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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. I did the same thing—went to take a nap at halftime. Woke up and turned on the World Series. Didn’t know we won until just a minute ago when I switched it over to the aggy game to check the score and saw it on the scroll. i couldn’t be more shocked.
  2. Let’s money-whip Cignetti.
  3. Goddamn, you're still this fucking bitter about that? I mean, I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun on that trip. Dinner at Galatoire's the night before and then four-dozen after-argument oysters at Felix's? That was a damned good time. Of course, Edith Jones didn't chew my ass out at oral argument. So maybe that colors my perspective.
  4. This has some real Fort Sumter vibes. And if you don't see that, then you need to pick up a book. Well, as a matter of fact, . . . .
  5. I don't agree with futureman very often . . . and this certainly isn't going to be one of those times. I like pickles. A lot. I'll order extra pickles on that tuna sandwich. But the logistics of that are going to be a problem. A pickle doesn't have the give of bread. So when you bite into a pickle, all the sandwich fillings are going to shoot out the other end--especially with a non-solid filling like tuna. So hard pass.
  6. I'm sorry--you're right. I was imprecise in my statement. He's the most popular Republican holding state office in Texas (and I include Cornyn, Cruz, and the various MOCs in that).
  7. Cross-posting from the Abbott thread, the "informed speculation" I heard at the event I was at last week--to which you were invited but you did not show (shame on you, by the way)--was exactly this. Paxton's fundraising and polling have been disappointing after Hunt announced his candidacy. A lot of MAGA donors see Hunt as being every bit as MAGA as Paxton without any of the baggage. You're exactly right hwn you say that Texas Republican voters are trained to vote with maximum cynicism. And Paxton's camp is starting to get concerned that he might end up third in a three-candidate race. And that is to say that he would end up without a job in government, which is pretty bad for a guy of his criminality. So according to my informant, when the filing deadline comes in December, Ken Paxton is not going to have filed to run for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn; he will have filed to run for governor against Greg Abbott. There are some people (e.g., Tim Dunn) who aren't altogether thrilled with Abbott. I don't know if it's all about marijuana, but I think that's a large part of it. And they see Paxton as a viable alternative. Now, I've got to tell you--that last bit doesn't make any sense to me. Greg Abbott has a $100M war chest. And he's probably the most popular Republican in Texas. I suppose Tim Dunn could challenge him on the money front. Maybe. But really--why? And even if you could challenge him on the money front, Ken Paxton isn't going to challenge him on the popularity front with a Republican (or any) electorate. So Paxton running a real risk of missing a run-off in the Senate race makes some sense to me. But the running against Abbott bit doesn't. But maybe the last part just flows from the first part. Paxton has to be desperate to hold public office given his criminality. Any office. He could've stayed AG, but he's probably burned his ships on that. So he's got to find something else to run for. Anything. So maybe this does make some sense.
  8. It was the second very short offseason in a row. And it's a team that's focused entirely on April and May. I'm not entirely surprised that they've come out in October looking a bit lackluster. That being said--the defense is terrible. And that needs to be addressed soon.
  9. So our own Marian Reforms, eh?
  10. And it's not unique to the United States. Go to rural (particularly Western) Canada. Go to rural (particularly the Midlands) England. Go to East Germany. It's the same deal right across the developed (and developing) world. If you lived in Chemnitz on October 2, 1990, and you had the least bit of education, ambition, and good sense, you moved. Maybe you went to Berlin. Maybe you went to Frankfurt. Hell--maybe you went to Vienna or Brussels. But whatever--you got the fuck out. Chemnitz was an industrial city with non-competitive industries built by the Communists; it wasn't going to do well in a new capitalistic economy. And anyone with half a brain could've figured that out. And they did. So who's left? The people with less than half a brain. And their descendents. Oh--and more than a few people who have fled places like Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. And boy do the less-than-half-brained natives hate them. Because those are people with the smarts and drive to flee a bad situation. But don't worry, dear Chemnitzian--they won't be there for long. They'll move on, leaving you behind again and making Chemnitz even less dynamic and desirable. But in the meantime, Chemnitz votes AfD. In the same way that Leeds votes Reform. And Kamloops votes Conservative. And none of those are good for the democracies in those countries. Somehow, we've got to deal with those left-behinds. I mean, they disgust me, too. They disgust me in the way the crazy fat homeless woman on Congress Ave. who half the time has her nasty-ass tit hanging out disgusts me. She's super gross and I wish she didn't exist. But if we don't deal with her in some way, she's going to break into the new Japanese deli there between 6th and 7th and destroy the joint. And I like the Japanese deli. So I guess we have to figure out some way to deal with her stupid ass before she destroys the things on Congress Ave. that we like.
