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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. The problem with currying favor with erratic, mercurial narcissists is that you're currying favor with an erratic, mercurial narcissist. You will be forever in his favor. Right up until he unilaterally (and for insane reasons) decides that you are not. There's a reason that nobody on earth has ever said "Donald Trump is my best and most loyal friend." Because he's not. He's incapable of it. He has no relationships that are not entirely transactional. And when the relationship at hand involves a public evaluation of "who is the most god-like," anyone who can even be characterized as a rival for that status is already in a precarious position.
  2. The Capitol in Austin is similar. I know people who had decades-long careers lobbying, problem solving, etc…and they have bailed and are bailing. Because the environment is so toxic, unproductive, and flat-out mean. They can’t even get a meeting or a sympathetic ear, on the real everyday issues and solutions that government traditionally addressed. And then when you do get a meeting…the legislator and the staffer are not smart.
  3. Yeah…as someone who has had to materially adjust his entire professional approach to account for “I know what the law says, but they’re gonna do whatever Newsmax tells em to”….sing it, brother.
  4. I came to Austin 30+ years ago from Houston. Where I grew up solidly middle class oil patch (went to school with some upper class, though.) Austin was my first exposure to real-deal political liberalism. I don’t mean Texas democrat liberal, I mean Austin liberal. It was eye-opening, and not in any good way. Lots of performative preachy bullshit. Volvos with inspiring bumper stickers. Which were parked in front of nice west Austin homes, after the driver had just been at a neighborhood association meeting shouting about how those new apartments shouldn’t be built because they would “destroy the character of the community.” The hypocrisy was blatant enough that a naive Houston kid saw it clear as day. A friend’s dad was IBEW here. They tried for YEARS to build a job training center. Austin’s idiotic salamander-saving building restrictions made it a hard no. They eventually gave up. Out-of-touch liberals preaching on one hand and making life harder for real people on the other is a long-time problem.
  5. Oh…because she knows what she’s doing. I’m happy to have her on the field running plays.
  6. Here we go….3 and out, to seal the loss.
  7. Huh…wonder what Christmas movie is in the Hallmark Channel right now. It’s probably more manly than this fucking game.
  8. This is wretched. Dominated the game…about to have our lead turned to nothing. I really hate this team, I think. I definitely hate Quinn.
  9. Fucking seriously. Like, legitimately “not good.”
  10. We are leaving so many goddamned points on the board.
  11. Designer PB is all that Whole Foods organic shit that separates. We have family members whose mom is crunchy and would only stick that PB at home. But when we went grocery shopping on vacation, they’d ask for (and get) Jif or some such, which they called “I love you peanut butter” because….it is tasty and not that organic shit.
  12. Dude. That ship has sailed. Truth is, it sailed the day after we elected Obama. Electing a black man president absolutely broke us. I never saw that coming, but that’s where the tipping point was. We can’t and won’t recover.
  13. Jonah Goldberg should drink hemlock. He helped create the unprincipled monstrosity, he should be the among first ones consumed by it. He knew what he was doing. He thought he could intellectually control the monstrous philosophy he stoked. He was wrong. He should suffer.
  14. The thing is, your first chart shows exactly what Bozo and the feelings of working Americans reflect. We were used to wages slightly outpacing inflation….doing just a little better over time, steadily. Then…inflation outpaced wages, for a good slice of time. In recent months, wages again outpaced inflation, but people haven’t regained all the ground they lost and, more importantly, they don’t FEEL like they regained that ground. The traumatic feeling of falling behind is still a fresh feeling. Objectively, so we see that there was an economic phenomenon and cycle that happened globally, and the US weathered it better than almost everyone else, and is largely in the recovery/recovered period? Sure. But statistics aren’t feelings. Feelings are what people have, and people are the thing that votes. Truly, I don’t know if any Dem candidate could have done anything to win, climbing uphill against those feelings. But…they could have done better. And yes…they need to figure out how to run negative campaigns, because people respond to demonization and fear 1000X better than they respond to boring policy and facts. We have a booming and evil oligarch class asserting outsized influence, ripe target right there.
  15. Oh, "pretend everything is fine" isn't part of the deal. Instead, it's "be at peace that it's all gone to shit, and there's nothing you can do about it. So, take care of you and yours." And of course, take care of Sela and Susanna. I know you don't swing that way, but even you can see the wisdom of my plan.
  16. Do you even "redouble my efforts to get the wife to sign on to a weekend-long sex-fest with her, Sela Ward, and Susanna Hoffs," bro? Geez. It's like you haven't even been paying attention.
  17. I mean, being that by most measures, I'm one of them....okay. I'll make out fine in the shitshow/austerity era. I'll probably be able to leverage it to my advantage. Sure, not as much as the donor class will (I don't have "purchase carte blanche favors from the US government" money), but I'll do well. I'm just mature enough and have enough perspective to know that changes that benefit mostly people like me and above, and hurt mostly people of less means than me, fucking suck and are socially counter-productive.
  18. Man. Y'all disappoint me. Ethics? We're talking 'bout groceries here.....
  19. Oh, hey, you must have missed the part where I said I am ALL FOR IT. END IT. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. Being that people dependent on various forms of SS overwhelmingly voted for this outcome, I say bring it on. And one of 'em better come to be bitching when they got exactly what they asked for. See, I USED to believe that it was a good and decent social policy to provide basics for the elderly, even if it cost the rest of us a bit here and there. But no longer. They want it to be "every man for himself, 100%." Cool. I'm set up just fine, so no worries for me.
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