gmr548

Can't actually book through Google Flights, it just shows pricing across all the different platforms.

Prior to Israel I'd have considered him the best POTUS of my lifetime (starting, technically, with Bush 1 but I really don't remember much before Bush 2 second term) without serious competition. That may still be the case but I'd have to think about that now.

Yeah this won't be aimed at business travelers using corporate platforms. It's aimed at individual consumers using third party sites, and at the Chase and Amex travels of the world offering big incentives to book through their portals. I know Expedia handles those on the back end so it will be interesting to see if they qualify.

In general I've found the floor for food quality is higher in Mexico. Obviously there is a lot of fast food in both countries, but beyond that the low end in the USA is so goddamn saturated with chains and over-processed food.

Travel agents still exist?

Always wild to me that there are many posters on this board who graduated from UT and do not immediately gut check when they find themselves aligned with texags and Barry Switzer.

Even more ironic, every single person he named with the exception of Abraham Lincoln are in hell for, you know, owning other human beings as slaves.

1.) Did the RNC seriously just misidentify the most senior Republican in the US Government? 2.) He looks fine and do we all not remember the videos of Trump's fat ass attempting to navigate an incline?

I'd say don't sleep on Santa Maria style BBQ. A good tri tip sandwich, cole slaw, and some cold beer absolutely fucks. CA isn't the BBQ desert that much of the west is. But yeah, Texas BBQ is the undisputed king.

You'd be right, but that's because plenty of people feel their state's leadership is horrible everywhere, Texas included. A quick google search indicates CA governor Newsom has historically had a higher approval rating than Abbott - the most popular of Texas's leadership - until very recently, which seems to coincide with Newsom putting more focus on being a surrogate for the Biden campaign and seemingly positioning himself for a future presidential run. AKA a major reason a lot of Texans dislike Ted Cruz. TX legislature lives in the < 50% approval range and was well into the negatives at the end of the 2023 session. Same story in CA. Two sides of the same coin. I'd imagine you'd probably find similar cases in most states. Congress thinks it's a good day when approval goes north of 20%. People don't like politicians, news at 11.

I'm in multifamily, which is a why I mostly lurk in this thread and then pop off in general housing market discussion or when talk veers to commercial. That's the other reason I'd be inclined to find a good buyers agent - I understand the language, but I also understand that there's things I'm not going to know deep in the weeds of a single family deal. I've been advising my mom through selling her home recently and she's been really frustrated with, well, everything that makes this true. All I could muster is "Yeah... in my experience the best and brightest don't dream of working in title."

You type like texags. People, we are dealing with a very intelligent individual here. If Trump wins the election - and make no mistake, despite the optimism on this board he is a slight but distinct favorite at this juncture - he will do so while his record moves to 0-3 in the popular vote. He will end up 10MM-12MM votes in the red over three elections (even more if he loses), not to mention costing the GOP countless downballot races. In no world did the prior or potential future election of the election of Donald Trump symbolize some groundswell of popular support for him or MAGA's platform of victimhood and cultural grievance; or likewise, a popular rebuke of the Democratic policy platform, progressivism, or whatever else you like to yell at clouds about. To even suggest that it does is phenomenally stupid and in no way grounded in reality. Trump ran behind Mitt Romney's 2012 performance both times he has been on the ballot and will again in 2024. The only thing his election represents is a subtle realignment of political coalitions that created a significant advantage in the Electoral College; a quirk in our system, which is designed to empower the minority and make political change hard. lol If it thinks like aggy, sounds like aggy...

Yeah, you have to remember the audience in this thread is people going out of the way to talk about real estate on a college football message board. A lot of us work in the industry. This thread is a very cherry picked sample. I'm not saying RE agents are categorically great and everyone should use one but even a half decent agent offers some value to the median market participant. They're not going away. I'm an underwriter; very comfortable reading market data, purchase agreements, loan docs, etc. and still plan to use a buyer's agent for our first home just to make sure there is another set of eyes. Maybe this thins the herd a bit because the useless ones can't coast to 3% with all buyers, but that's about it.

