Posts posted by Brisketexan
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“He’s just like us!”
Jesus. The fucking proletariat cheering on the billionaires as they are raped by them. This fucking timeline. -
Ghost is right. When you take an American citizen into custody and send them to any foreign country, that is NOT deportation. It is much more akin to kidnapping. -
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It is. But so many seem so cowed by the administration.
The good news is that even though the P2025 crowd is in full effect in their malevolent agenda, the competence in execution may actually be worse than Trump I.
On a parallel note, I’m going to be sending both a contribution to Harvard’s endowment and a personal note to the Board of Regents. I’d suggest that this moment in history may be WHY Harvard was/should have been created in the first place. It predates the Republic. It helped form it. Now, it has to stand and fight for it. If they HADN’T stepped up for this fight, then they would have surrendered whatever institutional credibility they had. -
It's CRAZY the difference in reaction between deporting citizens and stealing their ID along the way, and when DT had a collective REEEEEE over facemasks. All the biggest MUH FREEDUMS folks are AWOL on this issue
Every. Fucking. One of them.
It was never about actual Constitutional rights and the protection of liberty AT ALL. It was never anything more than toddler-level oppositional defiance disorder, usually layered with baked-in white supremacy.
“Conservatives” have NO credibility on matters of Constitutional rights and protections. None. Zero. -
We taking it to Texas vs. Land thieves?
I’m willing. She’s up for the drive these days. Gotta put a quart of oil in every 1,000 miles or so because the main gasket is shot, but a few quarts of oil a year is a lot cheaper than a full gasket replacement. She’s got 150k miles on her. I put another 3k a year on her in recent years. She may outlive me. -
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I think that is a bit disingenuous to say its because they are not white. It is because there is argument around whether or not they are even citizens. I understand there are concerns arguments around constitutionality and human rights and all that. I am not trying to open that door. But by saying it's just because they "arent white" is lazy and youre looking to be as dramatic as the other side that screams they are all terrorists or gang members.
1) They’re already deporting citizens. Juvenile citizens. I thought you people were all-in on “WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN!” Add that to the pile of lies.
2) Fun fact: the protections of the Constitution largely apply to non-citizens as well. So, add “CONSTITUTION-LOVING CONSERVATIVE” to that Mt Everest-sized pile of lies.
Oh, and add 3) funny that the “maybe they ain’t even no citizen!” panic is almost exclusively about people who don’t look like, you know, “real Americans.”
It’s all white supremacy nativist panic wrapped up in a not-even-very-refreshed label. Own it. -
So, this was kind of interesting. Reportage on the most recent hearing in the Perkins Coie case.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-reporter-s-notes-of-the-april-23-perkins-coie-hearing
Recall that the government was enjoined from enforcing the EO against Perkins. Usually the next step would be to formalize that TRO into a preliminary injunction pending trial.
In this case, Perkins moved for summary judgment and the government moved to dismiss the complaint. I haven't read the document, but it appears the motion to dismiss was based entirely on some notion that the court was without power to adjudicate this executive action.
The government's attorney was one Richard Lawson, a former Florida DAG (dya like dags?) and Bondi cuck, now a US DAG. It's a name I think you'll be hearing a lot of in court cases.
He didn't seem to be much of an asshole (compared to Drew Ensign), but was curiously uninformed about the administration's motivations and actual execution of the EO against Perkins. The problem for him is that is exactly the kind of evidence one needs to avoid summary judgment.
So, that Judge Howell was going to rule against the government seemed a foregone conclusion. A central question to Howell seemed to be that if she ruled that the EO was invalid, was an injunction even necessary against its enforcement.
So, a couple of the key takes: the government didn't try very hard to defend the indefensible. It seems that a lot of their defense is a very Trumpian, "I have the power to do this and you can't stop me" without much analysis or citation of precedent. In other words, some pretty low-quality advocacy. The other thing Lawson tried to argue is that "this isn't as bad as it looks," that is, interpretations of starkly worded portions of the order represent a more "traditional" exercise of executive power. Stuff like "security clearances are always subject to review and revocation," so the security clearance part is just business as usual. And the exclusion from government buildings and services really means exclusion from SCIFs, not courthouses and government transaction websites like EDGAR, or uspto.gov.
But without evidence of any of that, the order pretty much speaks for itself and its intemperate tone dooms it to invalidity.
