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LCHorn

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Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. Just wanted to highlight this part because I 100% agree. I also think it points to a long term problem because Trump won’t live forever and we’ll put the pandemic malaise further into memory. Unregulated social media, however, is a rot that seems immune from regulation.
  2. Nope, we don’t know yet. Clearly they have held it back for a big reveal. I chortled 🤭
  3. Sorry to pick on you, but stellar is a high bar and I think digging into this is a good way to interrogate how we got here. What legislative success made your life better? Which of Biden’s foreign policy successes improved your life? Not to Beetlejuice @Brian Fantana, but do you think his handling of Israel was stellar? Ukraine? Bear in mind, I’m not trying to be silly about this, there’s ample reason to appreciate basic competency and decency and Biden possessed both. I do feel like some have been a little quick to exaggerate Biden’s virtues, not terribly unlike we did in the 2004 election when everyone was exhausted with Bush, felt mezzo-mezzo on Kerry, and put the Clinton years on a pedestal.
  4. I’m continually befuddled that these dudes are broadcasting videos using laptop cameras. You can get a Logitech pro webcam for $60, mount it at eye level, and it actually looks like you’re not living in your mom’s basement anymore.
  5. I think history is going to judge Biden pretty unkindly, and I think that would have been true even if Harris won. In hindsight, trying to tie together infrastructure investment, climate, jobs, social welfare, reinvestment in rural communities, etc., didn't work either to improve the general welfare, is getting rolled back under Trump, and earned very little kudos by voters. There's also one single thing he could have accomplished, almost fully under his control, that would have stemmed the tide of authoritarianism and that's to make sure Trump was put on trial for inciting an insurrection (and I'm presuming he'd have been found guilty).
  6. David French has an interesting piece today in the NY Times Gift Link TL:DR, he says Article II is to blame for a rapacious executive. Anyway, quick reaction to this is I think the Dems should promote the idea of a constitutional convention. "We have to fix the Constitution" is at least an ethos, and it's vague enough that it could mean almost anything while appealing to anyone unhappy with the status quo. It's also a complex problem that can be sold in a single sentence, it's not asking neighbors to blame each other, and it's the kind of big, aspirant thing that tends to get Democrats united.
  7. Dubin got three outs!
  8. I think we’re going to find out that the xenomorphs have some auditory way of communicating that she’s able to hear. Just don’t ask me why her and not the other synths.
  9. Your whole posts deserves a more lengthy and thoughtful response, but I wanted to single out one part that I can write on quickly. I actually think it’s simple, at least for 2026 and 2028 (and for the record, I’m stealing this idea but can’t recall the source). You just have to run against the party.
  10. @Bozo_Casanova is going to say that voters don’t vote for policies, they vote for candidates. That said, I agree with you in that the polls show that. I do question the conventional wisdom that tends to follow (the Democrats just need to message better). I think it’s hiding some weakness that those policies are actually less popular than they appear to be.
  11. @Bozo_Casanova can speak for himself, but this is an area in which I disagree that your caricature is incorrect (that’s a little awkward so to put it more simply, “The Groups,” are, in fact, the problem or a big contributor). Let’s just get real basic on this-the Democratic Party has failed to provide sufficient benefit to enough voters to rebut GOP criticism (regardless of the validity of that criticism). The why is at least partially because the party isn’t reorienting around popular positions because specific portions within “The Groups” disagree with them.
  12. Let’s not exaggerate a voting group’s interest as all about any one particular issue. I’m not sure why you’re so defensive over Latinx but you’re welcome to google pew research. You can even have Gemini summarize the findings. I mean, that’s basically how we figured out everything that we think we know about how the universe and science works. What’s your preferred method? I tend to wildly overuse this in conversation, but I think there’s an element of Billy Beane’s “my shit doesn’t work in the playoffs” applicable here. It worked fine for the Dems until it didn’t.
  13. I like you, but I’m going to have to jump all over this one. If we’re going to try to make data based decisions then there’s non-partisan polling and survey data, both before the 2024 election and since, that Hispanics REALLY dislike LatinX as a descriptor. It’s a little less of a problem for younger voters, but it’s a self-own by the left and is easily swept up in the whole “it’s a party of woke white elites who don’t even know you” that’s alienating the working class.
  14. Andiamo has gone way downhill. Skip it. Reale’s is the kind of place that used to stand out a lot more before Austin’s culinary upgrade over the last 20 years. It’s a good value but you’ll go into a carb coma after. I like their Greek pizza as something you wouldn’t expect to be quite so good coming from there. You can also see fitlump there if you time it right.
  15. I like that a lot more than the fucking Midwest that Jim Bowden proposed. I have zero enthusiasm playing the Royals and Cardinals on the reg.
  16. The faces being made by the ASL interpreter are far more fun than any of the rhetoric.
  17. What a weird season-the first half had some of that 2017 magic in which it seemed they would luck into wins. Second half has that 2021 energy where it’s hard to understand how they can be so shitty.
  18. They brought national attention to the fact that Texas Democrats have less fight in them than quisling statewide GOP leaders wholly obsequious to DC and two west Texas oil men, so there is that…
  19. LCHorn