Your friends take is interesting. Haven't heard someone say "We're generating too much electricity in Texas!"

That's because of the demographic of those leaving; it's been predominantly low/middle income earners for a long time. And also, in the grand scheme of things the number of people leaving the state is a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the population. There's still very much a housing shortage out there. Supply and demand in housing is as much about dollars to go around as it is headcount, and the volume of money in the market has arguably increased. Pre-COVID, CA was a net negative domestic migration state but not by anything approaching the margins of recent years because there was net positive inflow of highly educated/earning subgroup. The population still grew (pretty substantially - only FL and TX added more people between 2010-2020) because international migrations and natural increase was > net out migration. With COVID ushering in remote work more of those households understandably left because they didn't need to physically be in CA anymore and paying CA income taxes. I expect CA's population will more or less stabilize around its current level as the labor market seems to have reached a new equilibrium with hybrid/remote work, and there's employment upside with the tech sector that will probably draw some people out there in its next growth cycle. It's probably still the biggest state in the 2030 Census but Texas seems likely to pass it at some point in the 2030's.

This is pretty simplistic. People walk around feeling fine and then find out they have Stage III or IV cancer. Things aren't always as they seem on the surface. The vast majority of people that make interstate moves do so either because of household economics (job opportunity, housing costs, whatever) or proximity to family. It's not typically some dream of living in Texas - although, like others have mentioned, I do know a few transplants really into the cowboy cosplay bit so it is out there. The segment of the population that actually, consciously votes with their feet is very small because that generally requires a level of financial stability that most of the population doesn't have, and most people aren't willing to up and leave their family/friends, find a new job or close their business, or whatever the case may be to make a political point. The growth machine - which at this point is self sustaining and plays a nontrivial role in the continued economic expansion of the state - will end for Texas at some point, just like it has elsewhere. At that point Texas is going to be left with a lot of very inefficient, expensive to maintain sprawl without the growth to pay for it. At some point, somewhere else is going to be the more cost effective and appealing option for businesses and citizens, and you'll see relocations out of Texas to hotspot X just like people once moved in droves from the east coast to the Rust Belt, and from EST and CST to California. It will be interesting to see where the state goes from there. It has advantages California, the northeast (near endless supply of flat, buildable land across which to continuously sprawl), and the Rust Belt (international migration, diversified economy) didn't have when the growth cycle ended in those places. But it'll also face some unique challenges with climate change/water security (this is an issue for CA too), transition away from oil (no CR, it'll happen at some point even if it is literally pumping it all out of the ground), etc.

If you're coming from Texas in June I think you'll find anything short of like 90 days in WA to be too short. Depends on a lot of things - what you're interested in, what's the standard for lodging, budget, etc. You could probably make a week work between those two cities or stretch it to a full two weeks The one thing I'd really highly recommend is 2-3 weeknights in Port Angeles to explore Olympic National Park, if you guys are remotely into that sort of thing. The town itself is sleepy but the Olympic Peninsula is just epic.

Chase transfers to Hyatt, and their points can often go pretty far. I don't have a specific resort rec for a big family vacation, but I'd say look into Hyatt's resort portfolio (they have been recently acquired several additional resort brands). You can probably find an all inclusive that gets you a pretty good return on points.

The scientific term is the texags effect

Yep. I remember the absolute meltdown when Abbott let his sanity slip out from undercover and added a third week of early voting in 2020. Next action on that will be in the other direction, and only applicable to counties with a population of n-1, where n = the population of Dallas County.

Maybe this was fear of being subjected to aggy football?

I can tell you've never been to Texas. You should come down to visit. Lovely weather this time of year.

Meant to multiquote this but somehow fucked it up. I'd actually be curious to be a fly on the wall in Chinese discussions on American elections. On the one hand, Trump clearly hurts them in the short term with his trade vendetta. It's economically destabilizing and with that comes a lot of risk for them. But Trump is also a much larger risk to American stability, which could elevate China. Long term, if Trump guts the US federal government and ushers in an economic meltdown, there's no doubt an opportunity for China.