  11. I get both instincts: sympathy and disgust. I share your sympathy for them. They were born in a shit town that was dying through no fault of their own. hey don't have the education or skills to make the town attractive to any industry, and they don't have the wherewithal to attain the education necessary to be successful in the modern economy. That shit's fucking hopeless. And it's even more hopeless for them in a society that broadcasts to them the successes of people who had the good fortune of just being born a couple hundred miles away. But I also share in the disgust. The rural poor in America live in circumstances and with opportunities the rural poor across most of the rest of the world could only dream of. Shit--the reason the rural poor have a feeling of having been left behind is that they have been left behind--literally--by anybody with the least little bit of intelligence and ambition, who left those shit towns ages ago to find better lives in Boston or New York or even fucking Providence. And I can't feel much but disgust for someone who is prevented from improving his circumstances simply by relocating to a real city by nothing more than his own fear and inertia. Before 2016, my sympathy outweighed the disgust. But then they decided to declare war on the rest of the country. So now, fuck them.
  12. That's not exactly true. Trump's approval rating has steadily declined over the last six months. Now you and I will agree that it hasn't gone down nearly as much as it should given the state of the economy and that 2/3rds of Americans say the country is on the "wrong track." But given the stickiness of the cult we're dealing with, it's not nothing. But regardless--we don't need them to see the light. Who really gives a shit if they see the light. I don't give a fuck about their redemption or personal salvation. I just want them not to vote. And every actual poll of actual races (and some that aren't actual races, but are indicative of voting behavior, like the generic congressional ballot) indicate that there is a lot of Trump approvers out there who probably aren't going to show up to vote in 2026.
  13. I feel like I got some cheap points here. Have I walked a factory floor? I mean, yeah--when I was doing a site inspection in litigation. Oh--and when I went on the field trip in elementary school to the Mrs. Baird's factory. That was fucking awesome. You got a slice of buttered bread at the end. Have I gone fishing in the last 12 months? I mean, yeah. But I don't think deep-sea fishing in Mexico really gives me the working-class bona-fides they're looking for. And I saw most of those movies because Mrs.LL has shit taste in movies, but I like to get laid.
  14. Whoa--hold on here, friend. Submarine attacks on merchant shipping was not solely a German practice. It was the practice of the United States Navy to attack Japanese merchant vessels (both cargo and passenger) from the outset of the War in the Pacific, in direct contravention of the 1936 London Protocol on Submarine Warfare. The primary difference is that the USN's unrestricted submarine warfare was successful. By Summer 1945, the Japanese merchant fleet had been destroyed; the Home Islands were on the precipice of starvation. But wasn't different was the targeting of passenger ships without forewarning. For example, In 1942, USS Grenadier sunk the Taiyō Maru on its way from Manila to Singapore, killing more than 1,000 civilians. In 1944, USS Nautilus sunk the passenger liner America Maru, killing around 500 civilians (mainly women and children) evacuating Saipan. As to gas attacks, both sides used prodigious amounts of gas during World War I. Neither side used gas in World War II, but the historical record pretty clearly establishes that Britain would have done so had Germany invaded England. So you know what--let's focus on things that actually show the moral shortcomings of the Germans and maybe lay off where we ourselves live in a glass house.
