TwiceHorn

Attempting to explain his behavior isn't cutting him a break. He's a fairly unique specimen among Trumpkins. Bottom line, he's as craven as the rest of them, but he also seems to be something of a special case.

Yep, he's not deciding for himself among those ideas, he's letting others do it for him. It's really hideous. If he wasn't powerful and aspiring to more, it really would be sad.

I think he's extremely confused and conflicted. He's been broadly exposed to a) Appalachian poverty b) enlisted military service c) a public education at a giant state school d) extreme academic elitism e) venture capitalism in its worst form from an autistic homosexual German-American-New Zealander (who not coincidentally is probably extremely conflicted himself). This guy's got so many ideas swirling around in his head and lacks the intellectual and personal strength to decide which ones are authentically those he subscribes to.

I think here's the fundamental problem with Trumpism. Rightly or wrongly, we have a lot of people that feel a) disenfranchised or marginalized in today's society and b) powerless to change that. I'd say a major driver of that is wealth and income inequality, which has been increasing, not coincidentally, with the rise of what underlies Trumpism: a fundamental mistrust of government and society. It also coincides with "deregulation" and concepts like "trickle down" economics.

I think their whiteness and ruralness trumps German heritage. I think that NYT article nails it: whites are fragile and those who feel marginalized react severely, whether they're actually marginalized or not, and the targets of their reaction are minority groups.

Great job, Devin.

Someone needs to gently break Ella's foot again.

RIP.

My Dad was a devotee of the Rocket Engine. IIRC, Oldsmobile was the first non-Cadillac to offer the OHV V-8 sometime after WWII. At that time, Mom and Dad didn't fancy themselves Cadillac types, but the OHV V-8 was pretty spirited. So that did kind of mean something to my Dad. He wasn't enough of a car guy to appreciate that emission controls had ruined everything. That Delta 88 essentially replaced a 1969 green one with a 2-bbl 455. That car would go, despite its bulk and made quick work of late 70s and early 80s Z-28s in impromptu city-block drag races.

My parents had same. They got to return it for a vehicle with a Rocket Engine. But by that time, the Rocket 350 sucked even more than the Chevy 350. I think it was a bigger block and had longer intake passages so was even more gravely affected by clumsy emission controls.

Don't let the fans off the hook, either. It is ultimately us that drive this shit.

What relation?

New here?

Basic employment law seems to be kind of all-lawyer adjacent. In the course of being employed as lawyers and employing others, we pick up a fair amount of the fundamental shit. Sometimes that level of knowledge can be helpful to a layperson, other times it takes something more complex and nuanced.

As related previously, I took 316K from Kaulbach, a giant class in Jester. We had to do a midterm paper that we could turn in basically any time after the middle of the semester. At one point, he said, "people, midterm papers are coming in and a lot of them are junk. Please don't turn in junk. Here's a good one," and began reading mine. All the Jewish sorority girls were eyeing me for about two weeks. That was the sole English class I took at UT. In my time, three were required to graduate, E306, which everyone placed out of, E316, which no one avoided, and a third that wasn't offered so any "substantial writing component" class would do. Before I graduated, the College of Engineering mandated that the third English, which was supposed to have been "Writing in Different Disciplines," be Technical Writing and all engineers would be required to take it. One hitch, they didn't offer it. So I took another class at Richland. It's now what I do for a living.

During my time, E306 was the one anyone literate placed out of by SAT achievement test. E316 was mandatory to graduate and came in three flavors, American, British, or World Lit. I took World from Kaulbach and enjoyed it. Still have my Norton's from then.

Not defending Elmo here, but this is the tale of the tape: I suspect most of this goes on far below Elmo's sightlines.

I don't do employment per se. I do covenants not to compete and trade secrets. GoLL is an employment lawyer

Strippers.

Trying to come up with a counter-narrative to Russia's increasingly known interference with our election. Just like the "Biden crime family" was an attempt to counter-narrate Trump's crimes.

Fify.

Same as it ever was. The left half is more aggressively stupid, though.

Mountain lions see you long before you see them, if you ever do at all. The vast, vast majority of snapping turtle injuries come from people mishandling them. They don't bite people in the water.

People will buy a lot of Kubotas.

Fluke multimeter. And, as Archie Bunker said in reference to Watergate, everyone knows you don't hire the Krauts (Haldeman, Ehrlichman) to do the electronics. You want the Japs for that.