are quite amazing.

I wish I could speak to the EZ, but I thought I might throw another good option in the mix if you haven't considered it. I suggest checking out the Walther CCP, which is extremely easy to rack. It has a very light recoil spring due to its piston delayed blowback design. It's also the most comfortable pistol (in my limited experience) I've ever held. 9mm with 8+1 capacity.

Why am I experiencing Déjà vu?

Not really in the price range but I would probably buy a S&W 625.

VTSAX (or VFIAX) and Chill. Invest excess cash in the above after paying bills if your emergency fund is loaded and you're not paying off bad debt. 401k and IRAs (traditional or Roth) are better than taxable, but taxable is fine for long term (>5yrs) saving goals. Best not to blow off retirement savings, especially if you can get a match from your employer along the way. Rinse, lather, repeat. Don't get cute.

My buddy uses 8.0 grains Accurate #5 for his 158 LSWC loads.

Without the buyers, the sellers wouldn't exist, and you could walk into your local store and buy what you want.

Some folks ain't right in the head, both sellers and buyers!

I understand everyone's anxiety and I'm not immune to the situation, but at this point I've decided wtf. I'm pretty much hunkered down and have been for months. Freezers are stocked, ammo supply is good. Where I live may not be immune to discord, but its pretty low key. I can start social security at any time or if it actually gets that bad take what I need. I'm old and whatever happens, happens. We just all need to take a deep breath and hope the Donald can sit tight. As for congress, it seems to be living up to my every expectation.

Lol. Hypocrisy you say. Nooooo. Nothing new for the seat of power. Toe their line, you must. Come on, lets admit it. 1A was really problematic anyway. Now no one ever has to worry about being butthurt by words or thoughts ever again. To be good is Gamma, because Gamma is good! Google + Apple + Amazon, how much of the web backbone infrastructure do y'all think they control? Deregulation had its consequences. It would appear capitalism and freedom of speech were not terribly compatible long term. Man, I hope they aren't working on brain scanners. Then we'd really be porked.

My main carry gun is a LC9S Pro. Great little pistol!!! But I get that the trigger might be a little too far forward for smaller hands. I have medium sized hands and it's perfect for me.

I needed this LOL so BAD today, thanks so much!

The fear of the vaccine is strange when I see the comments come from people that haven't really cared about their health in years(Not addressing anyone on TGO as I have no idea what your health situation is). We are a horribly unhealthy country. We eat the worst possible things, we don't exercise, and have one of the highest rates of obesity in the world and suddenly we're so concerned about our health that we won't get a vaccine because "there's no telling what's in it". For everyone that is so against the vaccine I would ask what exactly you think it will take to return life to normal? I don't see a path back to some level of normal unless we vaccinate most of the population and slow the rate of people going into the hospitals. The virus is killing the economy right now, not the government. I spoke to a friend of mine that owns a bar in Knoxville. He's allowed to be open for business, just has to close a bit earlier. His revenue is down 80% from 2019. People aren't coming into the bar, not because they can't, but because they don't want to. Tens of millions have had the shot worldwide and people are not dropping dead in the streets like the internet predicted.

The part about the no fly lists isnt fact. The people who were removed from flights were refusing to wear masks if you go to teh original posts of the videos.

Piker! I can do all 4!

As a CZ fan, this will be a good thing, I hope. CZ has owned Dan Wesson for years - I wish they still made Dan Wesson 715 revolvers, though.

I was just fixin' to post this. I saw it on another board. Yeah, a lot of folks seem disappointed that Colt may belong to a European company. However, its better than going to some huge conglomerate holding company that will just rape it and dump the leftovers. CZ is a gun company and a darn good one. Hopefully, they will keep making Colt firearms here in the USA. Heck, maybe we'll finally see a blue 2020 Python.

USPS Tracking: 1. We have it! 2. Ain't got a clue? 3. Delivered!

Brain Salad Surgery, nice.

In the last month-2 years NRA for wife-1 extra year for me. Upgraded my TGO membership to Lifetime Benefactor. Renewed GOA. Joined MSSA-not cheap.

All the poor fools who were duped by the Libs because they didn’t like something about Trump. They will have their eyes opened, like it or not, Amendments be damned

I can hear it now "aaaachhhthuallly arfdotcom was toooooxic and it wont go any further because they're just cleaning up and <insert reasons why it will be fixed/won't go further here> and beeeeesiiiiiiides <insert private company rant here>."

Please correct me if I’m wrong. But I was always taught that “if you feel like you are in imminent life threatening danger” you have the right to protect yourself