Jump to content

flatdawgs

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    831
  • Joined

Everything posted by flatdawgs

  1. My favorite Nepalese restaurant in Seattle is called Annapurna; then again, we know our mountains here. Dammit, now I want some momos too. Even the yak ones aren't bad.
  2. We in Washington state stand in solidarity with you on this one, Texas.
  3. Nah, they have a functioning court system. Bolsonaro out front shoulda told ya.
  4. Will be at this one. Stoked to see a Grubauer - Daccord GK matchup.... 🤣🦑
  5. So, his "business partner... was promptly notified and arrived to oversee his care?" Wow, if there isn't better proof that nobody in your life actually gives a shit about you, I don't know what it would be.
  6. Schmetzer is a good guy; we grew up a block from each other (he's a few years older; I played with his younger brothers). His dad played in 3. Liga in Germany and was our select coach growing up; they also ran the only serious soccer gear store in town back then. Very happy to see Brian's ongoing success in his/our home town. He is an underrated coach who - like the team - prioritizes the international game and competitions on a budget 1/4 that of Miami or LAFC's.
  7. lol no doubt! Rothrock is kind of a cult figure here because of exactly what you point out - he's a journeyman with a limited skill set but a bulldog; he's also from Seattle as were 2 other starters (2 others went to UW). Head coach Schmetzer, very tongue in cheek, pointed out earlier in the week that, yes, "they have Messi, but we have Paul Rothrock." The team, even more tongue in cheek, offered fans with Messi jerseys a chance to trade them in for Rothrock ones. Pretty sure they didn't actually have to provide any.... 🤣
  8. Fucking Suárez. Great match; I was there and in the corner where this took place after (although from the front row in the upper deck didn't see the spit). Miami player threw a (light) punch and hit Seattle's Vargas in the face; a couple of other punches were thrown after by Miami players but I don't think they landed. TBH other than the spitting it looked like one of those goofy baseball "brawls". At halftime a Miami bench player tried to mix it up with a Sounders staffer as they were leaving the pitch; no idea what that was about. At any rate, fun match in front of 70,000, and an Argentinian #10 did end up winning the tournament's best player award. It just wasn't the guy in pink.
  9. I was happy to see this, especially as someone with interests in Portugal. Portugal's far-right Chega party made substantial gains in the election earlier this spring, and has forced the governing center-right PSD to move further to the right. President de Sousa has consistently vetoed bills coming from the far right and sent them off to the Constitutional Court. It is heartening to hear him take a stand here as many larger and more powerful European states are still pussyfooting around the obvious. As an American I have always been treated extremely well in Portugal, and Portugal has a live-and-let-live culture that makes this a very unusual statement. Força o presidente de Sousa!
  10. *klanner ... but SB, we'd be relegated back to the Pac-12 again! Oh, wait, nevermind. I can live with that.
  11. I was watching DC the day this all happened, assuming they - as a highly Democrat, minority city - would instantly be in the streets. They weren't. I'd like to think my equally blue city would act differently, but I no longer know. I love my city and state dearly - its natural beauty, its long-established tolerance towards all, its "Japan-dinavian" sense of social equality and sensibility, held dear for decades, its model - though still short of what it could be - of success and prosperity. I have considered and taken many of the requisite steps towards overseas residency, starting the process years ago. This was not done for political reasons but out of a sense of adventure and experiencing things from a different perspective. Right now, I want to stay in my state and fight for all of us to have what we have here. But... when the day comes that the military becomes part of our police force and we just shrug, I'm off to Portugal, this time wondering if I'll ever get to return. You have no idea how badly I feel for you, my Texan friends.
  12. As in any other banana republic.
  13. I've been to 5 international club matches here (Seattle) this summer - 3 Club World Cup and 2 Leagues Cup (vs Mexican teams) and despite looking rather intently saw no signs of ICE presence at any of them. Law enforcement was there, of course, from city cops to state parks rangers, all doing the "we're bored but making OT" hanging around bit. Leagues Cup crowds were probably 50% Mexican which was a lot of fun. Obviously other cities like Miami have had issues with ICE at their matches, but here everyone from the governor to the mayor is militantly opposed to ICE and have loudly and clearly said as much. Next year remains to be seen, of course; the Governor's letter this past week telling Pam Bondi to fuck straight off probably didn't go over well with the Nuremberg Rally crowd.
  14. Nah, this is more like the Morning of the Pointy Stick. Hitler cleared out the entire lot at once. (Not that a more general purge could be coming and that this is just a harbinger....)
