My avatar up and vanished one day. I've tried getting a new one several times but nothing happened. Even a call to the moderators didn't get a response. Any ideas?

I'm not a gun person. I was in the Army and shot several weapons and got my marksmanship badge and all, but otherwise I have no interest in them. Which brings up a question.

I have an old-time friend who's been into guns and target-shooting (and hunting, many years ago) for well over forty years. Now he has a collection of rifles and handguns stored in a safe. Let's just say he is with the camp that believes Uncle Sam may come over someday to take his weapons and wants to be ready to defend himself. Thus the weapons and lots of ammo.

But he lives in a free-standing, two-story house with windows on three sides. Even if his wife were to get in on the action, which is doubtful, they could only defend one or two positions at a time. So what, I've asked myself several times, is he thinking? I avoid talking with him about politics to avoid a shouting match, but one of these days I would really like to figure out how that computes.

I see it all the time: people at the supermarket blocking an aisle totally unaware that there's someone behind them, or pulling out of a parking slot (or crossing the street) without looking, or something similar. It seems to be getting more common.

Do any of you notice this?

I received two more forwarded emails from a long-time friend who is a Republican, and they were interesting.

The first one, titled "Do you believe in coincidences?" was about the Roswell crash in 1947 and about a dozen prominent Democrats who were born nine months afterwards. [Sigh] It only took a couple of minutes to find out that all but two were born either years before the crash or years after it, but what hit me was that so many people nowadays would probably read something like this and believe it right off the bat. Knowing my friend, I suspect he forwarded it to me as a gag, but the tone of the original email was so serious that I have to believe it was intended to piss people off.

The other one was about old-style simple humor, and the message was, how did we get so serious. This one really got me thinking: how DID we get so serious and angry? Or is it that we only seem to hear about the ones who are?

This may have been said before, and, if so, sorry for the redundancy.

I don't believe they supported that PoS. Those MFers would throw it under the bus at the drop of a hat. What I believe they supported was the status quo over the last four years: the corruption, the lies, the lack of accountability, the idea that the GOP is above the law, the racism -- and the hypocrisy. That PoS was just a symbol for all that.

As far as I'm concerned, every one of those GOPers broke his or her oath of office. And they want the lack of accountability to continue.

signed,

The Curmudgeon.

And one right back to you!

I was looking all over the net yesterday for a line-item breakdown of the $2 trillion package (H.R. 748, the CARES act), but all I could find was summaries. Specifically, I'd like to find something more detailed, like this, which is for the HEROES act:

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/whats-3-trillion-heroes-act

Any thoughts?