Ghost of LL

Ha--yeah, she's definitely not doing any sports. She's an arts kid. And look--nothing really affects her right now. When they pass vouchers, our school district will be about the last to be really impacted. When she needs contraceptives, we'll be able to get them from out of state. There's really no present reason to uproot the family because I can see what's coming (but not here yet). And I'd pay to go see that band.

My friend, Mrs.LL and I will be joining you in NYC in just a few years. I have to get the youngest out of the house and safely into college (she's in 7th Grade now). But once that's done, I can get the fuck out of this shithole and never fucking look back. And by the way, I'm a 6th Generation Texan. Saying that pains me. But then I remember that one set of great-grandparents were Nth Generation Czechs; another set of ancestors were once Nth Generation English. But they all figured out at some point that they needed to leave the shithole they were in to seek their entertainment and fortunes elsewhere. And it won't take six more generations for my descendants to wonder "why the fuck did our family ever live in Texas?"

The neighborhood is kind of unique in that it was fully built out decades before annexation. So the roads and utilities were already built out. Austin Water would continue to do the utilities; road maintenance would be done by the MUD through a contractor (road maintenance on neighborhood streets is really pretty cheap). Police would be through the sheriff; fire through West Lake Hills (as it functionally currently is). That being said, there is only a slight break on the taxes. Properties that are disannexed would still be on the hook for debt service on debt incurred while those properties were part of the City.

Google "Letters of Last Resort." It's a very British way of dealing with this issue.

Real talk here for a minute—there are a bunch of sports that are suddenly going to be competitive in the Big XII next year for the first time. Imagine: Baylor or Iowa State could actually win a conference championship in swimming or volleyball. That’s wild.

Oh, and ok NYT—tell me more about how women have shifted 11 points to the right post-Dobbs.

Just out of curiosity, let’s check the methodology. They actually ran a telephone poll in … lemme check my calendar … 20 motherfucking 24? Is this a joke? The NYT actually paid Siena for this shit. That’s unreal.

We could only be so lucky. Greg has even less charisma than DeSantis. He'd be a complete shitshow on the national stage.

I don't know exactly how to review it. As an experience, it's really cool. It's an historical site as much as a restaurant. The pipes smoked by various famous people going back to the Nineteenth Century is really a unique thing. As a restaurant, it was good and fairly unique. But my experience was atypical--Mrs.LL and I went before the Billy Joel concert. So our reservation was at 6:30, and we don't typically eat until 9:00. So neither one of us were very hungry. We split a seafood tower (pretty good, but standard fare--hard to give much of a critique on that). For a second course, she had the lobster bisque (good, not spectacular) and I had the appetizer portion of mutton. Now, here's the fun thing: you don't see many steakhouses with mutton on the menu. And I like mutton. It was good damned mutton. But I'll also recognize that not everyone digs on the sheep. And man--they turned that table in an hour. And that was cool with us, because we were going to the show (and I think we told the waiter we were going to the show). We didn't exactly feel rushed. But as we headed out, I had the very conscious thought, "damn--we weren't in there very long." I'm not sure if that was the standard service plan; I suspect they were hustling on a kind of pre-show plan. But if that is standard, I would understand how one would feel rushed.

It's just Lost Creek that is being put to a vote. It's the result of a very specific piece of legislation passed last year by the 88th Legislature, following years of lobbying by a handful of residents. Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that there are a few lobbyists who live in Lost Creek. Anyway, it's just a majority of votes cast needed for disannexation. That's why the City's move here is so puzzling. In a low-turnout election, it's going to be the highly motivated people who carry the day. And on this issue, that's clearly the pro-disannexation people.

Sure. Give me a bit more information, though. Where are you flying into and out of? Are you open to flying into someplace like Frankfurt and out Zurich? Or are you intent on flying out of the same place you flew into? And what about internal transit? Are you doing trains or renting a car? And how ambitious do you want to be on transit? Like a "if it's Friday, it must be Munich" itinerary? Or more of a "let's find one or two bases of operations and go from there?" And what do you mean by "culture?" Are you looking for art museums? Cites of historical significance (and if so, what era)? Or more like street art and the KitKat Club? Just three ideas: Rhine: Fly into Frankfurt and drive up to the Romantic Rhine (i.e., the stretch roughly from Bingen to Koblenz). Spend a couple days there checking out the various castles. Drive down to Strasbourg and spend a few days there. Then drive down to Basel and spend a couple days there exploring the Rhine as it exits the Alps. Fly out of Zurich. Berlin & Dresden: Fly into Berlin (will require a connection) and spend five days there. Drive down to Dresden, which is an under-visited and -appreciated city by Americans. About halfway is the Spreewald, which is where the River Spree naturally spreads out into a huge floodplain but has, over the millennia, been carved up by small canals. It's just a beautiful area that you can now get a gondola, a bike, or just hike around. Munich & the Bavarian Alps: Fly into Munich and spend three or four days there. Then drive down to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, see King Ludwig's castles, hike the Partnachklamm and the Alpspitze, take the gondola up to the top of the Zugspitze (the highest mountain in Germany). Maybe go over to Salzburg and check out Berchtesgaden if there's time. Those are just some ideas.

Definitely Keen's. I think Mrs.LL and I sat at that exact table about a month ago.