  15. I come to Surly from a strange and foreign land, "woke"/"far left"/"socialist" as may be (one of the reasons I read CR and DT is to get opinions from places different from mine, even when from the same team). I am not a fan of Third Way, but that article makes a lot of sense. Even here in the People's Republic of Cascadia I'd not ever even heard of some of those phrases, and the ones I have heard or seen used invariably sound stilted, condescending, nerdy, and out of touch. Nobody in meat space uses these terms; you'd get laughed out of my local bar - a very liberal place -for even trying to use most of them. I can't even imagine chatting with anyone talking like that while visiting friends in more maga areas of the state; I'd at best get chased out of the bar and at worst get a probably deserved ass-kicking. (oh, and Dems - maybe point out some states that have already given their constituents things that poll high across the board with the message "See? This is possible!" rather than throwing up your hands and giving up on it because "it's too hard.")
  16. Exactly where I was standing when the cyclist came by!
  17. I was up at the border (Blaine, WA) Tuesday for my Nexus card interview with CBSA (Canadian border agency), and wandered over to Peace Arch State Park afterwards. This park literally extends to the actual US-Canada border, which is a little ditch with a Canadian street on the other side, suburban houses on the other side of that. No fence, nothing but a sign telling you to report to the border station if you walk across. It has always been that way; BC and WA have interacted over this border since it was created (sports exchanges, shopping, friends/families on both sides). Seattle and Vancouver are two great cities to be in, and only around 2 hours apart. BC residents when polled say they have more in common with WA than with anywhere in Canada, by a wide margin, and if they polled WA residents we'd say the same about them compared to most of the USA. Now, they're not coming over as much. Seattle is expecting 27% fewer Canadian visitors than last year. Whatcom County - the border county - is getting hammered because Canadians aren't coming over to shop. I wish they would - we voted for no leopards (Whatcom is D +20; Seattle is D +80) - but we're part of this country too and will have to take our medicine along with everyone else. Still pisses me off to no end, and likely pisses off the Canadians that, like us, used to cross the border with barely a thought. Anyway, while I was walking along the border, a cyclist on the Canadian side said "Welcome to Fortress America!" "I'm truly sorry" I replied (I speak fluent Canadian, eh? Sorry.). He responded "Stupid," shook his head and rode off. There was nothing else to say.
  18. What does this have to do with Eskimo Hut?
  19. I'd take a bullet to immediately end this regime. So... wait, let me think about this one a bit more. I'll, uh - I'll get back to you....
  20. Ah, it reminds me of the always-elevated "terrorism alert level" post-9/11, which never seemed to change color except prior to elections. Hell, here in WA the state ferry terminals still have signs at the docks saying "Current security level: MARSEC 1" even though nobody remembers (or ever knew) what that even means any longer.
  21. Oh, they're not even playing around with that any longer. The IDF claims al-Sharif was the head of a terrorist cell, claiming evidence that the BBC finds "unconvincing". To date, 186 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel's military offensive.
  22. The major difference is that 10 out of the 12 million people in the two states live in those areas that are definitively not like the south; and in WA a big part of the eastern part of the state is ag, so it's more like Kansas or Iowa than the Confederacy. You get into ranching and mining areas, then yeah. (Having lived in both the PNW and the south, it's not by a long shot "worse" but it is different. Different people to hate/fear and all that.) Deschutes County (Bend) went Harris +10. Not Seattle - my district was +80 - but also not South Carolina or Oklahoma.
  23. That game was quite CONCACAFy. Fortunately, for a competition of this magnitude, they got the very best officials from (checks notes) Jamaica and Trinidad for this match. Still enjoyed attending. (I actually always enjoy the international matchups, and the Sounders have a decent record against Liga MX sides.)
  24. haha no, they're too smart for that. Mom actually looked into in many years ago and even she didn't qualify. Pity, though - I love Denmark.
  25. Birthright citizenship hasn't always been sacrosanct - it's been taken away from various out groups at various times. In doing some genealogical research I came across a naturalization certificate for my great-grandmother. The hell? I knew her; knew she had been born in Dundee, Illinois to American parents; knew she probably had never even left the country in her lifetime. It turns out that, due to the Expatriation Act of 1907, if an American woman married a foreign national she had to take his citizenship and forfeit her American citizenship (and no, of course it didn't work the other way). At the time there was no dual citizenship and there was a backlash against immigrants, which is somewhat of an American pastime. My great-grandfather was a Danish citizen who had not yet naturalized as an American, so she became a subject of the King of Denmark (apparently in his Spokanish Realm) and no longer an American. It wasn't until the 1930s that she was allowed to become an American citizen again - but only after having to go through the naturalization process. All that to say there is precedent for revoking birthright citizenship, and although Congress actually passed a law in that case, this SCOTUS seems to have no particular care for that sort of thing when it suits them.
×
×
  • Create New...