One fun note, Howell dinged Lawson repeatedly on how the settlements with other firms basically address none of the alleged national security concerns of the order, instead settling just for free legal services for Trump causes.
So, like a lot of shit Trump, the bully quietly backs down once his bullshit is called.
Also, I saw a paywalled article that a lot of corporate IP departments are expressing dismay at the capitulating firms, ie not gonna hire em anymore.
“You won’t even stand up for yourself, why would I trust you to stand up for me?”
That’s an easy client call. -
This all makes me very grateful that my wife and I don’t give a shit about cars except in two respects: 1) for primary vehicle, give us reliability and comfort. A smooth highway ride, nice interior features, and doesn’t need a lot of maintenance. We each have 2020 era Korean SUVs (bought hers, mine was my mother’s for years, almost no miles on it), they do the trick. Then 2) I need a truck. Not often, but when I need it, I need it - hunting, fishing, yes I do occasionally haul shit, tow a trailer (a smoker, a boat, etc). So, I still have my 99 F-150 V8 4wd, that I bought new in 99. Coupla years ago, put $2500 into it to finally fix a buncha things (fuel pump, doors that were busted, AC). Still tools along and does its thing. People stop me in parking lots asking if I’m interested in selling it. Nope. Gonna keep it till it’s wrecked or goes full-on tits up…and even then, I can surely drop a new powertrain into it for 20% of what a new truck would cost.
It’s ugly, and he paint is faded, my wife kinda hates it…but she has to repeatedly acknowledge how handy it is. -
The Swedes do very, very, VERY little well, culinarily. The meatballs are a real thing, those little pancakes with lingonberries are quite good…and all the herring. When we’ve been in the Nordics, I’ve eaten ALL the herrings, but I’m the only one in my family who likes it. Smoked, curried, pickled, creamed, all of it. But I definitely understand how it’s a specialized taste.
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3 minutes ago, WineGuy69 said:
Yea for sure. Why would I have a problem with liberals owning a gun if they do it legally?
Mostly because most conservatives, who we all THOUGHT were super-worried about an authoritarian government casually acting outside the rule of law and sweeping people up without regard for the constitution....but it turns out they were only worried about that in their fever-dreams when they thought that might happen to white people. So, you'll understand when we doubt the sincerity of any conservative's professed reverence for constitutional rights.
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3 minutes ago, WineGuy69 said:
I personally have a short barreled ar-15 setup with a collapsable stock and a 21 round 9mm loaded with hollow points and about 6 mags for each weapon. I have another shotgun loaded and ready and then a compact glock in the car.
Post it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/
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Second confirmed measles case in Travis county. Picked up by a vaccinated person......HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...NO. An unvaccinated fuckwad piece of shit, of course. But, at least he didn't expose anyone else to it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OF COURSE HE EXPOSED PEOPLE:
Officials report that the infected person visited several locations in and around Austin over the past week, which include:
- An office building at 300 Colorado St., on Wednesday, April 16, from 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.
- Maaribu Coffee Shop, 1413 S 1st St., on Thursday, April 17, from 8:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
- Curra’s, 614 E Oltorf St., on Thursday, April 17, from 5:45 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
- Starbucks, 1920 E Riverside Dr., on Friday, April 18, from 10:08 a.m. – 12:08 p.m.
- UPS Store, 2407 S Congress Ave. STE E, on Saturday, April 19, from 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
- Hestia Restaurant, 607 W 3rd St. #105, on Saturday, April 19, from 5:45 p.m. – 11 p.m.
- Walgreens, 1920 E Riverside Dr. Bldg B, on Sunday, April 20, from 8:45 a.m. – 12 p.m.
- Pueblo Viejo, 2410 E Riverside Dr. STE H-8, on Sunday, from April 20, 8:45 a.m. – 12 p.m.
- CareNow, 1920 E Riverside Dr. Suite A110, on Sunday, April 20, from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Because, you know, being vaccinated is totally a personal choice, and fuck any consequences for anyone else, I get to do whatever I want and fuck you and your interests or health. ME ME ME ME ME.
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7 minutes ago, Clintonaldo said:
Trump’s first term some of his shit worked because he was unpredictable but that ain’t working this time because the rest of the civilized world has realized he is an ignorant buffoon who just runs his mouth and they aren’t scared anymore. In summary, the bully has bluffed all he can and now actually has to fight.