I'm pretty sympathetic to UCF because Mrs.LL is an alumna. But even so, seeing "UCF" on your schedule isn't going to get any Iowa State fan excited (or fan of Kansas State or Texas Tech or Utah). And let's be real--the same goes for Cincinnati and Houston. BYU excites Utah fans because of that historical rivalry, but that's about it. I mean, I get why the Big XII did it at the time. But woof--those additions just look worse and worse on a schedule that is now lacking Texas and Oklahoma. And by the way--how the fuck did Iowa State not get one of the new Pac-10 refugees on its home schedule? That would add a little spice to this otherwise completely shitty and bland Hot Dish.

I really like Cologne, but for me it's no more than a day. See the Cathedral. Check out the Roman Museum across the street. Have a few little tiny glasses of Kolsch. And then you've pretty much exhausted Cologne. I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying not to spend too much time there. If you're interested in Medieval History--and I mean, really, who isn't?--go over to Aachen. It is generally regarded as the oldest city in Germany and was Charlemagne's capital. The chapel from his palace is still there (most of the palace was destroyed by the Vikings in 1000), and is kind of the remaining masterpiece of Carolingian architecture.

I'm just slightly gratified to see Mitch McConnell live to see himself drummed out of the party that he did a lot to create. Revolutions always eat their young, do they not?

I think this is the high likelihood. In all honesty, yeah.

ETJ isn't really a thing anymore with legislation that has passed over the last decade. I mean, it still exists. But it doesn't have a real material impact on anybody who actually lives in the ETJ. It only matters for developers (and it doesn't really matter to them anymore). So it really wouldn't matter for you. As to @TKthunder2's question--the disannexation vote is specific to Lost Creek. It was annexed back in 2015 just before legislation took effect limiting (pretty much eliminating) cities' ability to annex. Since then, a bunch of residents have been trying to get the Legislature to allow for a disannexation vote. And that's what finally happened this last session. But the legislation is very specific to Lost Creek. Nobody else anywhere in the state is going to be able to do it without passing new legislation.

Maybe. But it happens to be the wrong word. "Disannex" is the word used in the legislation. And it is specific to areas that were recently annexed. So I'm going to stick with that word.

Nope--only at this place I never heard of halfway across town. And really, what the fuck is the City thinking? Does it actually want Lost Creek to disannex? Because guess who's going to show up at a distant polling place that's not well-publicized? It's not the people who are like "well, I kind of like the City picking up my trash and I don't really have any complaints about it." It's the pot-bangers who spent the last four years at the Legislature trying to get this vote in the first place. The City is going to lose this election like 9-1, probably in large part because of its own vote suppression.

So the Lost Creek disannexation vote has been set for May 4, with early voting April 20-29. So of course the City only put up on early-vote location. And, I mean, why would they have more, right? The ballot only affects three precincts. So presumably the City put the early-vote location in Lost Creek, right? Right? Fuck no--they put it way across down at the Austin Permitting and development Center at 2222 and I-35. You know--I was undecided about this issue. But when you pull that kind of vote-suppressing shenanigans, it tells me that you know you don't have popular support. And damned if I'm going to vote on your side when you're doing that.

I have to tell you--I'm not too worried about all this Muslim talk for two reasons: 1) For the same reason I'm not particularly happy about these exit polls that show a bunch of Haley voters say they're not voting for Trump in November, I'm not too worried about this. The primaries are the time to register protest votes when you've got incumbents seeking re-nomination. Now sometimes, those protests are large enough that they signal real problems in November (see, e.g., Buchanan in 1992; Kennedy in 1980). And maybe Haley is large enough that she falls into that category. But we haven't seen that with Biden. For right now, those are just protest votes in a primary. That's a real benefit to an incumbent; it lets dissatisfied partisans blow off steam. There'll be plenty of time between March and November for those dissatisfied partisans to reframe the question in their minds as one between two choices (in which one choice is plainly preferable over the other). 2) It's fucking Michigan. Even outside the Arab-Muslim population, Michigan is a disaster for the GQP right now. The state party is in a shambles. They hold no statewide offices. They are too busy fighting over election denialsism to actually campaign for votes. I'd be a lot more worried if Dearborn were in Wisconsin. But happily, it's not. It's in Michigan. And Michigan is fucking blue.

I was watching BBC this morning, and you’re dead right about their hosts. They were interviewing the Deputy PM and asking him about some comments from some rando Tory MP. And he just wouldn’t say whether the comments were racist. Finally, the interviewer just says, “and our viewers will have discerned by now that you don’t want to say whether the comments were racist, but ….” It was exactly right and very clever, because it kind of forced the guest to provide something of an answer.

Nobody actually believes that frozen embryos are children. I don't like to get into dissecting people's motives on things. It's generally counterproductive. I certainly doesn't address the logical failings of the argument. But here, it's unavoidable. Nobody believes that frozen embryos are children, as reflected in the runaway-trolly though experiment I referenced above. I'm not saying there aren't plenty of people who will say "yeah, I think life begins at conception." But such people generally haven't thought through the full implications of what that means. For those who have thought through the full implications--and that is to say legislators, judges, and other policy-makers and -influencers--they don't actually believe that frozen embryos are children. And even if they were, they don't actually give two fucks about children, as reflected in the elimination of the summer food program. This is about controlling women and taking away their bodily autonomy. That's it. And anybody who tries to engage these people in any kind of good-faith debate about when life begins is making a mistake. Because these are not good-faith actors.

These people don't even believe that shit. Nobody believes that shit. Know how I know? Just do the old thought experiment with the trolley. You're at the switch and a runaway trolley is coming down the tracks. On one spur, there's a toddler. On the other spur, there's a cryogenic container with 100 frozen embryos. Is anybody flipping the switch to kill the toddler?

I'm definitely FOR me not having sex with that woman. So see--even in a negative environment, you can run a positive campaign.