And when Mrs GoS starts collecting in 15 months, we'll make the same arrangement.

Here's a bit of fun about learning to play -

the French kick us out(though we have no place to go).

Recently had a conversation with a friend in California who asked when we were going back to the US to visit. We told him that unless there's a workable vaccine and the US changes, we're never going back. There is nothing there for us. Absolutely nothing.
Which is a tough thing to say. But has to be said.

We Americans have screwed up in so many ways, and I'm not sure that anything is going to get us back on the road to what we could have been. Certainly, as the expression goes, not in my lifetime.

I will add that living here is not a hardship and I'm not complaining. I'm very fortunate. Had we stayed in the US, I'd be dead.

This is the USPS Board of Governors. These six men have the power to fire Trump-appointee Louis DeJoy. They have the power to rollback Trump's hobbling of the USPS. They have the power to save a free and fair election. I encourage you to contact them and explain why mail-in voting matters to you.

#FairAndHonestElections

Robert Duncan:
mduncan@inezdepositbank.com
John Barger:
barger.jm@gmail.com
Ron Bloom:
ron.bloom@brookfield.com
Roman Martinez:
roman@rmiv.com
Donald Moak:
lee.moak@moakgroup.com
Wiliam Zollers:
directoraccessmailbox@cigna.com

I'm told that a couple of addresses bounced. Could be full mailboxes.

Here's a letter that a friend in Philadelphia has written -

Borrow, rephrase, and/or customize.

Gentlemen,
First of all, thank you for your service with respect to the United States Postal Service. The US postal system, established in 1775, is one of the gems of the nation. Established to connect every household in the US to every business, and each other, the USPS (reestablished in 1971) is a gem in the US governmental system. It is a necessity to the well being of our social, economic, and political life.

We NEED the USPS. Many depend on this service as a primary source of contact with medicine, wages, communication with insurance, taxes, the government in general and each other.
The USPS is provided as a self-supporting, not-for-profit service, looking to the well-being of the entire American nation.

There has been a recent move to reconfigure the USPS as something else. There has been an effort to undermine the USPS and its capabilities as a precursor to an upcoming election, at a time during the covid quarantine, when the service will be of utmost importance to the American populace in their ability to vote, an essential requirement of citizenship.

Please don't let the USPS be undermined at this point in time. To do so seems like a purely partisan effort to diminish the clarity and potential of every American to vote, safely. Perhaps there are changes in store for the service, but NOW IS NOT THE TIME to make those changes.

Please reinstate mail carrying efficiency, mailboxes, and the labor force necessary to deliver the mail ontime. I believe it is of the utmost importance. I will not support any candidate that attempts to interfere or allows the service to be undermined at this crucial and fraught time in our nation's history.

PRESERVE AND RESTORE THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE. We require it.

Thanks very much for your time.

I'm sorry that you lost a patient. And out of respect for you, I shan't post his name here.

Reading his obit, it's obvious that along with the bad things he did, there was a lot of good there.

Unfortunately he was a dinosaur.

First name - your favorite pattern(fabric etc)
Surname - your favorite deceased singer/songwriter.

'For NPR News, this is Pinstripe Prine.'

This could turn into the 'Thread That Never Dies'.

If we keep going.

I ask this question because I got into a reasonable discussion on Facebook with someone who said: - 'I consider myself generally conservative (not the ultra right who has hijacked the party just like the far left has the democratic party) with a bit of a libertarian slant.'

We did continue, and amazingly didn't go the usual 'Way of The Facebook'. As part of this I went and looked at the Democratic Party 2016 platform. And it's certainly not radical or hijacked (Radical for me would be getting rid of FATCA, The Patriot Act, and insuring UBI, but that's just me).

Here's a link to the 2016 Democratic Party Platform which I encourage everyone to read.

So, my bad, for posting a poll before I had my coffee. I've changed the poll questions so, if anyone wants to change their votes, please do so. My thanks to Brooklynite, Still_One, and Lochloosa for pointing out the error.

Also, the guy, although a libertarian he had a great take on the whole Confederate statues stuff - 'I've always looked at those statues as the original participation trophies. "Whose that guy? He one of the guys responsible for losing a war? Hey, let's build a statue."... I have never understood that.'