A whole lot of this. When your play is "bluster and make a lot of noise and dust," it works the first time or two you run it. But once folks see it for what it is -- and anyone with an IQ greater than Trump (so....pretty much everyone in a position of power elsewhere in the world) absolutely sees it for what it is -- they just stand there and let you make your noise and dust.....and they're still standing there, unmoved, when you're done running your one and only play. And then what? He doesn't have a Plan B. That would require him to know the fucking alphabet, which is clearly 25 letters more than he can handle.
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3 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:
Thanks for responding. I don't see how that refutes what I said.
A person begins his belief about God by reading the Bible. The Bible is true because God wrote it.
Written without rancor.
The Bible is true because it speaks truth. Attribution to an anthropomorphic author with a human motivation is not necessary for it to speak truth. To go back to Spong, until we loosen our grip on the overly humanized, childlike insistence on a language of existence that we can understand because it is exactly what we experience as humans, we restrain ourselves from embracing the full truth. We actually do the truth that is the divine a disservice by confining it to a box of an orthodoxy created and imposed by men.
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Just now, Clintonaldo said:
Really appreciate the kind words and I think you really nailed something. I am seeking the truth no matter how uncomfortable it makes me. I have been surrounding myself with people not like me and asking questions that spur debate because I want to continue growing.
Hard questions. Which I've found yield humbling, often uncomfortable answers. That's the way "truth" is - whether it be the universal, existential type discussed here, or the more granular of "how do I do my job more effectively?", or "how do I get healthy?" If the "answers" you keep coming with look a whole lot like the path of least resistance, and not "man, that's some shit I'm really going to have to work on, and it's hard," they the odds are incredibly high that you're lying to yourself, steering yourself away from "truth."
As an easy example, and the one I cannot seem to even come CLOSE to clearing the hurdle on, a call and answer to the question of "how should I treat people" from Christianity: But I tell you, love your enemies. How ndo we walk "the way" that is Christianity? One of the ways to do that is to . . . love our enemies. That's not easy. It's really fucking hard. I sure as shit do a piss-poor job of it. And I'm getting worse at it, actually. But . . . I am honest enough with myself to acknowledge that no matter how much I don't want to hear it and don't want to do it and don't do it and will probably forever fail at it . . . it is true.
Walking "the way" is hard. It helps a lot to know we're not alone. Even when we're walking backwards.
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Edited by Brisketexan
Oh, and to @Clintonaldo, I would say....you are walking. You know that you are not doing it alone. You wrestle with understanding what truth is. But you seek it. And you do so with and in love. Your name is written in the Book of Life. Next to mine. Next to everyone else's. It is a staggeringly beautiful book, written in two hundred billion trillion stars (yeah, that's the actual number, best we can tell). And written in each moment you live. With each step you take. From the infinite to the mundane, you are in that Book, you are writing that Book. We are profoundly lucky and blessed to be on that journey together, in this sliver of time we have to be alive.
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3 hours ago, Vegas64 said:
I think the idea that you go to a concept of heaven up in the atmosphere away from earth and see all your friends and family and reunite is pretty widely accepted to be false. I think you might not even know your wife or husband or child or best friend, in the temporal sense we know them now, but it's a return to the shalom (the completeness, unbrokenness) that was how God intended
This is consistent with my universalism - as in, they are complementary, and not mutually exclusive.
God is creator, but also within all creation (again, that's pretty Hindu). We are in and of the universe - that whole "we are each of us some of the universe's stardust, coalesced for a period of time to be 'Brisketexan.'" When we die, we literally return to that inanimate state -- again, the literal "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." And that is a return to being in and a non-independent part of the universe.
I think it's quite beautiful, actually. As infinite and incomprehensible as this massive universe is, its story cannot be completely told without speaking of that time when some of its stardust was Brisketexan. Omit that, and the story of the universe and its journey is incomplete. So, while my perception can easily be that I am an insignificant collection of dust, the fact that the dust that is me is part of the universe's total inventory means that I am NOT insignificant. I am part of the story. To go Jewish, my name is written in the Book of Life. Creation knows of every speck of dust in it, and it is profound to be part of that completeness and unbrokenness.