    Pizza

    Then there are better, cheaper options than a $28 pepperoni pizza from All Day. I don’t like their pizza because it’s sloppy to eat, but I used to live down the street from the original East Side Pies and they were always rolling out with something unusual.
  20. He actually looks like Correa in a cheap disguise.
  21. Also, Texas (or and the rest of the marketplace) can certainly go in another direction if they feel like the value isn't there anymore. Probably unlikely for someone of Atkinson's caliber, but I'm sure we can all recall highly touted prospects that had underwhelming senior years and it was evident they were overrated.
  22. I'm being flippant, but it's because no one truly gives a shit. Those that did represented a small, financial minded portion of yesterday's GOP and the rank and file repeated it because they were told to. Dropping the sarcasm, you ask a sincere question, and I think it's at least partially because the rhetorical pivot needed to call out the hypocrites doesn't work. Probably the most obvious example is the Christian support for Trump, whose sins are too numerable to list. Rather than reconsider their support, they just double-down that the illogical must be because of God's plan. There was a Vox piece years ago in which an academic reported on a study that showed people don't really want the truth, in fact they resent it when it doesn't confirm pre-existing beliefs. I think we need to keep it simple. The #1 issue for Gen Z is economics, and I've read that housing affordability is the principal driver (although that could tie into jobs or inflation in general). It's also an issue that's got some gender specificity (it ranks particularly high amongst the male voters that the Dems have been shedding). It's a mid-term election--you don't have to fix it, you just need to be clear that the other team failed. I also think the party need to re-orient around the family as the center of public life. If you can't squeeze "this helps your family" into every single benefit message then it needs to be de-platformed. I think they've been afraid of this because the evangelicals have made "family values" antithetical to the Dems sense of inclusiveness, but they need to take it back and it's a good segue for a broader economic policy that's consistent with long-held Dem efforts. It's also helps defend some of those marginalized without making them poster children or exploiting their misery. If I'm forced to talk about trans rights I'm going to do it in the framework of parents like @troph that love their children and children that love their parents.
  23. Bear in mind this is one of @Brian Fantana’s main issues and he tends to overstate it’s importance. I’d wager that this cohort feels differently now… Anyway, back to economics, Ezra Klein interviewed Natasha Sarin last week, founder of The Budget Lab at Yale. This isn’t going to be surprising to anyone here, but her position is that the tariffs are really only starting to be seen in the inflation data and it’s only going to worse from here. The US is already in a recession if you omit the AI investment, and the anti-immigration efforts are making basic things like fresh vegetables and meat more expensive. She, and I think I’ve heard this on a separate podcast, notes that tariffs are, in effect, a $2k tax on every family in America. Rich, poor, Trump voter or otherwise, this is the math. This is what you make your main message.
  24. The political leanings of Inside Texas has always been weird, even before Alex P Keaton wannabe Nahlin took over. It wouldn’t be at all surprising for Cain to be on there.
  25. Ah, the Dodgers broke the Dodgers. They've double-down on fragile, high beta pitchers and they are likely tougher in a series than over a season (if they can keep three starters healthy).
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