BerniePragle

There are places in Kentucky and PA where this is not recommended. Just about anybody in town could login your account.

Great for her getting into wrestling. It will have a lot of benefits, some you may not realize now. What do you do with your hands? Sit on them! I'll give you a little something else to think about... Both of my daughters grew up long before girls wrestling became popular, but I always wrestled and played with them from the time they were tykes until they went away to college. Looking back, I've always been amazed that one of them or my son or me didn't fall wrong and break something. The older daughter played a lot of softball and the younger one was a distance swimmer. Both also took a few years of taekwondo. I'm very proud that I raised them to be mentally and physically strong. I worried a lot less when they went to college that they could get attacked and physically overpowered by a young man. The young man would have no idea what he was in for. Once they got a little older, I taught them that you don't play fair in those situations, nothing is off limits. The downside of this was that a few times they hurt me real bad. I still remember when the older one was maybe 2 or 3 years old, she wound up and out of the blue walloped me in the belly in a store or somewhere with a lot of other people. Only problem is she was about a foot low. Everybody but me thought it was hilarious. One time when the younger daughter was about 15 we were riding in an elevator somewhere and I started to pick on her pretending to box. She just ignored me so I relaxed and she punched me on that bone in your upper arm where all the muscles come together. I was actually black and blue for over a month. I didn't do that again.

I'm going to add a little bit of "old guy" advice to this. Don't expose yourself as much. Simplify your life. Don't use a card or your phone to buy a bag of potato chips. I go to the bank every so often and they have this machine that dispenses this green stuff that works great (so far) for buying stuff in person. On line...another story.

There have been many, many cases where the rules were not strict enough, yet the rich guys always want them rolled back even more. Many, many cases where large companies, generally financials, have been fined 10s of millions for screwing investors, customers, and employees out of billions. I like those odds, where can I get some of that action?

Cool story about your god-daughter. I like the line : "Makin' my rounds all over town Puttin' out old flames" I'm generally not a big fan of country music, but they definitely have the catchiest or most insightful lyrics. Sometimes funny, sometimes tear-jerking. Also sometimes great instrumentals. There were good guitar and fiddle in this around the middle of the song. Very short though.

You're a very thoughtful, logical person. I wish there were more people like you on both sides of this issue (these issues). I'm guessing it's been quite a while since your dad's accident, but you have my condolences.

Is it a 100% comparison? No. Is it a 0% comparison? Again, no. You can't honestly think the VP of sales at Remington, S&W, etc, etc give two shits whether the guns they manufactured and sold are used for target practice, hunting, suicide, or murder. They are merely numbers on the monthly sales figures. I find that abhorrent. I'm certainly not without my faults, but I couldn't sleep at night. Before you go to a VP of sales at GM is similar argument, you know and I know it is different. Very, very, very... few people commit suicide or murder with a car. I also grew up semi-rural (after age 10). When I was a young man, guns were predominately for hunting, and a little for protection INSIDE the home. Now the gun and ammo manufacturers have done a very good job of convincing people that if they leave their home unarmed, the bad guy is gonna get them for sure. Also they've done a great job of convincing people that it's cool to own semi-automatic weapons, even for target practice. For heavens sake, go bowling, shoot pool or darts. Again, sales figures. Again, abhorrent.

Some good advice from John Nemeth. We've seen him twice, amazing harmonica player. He doesn't start playing till 2:00, but the kids on geetars are excellent too.

I'll accept your professional opinion.

You guys are xxxxing nuts.

Funny, there are a lot of politicians, lobbyists, defense contractor executives, and others in the US that I would call "arms dealers". Other countries too.

100%. Fundamentally no different than TV before, radio before that, and newspapers before that. Many, many elections were influenced by the media previously to social media. The difference being social media is media on steroids with respect to this. Much like nuclear power, the jeanie is out of the bottle and not going back in.

Referring to fudged government statistics as "science and knowledge"... I honestly don't know whether to laugh at you or feel sorry for you.

I really like everything about this new forum, but there are times like this when we need this reaction emoji:

No problem. Been there, done that. You gave me very good info though. I checked, Lowes sells 4x8x1/2" sheetrock for around $15. I would have no idea of their "cost", all companies play games with that, but I can't imagine it's actually more than $8 or 9 tops, meaning that the shipping cost is very significant. It simply doesn't add up! Actually, I think this is probably a bad example by me of American companies taking advantage of tax and corporate laws by outsourcing. I suspect it is more an example of currency manipulation or dumping of goods by a foreign company, which used to be illegal. Anyway, someone(s) in Washington is either asleep at the wheel or on the take, or both. There is absolutely no question of that. Our country's trade policies have us on the fast track to the poorhouse. It's not a D or R issue, it's a Washington issue.

That's usually my schtick, Mike. I think you're off by a decimal point. $10,000÷1800 is about $5.55 per sheet. Nonetheless, I had no idea of the volume or cost of shipping containers. Thanks, that does help to put it in perspective.

I absolutely believe that American companies are incentivized by tax law and corporate law to outsource products to other countries. I know nothing about the production of sheet rock and very little about the production of plywood, but both absolutely have to be extremely automated, using very little direct labor. To me, this eliminates the old "cost of labor" justification for outsourcing to China, yet that's what I see in Lowes and Home Depot, Chinese sheet rock and plywood. When you add in what has to be very significant shipping costs, things don't add up. These are two extreme examples, yet they prove the point. When I go to the grocery store and see fresh milk from China, I'm moving somewhere, I don't know where. Other countries, for example Switzerland, very much try to keep their manufacturing at home. We need to use their example.

I take an alternate semi-head in the sand approach to trying to figure out what's going on in Washington, lower governments, and the business world. I consume very little "news" from much of anywhere. I simply watch what's going on in the world around me and ask Scott Adams' question, "Which is more likely". This is how I have come up with my view that what any of us individually believes, or how we vote, is immaterial. As long as the general public is split about 50/50 on what we've been told are "the issues", "they" can contiue to pick our bones and our childrens' bones nearly clean. It's all simply a shell game. We're the patsies, the rich, powerful guys are the winners, and our taxes and purchases are the money being put into the game. The real problem is there is almost no integrity or empathy in government or Big Business. Granted, I'm less "real time" than someone who is keeping more abreast of the goings on, but I like to think I get BSed less. I'm not reading the recipe nor watching the cook prepare the food. I'm merely eating it and know it tastes like crap. And, it's the only place to eat in town.

I didn't explain well enough. I didn't mean writer as in who wrote the article. One of the suggestions was Donald Trump is... a writer. That's what I thought was laughable. I'm sure dad paid someone to write Donald's stuff from grade school to college.

You'd probably like this girl. My wife and I have seen her a few times. One time was in an old converted church in Oxford, NY (hometown of JP O'Connor). We were in the front pew, honestly. She is an amazing guitarist and singer and the drummer here, Go Go Ray is the real deal. The church was right in the middle of town, houses all around and she played till midnight. I wondered what the neighbors thought.

Donald Trump is... None of those choices would have been on my list. I think the "writer" is laughable.

I tried to sign up for this but I didn't have the necessary prerequisite courses.

I'm guessing in school BB spent a lot of time getting stuffed in a locker.