Smokin

I think there is also a large group like me that is solid middle of the road. Have an EV, don't have one, I don't care. Just don't make me subsidize your car purchase and charging. Also, don't try to convince me that they're the greatest invention ever, that there are zero downsides to them, and any potential problem is simply that not enough people are buying them which causes production issues. That is a one sentence summary of multiple conversations I've had with Tesla owners. It's BS and any rational person would see it. I drive an F-150 and I like it in general, but just like any other vehicle, there are significant pluses and minuses to it. For example, Tesla's autopilot makes Ford's Bluecruise (autopilot-ish) look like the code was written by a bunch of jr high kids for a science project. But I can drive 750 miles without stopping for gas, and when I do, I have another 750 range 5 minutes later. Or a 5 gallon jerry can in the bed gives me another 100 miles in an area where I can't depend on finding a gas station. I'm happy that Musk is doing what he's doing and pushing technology development. Once battery advances make an EV reasonable for me, I'll be happy to read a book as my car drives me to the airport.

I doubt there is a much dirtier energy than lithium ion batteries from materials mined and largely assembled in countries that either only pretend to follow environmental agreements or don't even pretend to try. And that's not even starting with the slave labor problem.

Nice, I'm looking at a similar project next summer before the tax rebates expire, minus the EV. Just not practical for my part of the country and lifestyle. Are you doing both wind and solar? I haven't gotten into the detailed planning yet, but I'm thinking the combo would be helpful when the weather is bad (dark clouds often equal lots of wind). The EVs would have been great living on base as an LT. Free "gas" for all of UPT.

Totally agree. Until battery tech gets way better, a full electric truck just isn't realistic where I live. But I would be interested in a good plug-in hybrid. One that could drive a to/from town on electric only, but then still be able to drive 500+ miles without stopping to charge/gas up. I briefly considered the Lightning and planned to use a gas generator as a mileage extender until I did the math on how many additional miles I would get on a night of charging from a portable generator. I don't remember the exact math, but it was something like 15 miles for 8 hours on a 100lb generator.

I know the vast majority of truck owners use about 10% of the capability of the truck. But, if you're one of those 10% and use it off road at all, take a look at the clearance. A cybertruck parked next to my truck the other day and I was floored at the difference. The cybertruck looked like it has 33" tires from the factory and somehow has the ground clearance of an Accord. If you don't take your truck off road, then this is irrelevant.

Based on the picture they chose, it looks like Navy Times is not a fan. If Navy Times is anything like AF Times, that might be a good sign.

Agreed. I like the idea of Musk rolling in and chopping heads, but platforms that we have literally built our national security plans around probably needs a bit deeper look. Cameras are great, until it's cloudy...

Factory. I'm thinking about getting into reloading, buy my wife tells me I have too many hobbies already... I think Barnes bullets are absolutely awesome. As I mentioned before, I dropped a pig in its tracks with a 9mm. The bullet punched through bone and lodged in the spine. I found it cutting up the pig and the pedals were perfectly intact. No lead bullet is going to do that. Also, since I eat what I shoot, the thought of a lead bullet retaining only 50% of its weight is disturbing. That means there is a lot of lead in that meat. Copper bullets retain close to 100% of their weight and copper is ok to eat and even good for you in small quantities. So, for me, copper bullets are a no brainier. They work better to drop the game quickly and they're better for the meat. If you don't reload, there are a couple ways to get Barnes rounds. Barnes makes a few rounds themselves but they're a bit tough to find. Same with some other manufacturers. Federal makes a bunch of rounds with Barnes bullets and they're at most stores and on www.guidefitter.com with a military discount for not much more than you'd buy lead locally.

Taking your chosen or potential home defense weapons pig hunting is a great trial by fire. Pigs are similar enough to humans that I understand military trauma medicine schools used to (maybe still do?) shoot pigs then have the students try to patch them up to practice for human gunshot wounds. Gel tests are only worth so much as humans are not made of uniform gel. You see a gel test that only penetrates six inches (that's what she said) and you might think the round is bad. Until you realize that a human chest is mostly lungs surrounded by a relatively thin section of muscle/tissue/ribs. In the hunting world, I hear far too many people talk about 'knock-down power' as if that were some quantifiable thing that actually kills something. Animals and people alike die from either loss of blood pressure (bleeding out, heart shot, etc) or from stopping the signals that control the body (head shot, severing the spine, etc). Shooting pigs has made me realize that short of an actual cannon, they're going to take a bit to die from a lung shot regardless of the cartridge, including rounds far more powerful than most would consider for home defense. I've had fellow hunters lose a medium sized deer hit with a 300 win mag in open country because it ran away. Pigs will also fall over in their tracks with quality bullet in 9mm if you shoot their head/neck/spine/shoulder. People will be no different. I'm going to get some of the rounds that @brabus mentioned for the 300BO and give them a try. I'd also highly recommend anyone looking at a new bullet to look at Barnes all copper bullets (haven't tried them in 300BO). I've shot 7-8 animals ranging from pigs to elk with them and the furthest any have run has been around 30 yards. All have opened completely and the couple bullets I've recovered have retained their pedals despite hitting bone. I have them in my home defense guns for that reason.

