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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. Brisketexan

    NIMBYism

    I don't generally disagree with this. And I have a similar story, except it was my mom and her mother, fleeing an abusive alcoholic. In 1950, she had to find a way to survive, and gov't subsidized housing in S. Texas was key to that. Not forever, but for a few years. Once she could dig her way out, they moved on. And the thing is, society as a WHOLE actually benefited from my mom and grandma having that safety net. My mother was fed, sheltered, got an education, and went on to live a good life and raise a successful and productive son....who also posts on Surly (so that part is probably a wash). Yes, there are always the stories of people who take it all for granted, stay too long, etc. There are also counter-stories of deserving people who are just going through some shit and need an option for a time, and none is available. No system is perfect, and we should never let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
  2. We are not your wife, so we are not falling for your empty promises of inches that never arrive.
  3. Brisketexan

    NIMBYism

    There is, and always will be, a significant percentage of the population of ANY country that will not be able to afford decent housing without some sort of government intervention. Kind of like how in any country, some portion of old people would starve without social security or their country's equivalent. Your options for that group of people, if you eliminate "affordable housing provided by some measure of government action" is "homelessness." Which is counterproductive and stupid. The solutions don't have to be Park Avenue Penthouses. They also don't have to be complete shitholes. Again, plenty of countries do this, and do it just fine. E.g., in Finland, municipalities actually own land, and develop affordable housing on that land. It is rented out (so, the people there generally DID "get jobs" and work), but it's not done to maximize profit/revenue. It's done to compensate the government for its expense, while also providing affordable housing for the lowest-earning tiers of society. There's a reason that literally every functioning state has some version of this sort of approach.
  4. Seriously. Realizing that a 34 yr old naturalized immigrant democratic socialist with a net worth of less than you have invested in living room furniture just played a 100X more masterful hand of poker than you did against the same opponent.....jesus, how humiliating and emasculating.
  5. Brisketexan

    NIMBYism

    Yep. There is no "affordable housing" solution without significant government involvement/subsidy/regulation etc. It's not like it's unsolvable, you can look at how other developed nations have tried to deal with it, with varying degrees of success. See council housing in the UK, municipal land control and gov't subsidized mortgages (and related measures) in Finland, etc. It's not something that "the unfettered market" can or will ever solve, because that market says "maximize the dollars on every square foot of dirt." I'm not saying that's wrong or a bad thing, I'm just pointing out the obvious: a mechanism that works like that isn't going to deliver much affordable housing.
  6. Also, this bears quoting. Because....for real. I would suspect that most of my peers would give an answer along the lines of "I guess the technical answer is she's gotta be at least 18, but man....I'd feel creepy AF to be with a gal who wasn't at least out of college/in her mid 20s/is in her 30s even." For most of us, there's kind of a hard barrier that's tied into the age of our daughter, if we have one. My daughter is in her mid-20s. Make me single tomorrow, and I STILL couldn't imagine myself being with one of her friends. Dude. No. But Trump? Jesus. That his mind even went there. "I wouldn't go as low as 12" are words that should never come out of any non-sick fuck's mouth. The concepts of "sex" and "12 year olds" shouldn't ever exist in your brain at the same time.
  7. Man, I had a friend with this back in the day, and I was so jealous:
  8. Because there just aren't enough beeves to process?
  9. Don't tell me she puts beans in her chili....
  10. Shades of
  11. Again, the serial, habitual, unambiguous and unabashed FALSE STATEMENTS submitted by ICE evidences a criminal conspiracy and demonstrates that ICE, in its present incarnation and under present management and direction, is a criminal enterprise. Because when you conspire to deprive individuals of their civil rights (and that's what shooting someone in the face with a pepper round for no reason is: textbook deprivation of civil rights) using criminal means to do so and justify it (you are committing the offense of battery and are falsifying government records to facilitate and enable your crimes), you should be arrested and prosecuted. I am not fucking around at all. If I'm a blue state governor, if Bovino indicates he's looking to show up in my jurisdiction, state publicly that you've prepared an arrest warrant for his ass as the leader of a criminal conspiracy, and if his criminal enterprise commits any criminal acts on your soil, you will arrest and charge his ass just as you would any other criminal terrorist operating on your state's soil. Fucking do it. Create the confrontation to protect your citizens against an outside terrorist.
  12. I mean, the paper literally has borscht and pelmeni* stains on it. * I had some fried pelmeni at a roadside dive in Estonia, and they were pretty damned tasty. They also sold nachos. I did not want to try Estonian nachos. But it was a beer joint, so I bet they were passable.
  13. No, I said tell your UR Cooks story, not one of your weird sex stories.
  14. Yep. My semi-weekly reminder (translated from the Hebrew):
  15. Whatever. You read all that and judge them. I see some real can-do spirit. These are exactly the kind of go-getters I want on my EM-50 project.
  16. Brisketexan

    NIMBYism

    This. My question upon driving into a nice enough neighborhood in San Diego 20 years ago, and knowing what the home prices were: as we passed a Jiffy Lube, I asked "where in the fuck do THOSE guys live?" Imagine having an hour commute from your "affordable" shithole apartment well outside of SD just to get to your job at....Jiffy Lube. We NEED guys who work at Jiffy Lube. Just like we need people to work at the Ralphs, and the dry cleaner, and the coffee shop in that same shopping center. Where is affordable housing for them? That said, I've long thought that schools COULD use some of the land they have to create staff/teacher housing, providing both a compensation/benefit and giving themselves more flexibility and power to hire qualified personnel. Shit, fancy private schools do it. That's a tool that any land-rich enterprise could use, on its own.
  17. A shadowy figure, but CCTV in Paree captured an image....
  18. AD Rhoades officially gone. As for this: According to sources, the allegations presented against Baylor AD Mack Rhoades are centered around his involvement in an outside incident that breaks school’s Christian standards rules Sources say this involves an outside relationship. Well, we know that "non-consensual" relationships aren't a problem. Kinda makes you wonder about what is actually problematic for Baylor. Wait, maybe he was in a relationship with a younger woman and it WASN'T non-consensual or predatory, and the Baylor athletic code just doesn't want someone setting a terrible precedent like that?
  19. Brisket, walking around the tailgate:
  20. I assure you, there is nothing that I can't be utterly pessimistic about. The decline of good neighborhood tex-mex places? The costs of car ownership? The continuing use of kale as an ingredient in restaurant dishes? I can be a negative nancy about all of that shit. Now, the ongoing ubiquity of yoga pants....there ya go, there's my ray-of-sunshine topic.
  21. In. Will see y'all there.
  22. I gotta admit, I don’t know how federal immunity would work in this case, but at this point - in Chicago at least - it’s apparent that ICE has engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit serial assaults against citizens of Illinois. They do not have immunity for violating the constitution, but is there any way for Illinois to bring state charges against ICE conspirators in federal court? I admit to having no idea if there’s any angle here - probably not, but this is insanely unprecedented. I’ve never seen a federal entity just go full-on at war against civilians, in violation of all laws and norms. Obviously, supremacy clause issues. But FFS, these are classic 18 USC 241 (conspiracy to violate civil rights) charges. A statute first written to deal with the fucking klan, and it works against the actual govt forces here. I know THIS DOJ won’t bring charges…but kick this motherfucker out and charge them ALL.
  23. Groovy. Got the boy looking at some of the options yall have suggested here.
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