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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Fuckers whose surname ends in "z" stanning for an overtly white-supremacist party will never not be amazing to me.
  2. I don't think you have to be a "moderate" or a "progressive." I think you just have to be angry. Elections in 2026 America are defined by anger. Republicans want you to be angry at immigrants and trans people. Of late, they've been pretty successful at it. Democrats in Texas havne't figured out who you should be angry at. That's kind of astonishing. The Republican Party has been in power for thity years. In that time, our schools have deteriorated, our electric grid has collapsed, our heatlhcare system is imperiled, and our taxes (for most people) have only gone up. Texas has gotten worse, and we're paying a higher price for it. There's literally nothing in Texas over which the state government has any say that is better today than it was in 1994. The only people who have benefited are a handful of billionaires. You want a target for anger--there it is: a handful of in-state and out-of-state billionaires and the Republican politicians they control.
  3. It's the nature of a second-term presidency. Every day that goes by, a second-term president is weaker. Every day, he has one fewer day to make appointments, to threaten retribution, or to promise rewards. And that's doubly true when everyone knows Trump is going to be too mentally gone to do anything after his term apart from drool and soil himself. Every day he loses power. And for each Republican, there's a tipping point day on which it is safer to piss off the second-term president than it is to stick with him. That day is a little different for each Republican. But for MTG and others, that day is already in the past. There's no one for whom that day is too far in the future. The last two years of Trump's presidency are going to be a complete shitshow. There's not going to be anything holding the GQP together. There's no clear successor; there's no unifying ideology. It's just going to splinter apart into recrimination and shelter-seeking.
  4. So exactly what leverage does Trump think the United States has to compel Ukraine to accept its (or any) peace deal? If Ukraine is able to keep up the fight without American aid, why wouldn't it do so? That's doubly true as Ukrainian sovereignty becomes every more important to Europe as it rapidly realizes that it can't trust the United States to protect it. Basically, all Trump has done is render the United States irrelevant.
  5. As I re-read Justice Sotomayor's dissent in Trump v. CASA, Inc., I hold out some possibility that Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagen were three of the four votes needed to grant cert. Kavanaugh concurred in that case specifically arguing that CASA wasn't a big deal because SCOTUS would get a chance to decide the EO on its (complete lack of) merits. Sotomayor was all "bullshit motherfucker, because the DOJ would know it'd get poured out and so it'd never petition for cert." And so once the DOJ did petition for cert, I think it's possible that Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagen voted in favor with Kavanaugh voting yes also because he kind of set himself up to do so with his concurrence in CASA. At least, I really really hope that's the deal.
  6. I miss the lawyer I was when SCOTUS was something that could be respected by people in the legal profession. That lawyer was so eager and energetic and thoughtful. It's too bad the Roberts Court killed him (and many others like him--looking at you, @Brisketexan & @DDD Dad).
  7. That's not true at all. Downtown you just get raped and assaulted. It's out by fucking MDW that you get raped, murdered, and raped. I didn't see this thread, but was his point that AMS is pretty unique among European airports in that it is very close to the city it serves and is well connected by train to Centraal Station (which is right in downtown)? So you could conceivably get a cheap rate on an airport hotel and use the train to be in downtown in less than 20 minutes? I mean, I still disagree. But I at least understand it as a discussion point.
  8. You're in Chicago for six days and you're staying at the fucking airport? What the everliving fuck? Airport hotels are for if you are in town for one night and you have an early flight out the next morning. That's it. If you're there for six nights, stay Downtown like a human.
  9. 1) Russian dressing is the only proper dressing on a Reuben. Putting Thousand Island on it just turns it into a kosher Big Mac. 2) Russian dressing isn't proper Russian dressing unless it has caviar in it. 3) Aside from Katz's, the best Reuben I've ever had is at Scholz's. Damn--I'm hungry.
  10. Turnout in Williamson County is going to be critical for Van Epps. It is the most educated county in the district. But unusually for such a well-educated area, it is heavily Republican. Van Epps either needs to hold trump’s margin or run up the score with a good turnout. He doesn’t need to do both. But he can’t do neither.
  11. There's a real jurisdictional question in there. If Hegseth ordered a murder in the Pentagon, is it a crime under Virginia law even if it was carried out elsewhere?
  12. Yeah--I think that's kind of where I am. It's been probably 20 years since I was in Venice, but my key takeaways were: 1) It's incredibly hot, humid, smelly, and crowded (none of which should be a real issue in January); 2) Even so, you don't have to go far from San Marco to find yourself completely lost and wondering down the most magical little alleys; 3) It's expensive AF. 4) But . . . you can hop from bacaro to bacaro eating cicchetti and have a fantastic "meal" for 15 Euro. You can buy a day pass on the Vaporetto for 25 Euro and ride the boat all around the Lagoon. You can walk through some of the most amazing churches in the world for nothing or next to nothing. In other words, you can fill a full day in Venice doing all the Venice stuff for less than 50 Euro. Anyway--this'll be different. I figure a gondola ride will be nice when it's cold. I imagine the gondaliers have blankets underneath which I can get handsy with Mrs.LL--that's definitely something you can't do in the Summer.
  13. So with that one detail out of the way, any thoughts on restaurants or stuff to do? Keeping in mind that it's January. So it'll be cold. Sitting on a patio isn't much in the cards. But drinking in a bacaro definitely is.
  14. Counterpoint: the St. Regis on Marriott points.
  15. To be clear--if I followed Option A, I wouldn't be going to Weatherspoon's. I'd go straight to the BA First Class Lounge as soon as I cleared the connection security at T5. The real issue with that plan is that the showers at the BA First Lounge are inferior and there aren't many of them. But at the AA Arrivals lounge, there are a ton of showers. I just don't know the geography of LHR well enough to remember if clearing customs and going to the AA Arrivals lounge is going to commit me to a whole ton of extra walking.
  16. Ok--I have a very specific scenario/question on this. I am going through LHR in January, and I have to transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 on the outbound leg. I am Executive Platinum on AA. I will have no checked luggage. My layover is 3 hours 15 minutes. With that information, should I: (A) Follow the purple "Flight Connections" signs and take the airside bus to Terminal 5, where I'd still have to go through security (though they do have a premium line), or (B) Clear immigration, hit the AA arrivals lounge at Terminal 3 to grab a shower and cup of coffee, take the Underground over to Terminal 5 where I can go through the BA First check-in situation which has a minimal security line and empties directly into the First Class Lounge?
  17. @texasdago or anyone else--any suggestions/thoughts on 72 hours in Venice in January?
  18. Don’t I know it, brother.
  19. As an SMU alumnus, let me just personally thank @PittsburghTiger for his team's absolutely exquisite performance.
  20. As someone who is an alumnus of SMU but who has a son for whom Berkeley is pretty high on his college list, I'll agree for this week only "Fuck Cal."
  21. Pitt is just plowing the way for SMU to get into the ACC championship game.
  22. Goddamn Missouri sucks.
  23. One of my more eclectic interests is the Age of Sail. I've read Utt's really excellent history of the naval War of 1812 (Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron), and I've made it all the way through the Aubrey-Maturin series. But I really feel incomplete without having read a biography of the greatest figure of the age--Nelson. And I can't really find a biography out there that is particularly well rated. Does anyone have any suggestions?
  24. Yeah--and it was definitely accurate.
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