Sailor Jerry

I also like this idea. It would cool to look back on and say stuff like "I was there at the beginning" or "I remember when the planet passed X millions of people", etc.

Nobody has ever said anything about requiring college diplomas. Hell I've only ever taken 3 college level classes. I started off making biscuits at a McDonalds when I was 15 back in the mid-80's.......made $3.35/hour. Did I ever once think that was what I was going to do with the rest of my life....hell no. I decided to make a change to better myself. I joined the navy, went through the Electronic Technicians training and did 20 years. Now I get a monthly pension from Uncle Sam, free medical for life for myself and my wife and my kids ( I think until they're 25 or something if I can prove they are in school) and the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Now I'm retired from the navy, working for a large international company at a power plant as a plant technician, just had a house built last year and have 2 newer cars. So yes, it can be done, I'm prove it can be done. Yes sacrifices were made, living the military lifestyle, me doing six 6-month deployments plus countless other underways ment I was gone and away from my family alot. I'm just of people saying "give me, give me" instead of "Hey, does anyone out there in big wide world have any ideas on how I can ahead". This newer/younger generation thinks they deserve instant gratification, I mean why work for anything when if they whine enough, stuff just gets haned to them. Whats that saying....."give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime", it doesn't go "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, keep giving that man all your fish and he won't learn shit"!

We seem to be going around in circles here. If anyone who is under the age of 34 and is in fairly healthy shape, there is always a way out.....it's called the military. Now before some of you go off and start in with the......"I'd never work for our government and fight in their needless wars" crap.....you're just biting your nose off to spite your face and makes no sence. If folks thought that they were trapped in a dead end job with no way out......put the pride aside and do what you must in order to get ahead. If an opportunty is there for people to improve themselves and don'ttake it because of some pride crap, well then, you'll get no sympathy from me. Now, to those that are over 34 years old you may ask, good question. Most folks start working at around 16, so if you worked for 18 years......all of them for minimum wage and tried to start a family while doing that.....well, thats just dumb as well. So now, lets assume that you had some skills or a good job for awhile and got downsized and now you have to work any job you can get.....thats when the mi imum wage jobs come in.....to be used as a temporary solution until you can get back on your feet. There always seems to be excuses for not wanting to change how peoples lives go......"Oh no, I'm trapped with no way out, poor me, poor me......now give me more money for doing nothing more than being a high school drop out and flippin burgers, I won't do more, I just want more".

So what do you think will happen to the poverty level if the minimum wage goes up to $15/hour? Do you think the poverty level will remain where it is and all these people will be lifted out of poverty? Screw it....lets just make minimum wage $20/hour.......maybe even where I am at $30/hour! It will happen.....whereever the minimum wage lands, that will be the new poverty level. I can't speak for everone else but I enjoy the fact that I'm a fairly solid middle class (I also have a small retirement from the Navy). I've worked long and hard to get where I am today and I'll be damned if I'll get dragged down because folks who are not wanting to work to get theirs are going to whine and cry and say "oh it's so not fair....I do nothing but I want everything". I know there are some folks who through no real fault of their own end up in a tight spot for a while and I understand that, but where I currently live, there are a ton of meth-heads who if they are able to land a jod, it will definitely be a minimum wage one. These are the folks who piss me off and are the ones crying. Minimum wagd jobs are not designed to worked at long term, they are designed for folks to learn some skills and move on, or to use temporarily until they can get back on their feet.

The problem with raising the minimum wage to any level......within a year, that level will become the new poverty level. Also, once the minimum wage goes up, companies/businesses will want to maintain the same margin of profit which means......to offset their new payroll increase, they will increase the price of their products. What does this mean to the middle class......their money will be worth less. If someone makes $40k/year now and say $100/week on groceries, or $5200/ year thats what about 13% of their annual income. Now when the prices go up, say your new grocery bill is now $125/week, or $6500/year, thats now just over 16% of their annual budget. Might not seem like much, but that is only area of ones expenses. If all the other areas of their budget goes up by 3-5% minimum, transportation, education, insurances, etc. Starts cutting into what that person might have been putting toward savings/retirement which means what......people will have to work longer before they can retire. So in my mind, the poverty level will rise with the new minimum wage which means the middle class will shrink. The new minimum wage might help those folks for about a year or so.....but once prices start to go up, they'll just be screaming for another increase.