  15. There is no hate quite so vicious as Christian "love."
  16. So I'm on board with the general idea that cultural purity as a concept is rubbish . . . with one big caveat: philosophy. Unlike most countries in the world, the United States of America is not an ethno-state. Japan is a nation because that's where the Japanese live. Ireland is a nation because that's where the Irish live. Germany is a nation because that's where the Germans live (at least, it's where they live now after they all got kicked out of Czechia, Poland, and elsewhere after WWII). But the United States of America is different. It's not a nation because it's where some people called the "Americans" live; it's a nation because that's where a group of people set up a government based on certain self-evident truths, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States is not an ethno-state; it's an ideological state. And it has been from its foundation. So when the Cubans come in and bring their hot women and their delicious sandwiches and their rockin' music and their curious take on language and their questionable taste in fashion, it doesn't threaten the foundations of the United States. Because the United States is not an ethno-state. It doesn't matter whether we're eating hot dish or Cuban sandwiches or pizza or listening to R&B or salsa or country music. It only matters that we broadly agree on the basic rights and liberties and obligations enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But when the Cubans also bring along their love of fascism and try to re-establish the Bautista dictatorship here, then I do object. And I do have a problem with the importation of that bit of their culture. And if they are unwilling to adopt our culture on those points and want to import their own ideosyncratic culture of kleptocratic fascism, then I think they absolutely should fuck all the way off and be deported. I single out the Cubans on this because that's whom the post I'm quoting is about, but that goes for any nationality. Russians who think Putinism ought to be emulated here; Arabs who think a North American caliphate would be a splendid idea; Chileans who come here thinking we ought to have an American equivalent of the Pinochet dictatorship; or a certain Persian who thinks she shah was just great and we ought to import the absolute monarchy of pre-revolution Iran to the United States--fuck all of them.
  17. Yeah--it's today. UT actually seems to be playing this exactly right. Loudly express its willingness to sign up and appease Geriatric Joffrey while doing absolutely nothing to actually sign up, which would imperil its academic standing.
  18. Honestly, this country does deserve to be shit on for electing this guy president.
  19. Any nation who regarded themselves as a free people would rise up and guillotine a self-styled "leader" who posts such a thing. I'm dead serious--"let them eat cake" pales in comparison to this.
  20. Hasn't the primary justifiction for employing Kyle Flood always been that he's the guy in charge of recruiting? I wonder how necessary that position is in the NIL/Portal era.
  21. I hear James Franklin is available.
  22. The sound mixing sucks in Victory. I crowd noise and you can’t even really hear the whistle.
  23. So I was at an event last night with some interesting people who have information to which I am not typically privy . . . and yes, I'm purposefully being very vague here . . . and I heard some "very informed speculation" (how it was posed to me). According to my informant, when the filing deadline comes in December, Ken Paxton is not going to have filed to run for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn; he will have filed to run for governor against Greg Abbott. The underlying facts are that Paxton's fundraising and polling have been disappointing after Hunt announced his candidacy. A lot of MAGA donors see Hunt as being every bit as MAGA as Paxton without any of the baggage. Pazton's camp is starting to get concerned that he might end up third in a three-candidate race. Meanwhile, there are some people (e.g., Tim Dunn) who aren't altogether thrilled with Abbott. And they see Paxton as a viable alternative. Here's my caveat--none of that makes any sense to me. But fuck--these are Republicans we're talking about. Nothing they do at all makes any sense to me. So I mean, I guess. Maybe.
  24. I don't think that's at all accurate w/r/t the French. I'll let one of our more knowledgeable posters speak about the experience in Louisiana, but in Quebec the French were pretty libertine when it came to mixing with the local indigineous population. That's probably to be expected because the male-female ratio of French people was way out of wack. It was largely a fur-trading colony; there weren't just a whole lot of mademoiselles.
  25. Hell—they bear the Chargers just two weeks ago. They’re a dangerous team with Dart playing at MetLife. But on the road, they still look like hammered dogshit.
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