Indeed, I see that as overlapping with the concept of grace as well, which I have always found theologically powerful as hell. No matter how much I fail -- in spite of my failures -- I am welcomed and loved by God. Or, another way to see it: no matter how much I might try to separate myself from the universe and everything in it -- particularly including the parts of that universe manifested as my fellow man -- it's pointless. The universe necessarily embraces me, and I will always return to its fold.
And I say that this sort of belief is complementary, not mutually exclusive with Christian faith because I see Christianity as being materially allegorical. Jesus spoke in parables, why cannot and why should not our faith itself be a parable, anthropomorphized for our human understanding? The important thing to understand is that parables are TRUE. Not literal, but TRUE. Thus, our faith, even if allegorical, even if an anthropomorphized translation used so that we might understand, need not be literal to be TRUE.
I wept -- not a few tears, but actual fucking sobs, when I saw "Everything Everywhere All At Once." Because the theme conveyed - or at least, that I received - was that the only true boundless force in creation is love. And that no matter what iteration or permutation of the universe you might imagine, in infinite alternate universes, love is a common thread, on a quantum level. Humans on this exact earth? Our love, and those we love, will find each other and be bound to each other. An alternate universe, where we are mere stones?
We will find each other.
My daughter and I, even when our connection is difficult, communication is hard, and we do not understand each other. The love is there. A quantum thread, running through every imaginable universe:
My wife and I. For us - with one way of looking at it - we were lazy and simple, "falling in love" with someone who literally grew up mere blocks away. Or, with a quantum view, ended up growing up merely blocks away from each other because the thread that runs through all universes was going to put us together.
Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
Limitless, undying love
Which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universeLimitless, undying love. That calls you on and on across the universe. Tell me that is NOT the essence of God. Tell me that is NOT the essence of faith - all faiths. It is the one truth of our collective existence. We are called to be a part of this universe, drawn and bound together by love. And thus to practice it. With every part of our being.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Allegory and faith are truth. Because they communicate a truth that is the very nature of existence as living beings.
Which is why I have always bristled at the gatekeeping of many iterations of "Christianity" of "but you have to accept Jesus -- without that ticket, nothing else matters." No. The universe - God - will not exclude me from the embrace and wholeness of divine creation because I don't say magic words or check a box. The beauty that is a human soul and being, conceived in and bound by love, cannot be denied the embrace of creation, because it does not affirmatively declare a particular allegory to be literal, yet lives the same truth of that allegory.
My wife - my ordained wife - loves John Shelby Spong's take (we are lucky enough to know two of Spong's sons personally), that as a faith, we will not advance until we loosen our insistence on the concept of the physical resurrection of Christ (the zombie Jesus thing, in pop culture parlance):
QuoteBishop John Shelby Spong has a unique view on the resurrection of Jesus; it was not really a resurrection at all as we understand it. In his book, Resurrection: Myth or Reality (1994), he states repeatedly that he believes in the reality of the resurrection; he explains (page 106):
Easter, for me, is eternal, subjective, mythological, nonhistorical, and nonphysical. Yet Easter is also something real to me.
On page 143, he asks:
Did Easter reverse the verdict of Jesus’ death? No, I don’t think so…I think Easter is real, but it is not an event that takes place inside human history.
It is real. It is true. But it is not literal the way that Christianity has made it out to be. NOR DOES IT NEED TO BE.
For me, in the end . . . fuck if I know. I'm just walking on this journey. I get it wrong. A lot. I go down dead-ends. I stop and sit down, petulant and angry. Sometimes, I charge ahead, and feel like I'm actually advancing. But -- and this is the really, really important thing when it comes to faith, and church, and such: I know that I am not doing it alone. I walk on my journey, and others walk along with me. Some in a way similar to mine, some in their own way that seems odd or alien to me. But we do so in community. That is the primary benefit that being part of a community (any community, but including a community of faith like a church). We walk. Together. Because that is the fucking way. We are all coalesced stardust of the same universe. Why would we NOT walk together?
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Tariff wars, they have began
in Cloak Room
So wait…which is it…are we going make great, beautiful deals with 200 countries, so these tariffs that we are using for leverage will go down (and thus not yield much revenue), or are big, beautiful tariffs going to stay so high that they raise so much revenue (from US consumers, by the way) that they replace the income tax?
Dumbest. Fucking. Timeline.