If you speaking to gain some realism.....the gasoline thing makes sence all day long and twice on Sundays. Your view about having a degree of wastage about ammo is completely false. Spending 10 of my 20 years in the U.S. Navy on 3 different warships (1Aegis Cruiser and 2 Aegis Destroyers) we would leave home port for 6-7 month deployments half way across the world and come back with the same loadout we left with. As for quick reation forces......I'm sure our marines and solides could be deployed to anywhere in the world within a 24 hour period. If you want to add some realism to the warfare front make some thing like, if a nation has an airforce and wishes to attack someone on a different continent, then they can attack say 1 game day after declaring war. If the nation doesn't have an airforce, then then they shouldn't be able to attack for say 5-6 game days after they declare war.

Like I'm trying to say who gets to say/decide what needs "improvements or a solution"? A large portion of folks in the U.S. like their guns and the laws just the way they are and think nothing is wrong with them.....are those folks wrong?

Ok.......you asked for it.....

Ok, you got me on the elected officials.....but who is to say we lag behind in our social development. Just because other countries have done certain things for awhile doesn't mean we all should be doing it. Some of us here think the majority of our laws are just fine and don't need to be changed just to suit the minority of people or those from other countries. Being a 20 year U.S. navy retiree, I've visited over 20 different countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East and was exposed to those countries laws and customs (albeit for only short periods of time). Some laws were pretty cool and wished we could adopt over here in the U.S., but some other made you think.....WTF were these people thinking when they made that law! At the end of the day however, I taught to respect those laws and realized that those laws are what make everyone a little different from each other which is a good thing.....diversity. So hearing folks that are not from the U.S. telling us we behind socially or that our laws are old and need to be brought up to modern times.....I say worry about the laws in your own county first, leave our laws to us.

That may be true, but who are the ones who get to decide which ones get changed and which ones don't?

Not to get to far off topic here, but some of your laws from 70 years ago probably weren't the greatest of laws I'd imagine.

So you want to see huge 6'-8", 350 lbs. guys running around in lingerie? Hey, who am I to judge.

Granted......but now the rest of world breaks out into war! I wish my housd was paid for!

We also have world class sporting events like

Just out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about bows/crossbows and arrows?

We also have many great museums with many great works of art such as Oh look, here is one of our master artisans now hard at work

Well, if you are looking to stay out of needless wars, then come check us out at the Green Protection Agency.

So, what if I'm not Filipino but I like lumpia and pancit?

I'm currently listening to my bathroom ventilation fan as I'm doing my morning "office" ritual!

Being summertime and all, why not stop on by and we'll fire up the old BBQ we'll kick back and enjoy some good eats and just shoot the breeze for awhile.

You do realize that there are only 1 0 kinds of people in the world, those that get it.....and those that don't!!!!!!

"A white horse jumped in the mud"...... Dirty enough for you? I could go on with "Dead Baby", "Helen Keller" or a few ethnic ones, but I'm sure I'd get the boot fairly quickly!

We also have our fair share of celebrities......like: And......

We are the most interesting alliance in Orbis! We have many leather bound books and our houses smell of rich mahogany. Sharks have a week dedicated to us. We are the life the party, even those we don't attend. We train our parakeets in the art of falconry. Stay green and neutral my friends!

Trust me, once folks have more cash on hand, they'll start needing the aluminum and steel to start building their banks, malls and stadiums. Also once more folks have grown and more conflicts start springing up, the need for steel, gas, munitions and aluminum will climd as folks start building their militaries up. It will happen, not sure when, but it will happen.