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flatdawgs

Certifiably Surly
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About flatdawgs

  • Birthday April 28

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  1. I just figured it was the Oklahoma plates.
  2. Naturalized citizens can be denaturalized and deported. I believe this even works on South Africans should an occasion arise.
  3. The Age of the Toddler Kings
  4. $43,000? That's minimum wage for most people in WA. That'll encourage the best and brightest. But yeah, sucking on the gubmint teat and all that. Get rid of 'em. What could go wrong?
  5. Ducks suck. Oh, I thought you were in Oregon.
  6. Visited the Mighty Mo many times as a kid when it was at Bremerton (and once at Pearl). Congrats on the gig, and enjoy!
  7. I was in Zambia over a couple of months in 2012-13 (northern Zambia mostly, not in the Copper Belt or much in Lusaka). Two Chinese "advisors" at a copper mine near Kitwe had recently been murdered and I was chatting about it and the growing Chinese presence with a Zambian acquaintance. His response was a shrug of the shoulders and "We Zambians know colonialism when we see it." Unfortunately they're still having even worse luck with them than they did with the Brits.
  8. Odds are, despite his age, that he didn't vote for this shit. He lives in Seattle, where Trump has managed to get 1 vote out of every 11 cast, in all 3 elections, at around 90% turnout. So, while he fits the demographic most likely to be that 1 of 11, odds remain high that he didn't. The Leopards Eating People's Faces Party has very little support here. Nonetheless, they're still feasting.
  9. Yeah, Alaska has its issues but it's much better than SWA (especially with these major devaluations)... if you're in a market they serve well. For most of this board that's not going to be the case. That said, in my major metro SWA hasn't had "low" fares - or really even competitive - for decades, and they're now a bit player here. Alaska and to some extent Delta have pushed them out, and now they have nothing to differentiate them from anyone else (worse, actually, if you fly more than just once a year to see Aunt Millie).
  10. FraggyBevo
  11. Just want to leave it here that the Global Times is a virulently anti-American / anti-Western arm of the CCP/PLA, not really a source I'd go to even for political cartoons (and this one doesn't really make a hell of a lot of sense anyway). Europe and the rest of the West has no shortage of pointed (and funny) political commentary to choose from.
  12. This is a painful topic to those of us who grew up in the PNW (or, I assume, in other forested areas). I can see three national parks from my office window, and most everything else in between is national forest. We grew up playing, fishing, hunting (wasn't my thing, but certainly friends did), and - most of all - hiking in them. To this day it is where I'm happiest. I recall the days of actual clearcutting right down to the streams, rivers, and highways, and would so hate to see that return. Nowadays they have to leave buffers and replant, which doesn't replace the more mixed natural forests but is a renewable resource and as such is likely to continue. Selective logging is best but is still fairly rare. The lack of sawmills is definitely a thing out here as well, at least in WA. Oregon is still a resource colony WRT timber and probably have more remaining. When I was young two places all the kids in Seattle went to on field trips were a salmon hatchery and a sawmill. Both are ingrained in us as part of our home. The hatcheries are still there; the sawmills, since the early Reagan years, are mostly gone. Now raw logs are sent to Asia for milling and their use. Our lumber comes from Canada - easy enough to see the trains and trucks rolling through Seattle. Mass timber construction will continue to grow; building codes have very recently been updated to allow for greater use, even in high-rise construction, and there are now local wood product manufacturers here again to produce those materials. As mentioned above, though, stick frame/dimensional lumber will still dominate the construction market for some time to come, and Canada has the mills. Like manufacturing elsewhere in this country, it effectively no longer exists here - certainly not as it once did.
  13. I have my tax ID and bank account set up/funded - that part takes up the most time from the applicant's perspective. Highly recommend using a Portuguese attorney to assist; they're reasonable (i.e. not members of the Surly Lawdog Cabal). As far as the rest goes, I've put it on hold whilst waiting on the new government's changes to the visa laws to become codified/clarified as well as to take care of some things here. It'll probably be a year or so until I restart the process, all else being equal. There is still a backlog of applicants for the Golden Visa program (visa by investment; 7 days min residency/year); it's being cleared as fast as possible but there's still a processing backlog of 18-24 months. Note that this doesn't mean you can't get temporary residency there. The 5 year clock to citizenship or permanent residency now starts upon acceptance of application rather than processing date, which is a huge time savings. The other residency visa options are much quicker/cheaper but require tax residency, or 181+ days/year in country. My sister and her family have been in the UK for 16 years and are dual citizens - one of the reasons Portugal was so appealing to me (plus it's just a lovely country/people and I speak a bit of Portuguese; not required to live there at all, but is for citizenship/permanent residency).
  14. If I make it that long, no - but I had already started the residency process in Portugal some time ago, long before the last election, and without regard to politics. The question would probably better be "will I return?" I live in and am native of a beautiful, sane, educated, prosperous part of the country and may well have returned home at some point; now it remains to be seen. We just hope to continue to be forgotten up here while we help pay everyone else's bills.
  15. Hawai'i says hi (before we fucked them over). Texas history is awesome, though.
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