One downside of 300BO is round expansion if you're going the suppressed subsonic route. You need to buy a high quality round or shoot normal supersonic speeds or you risk it not opening up. I've shot a pig with a suppressed subsonic 300BO, heard the nice thwack indicating a good hit, only to watch the pig trot away like nothing happened. My mind was blown until I looked more into that round afterwards and found it was notorious for not opening up at subsonic speeds. I'm sure the pig died, but not even close to recoverable with no blood trail in a swamp. If that were some dude that broke into my house on drugs, he'd require many more rounds to stop him. I had that gun as a backup home defense gun and swapped out the ammo for full speed rounds after that. I also had worried about rounds missing or going straight through a bad guy into my kids rooms, but decided after that I would just have to keep my home's geometry in mind if I woke up to a noise in the middle of the night. Might be easier said than done in some houses depending on the layout. Edit to add: depending on the shotgun, I've had nearly as many feed/ejection/misc problems with shotguns as I have with a well maintained AR. So don't let the 'ARs are more difficult to operate' though keep you from using one as a home defense gun. I think a good AR is absolutely the best home defense gun you could get. Few bad guys will break into a possibly occupied house by themselves unless they're really high. Then you either have someone that will take many rounds to put down or multiple bad guys to deal with. Either way I want more rounds available than most shotguns offer.

Physically resided on a farm? No, but my family does have a farm where I spend a fair amount of time and has switched 3 crops in the last 5 years, so yes, I have an idea. If there is a potential to double the income, farmers will figure it out.

True, wheat prices would jump considerably, but would recover for the next harvest season. We're still paying farmers not to farm and many of the midwest's most productive farms are growing corn to turn into gas rather than feed people. There is considerable excess production available and that's not even considering some of the greenbelt acreages that could be farmed productively but are basically just hayed for the tax savings. If people thought prices would continue to stay high, many of those greenbelt people would jump off the sideline and start leasing to nearby farmers.

Meanwhile, the young guys are googling to figure out what is being said here...

The defense of America is clearly provided for in the enumerated clauses so the Air Force is obviously well within the Federal powers. And, yes, I'm fully thinking of the broader implications. Just to toss out a number, I consider well over half of the Federal government and the things it does to be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, Americans have come to expect an absurdly huge Federal government and the handouts that come with it. Which is also why we are over a year of GDP in debt and some people can't build a house on their own land because someone once saw an endangered salamander there 30 years ago.

Because it is unconstitutional. The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Education is never addressed in the Constitution, thus it is reserved to the states or to the people. Either one of those, but not to the Federal government.

As I understand it, the threshold for libel is way higher when speaking about a public figure. However, if someone really said that they were a Russian agent, I think that would still meet that threshold.

Someone accused him, therefore he is unfit. Sounds about right. Oh, also he's an insider threat security risk because he's a Christian as classified by a security manager that admits to watching MSNBC while driving to work. As if watching MSNBC wasn't bad enough, he said he was watching it while driving to work. Yeah, I trust that dude's judgement. It would be refreshing to hear someone make an argument for or against based on his merits.

I'm wondering if Gaetz's nomination is intentional distraction. I think that could easily be something in Trump's playbook. 'Hey, everyone look at this bat-shit crazy nomination/draft executive order/mean-tweet over here while I quietly prep to cut the entire Department of Education'.

I dislike the loyalty hiring criteria, but it is understandable given the number of people from his first admin that have written books for personal profit claiming he said some pretty terrible things. I've said some bad things among friends when I was angry that would look really bad in a headline (if I were someone that anyone cared to read about), but my friends were "loyal" and haven't held unreasonable things I said against me when they knew I didn't really mean it. Given how many people have stabbed him in the back, by either repeating things they probably shouldn't have or straight up making it up, it is a little tougher to blame him for wanting loyalty this time around.

Some may be mail in ballots that had questionable signatures and needed to be verified, ballots that the machine rejected and have to be counted by hand, things like that. But in general, I agree. I voted in person this year for the first time in 20 years and the machine took my ballot as fast as copier and a little green light came on indicating that everything was good and it was counted. My vote was registered into the state count within seconds.

Legacy carriers drew down or entirely cancelled flying into Israel despite people paying >$10K/seat for first class because of potential for violence. Spirit sees the opportunity to sell seats for Haiti at $69? Lets go!

People don't have to like Trump to have picked him over Harris. I don't like him at all and think he's generally a bad person. But I prefer his views on government over those of Harris (who is also a bad person in my opinion). I know there are some die hard supporters that ignore/justify everything bad he has done (and he's done plenty of bad things), but I would bet the majority of people that voted for him are not in that category. He's personally done plenty of bad things and I disagree with many of his policies, but as often happens in these arguments, people can point out just as many bad things the other side does. So, it all comes down to which policies do you support, and which bad things they do are reasonable to overlook. He's a narcissist and I think the majority of what he does/says is to seek approval rather than following his beliefs. But, the left has engaged in absurd levels of law-fare, demonized half the country, overtly supported castrating kids and taking those kids away from parents that don't support the government castrating their kids. I'll take the narcissist over someone that wants to give my kids castration drugs without my approval.

I agree and some credit is to be given. However, that credit is somewhat decreased by two factors: 1 - It wasn't close. He got 42 more electoral votes than necessary and won every single swing state. A Republican President hasn't gotten that many electoral votes since Bush/Dukakis. Had it been close and taken 3-4 days to count the rest of the votes (still counting AZ? WTF?), they might be singing a different tune. 2 - After all the criticism of Trump not accepting 2020, even the mainstream media would point out the utter hypocrisy.

That would rock DC to the foundations (or muck where foundations should be). That would be amazing and so beneficial to our country if people actually SERVED for two terms rather than making a career and enormous personal wealth out of being an elected official. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think it'll ever happen.

This is contrary to much of the 'get out the vote' movements, but I personally think a low voter turnout is not inherently a bad thing. The level of ignorance of many voters is absolutely shocking. If you don't take the time to become informed enough to make a reasonable decision, then you shouldn't vote. I also agree that many voters were likely completely uninspired by either option and simply decided it wasn't worth their time if a ballot didn't magically show up in their mailbox unrequested.