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berlinerbaer

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Posts posted by berlinerbaer

  1. 8 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    My Mercedes was built in Alabama.  I hope they go union.  Just wanted to humble brag a little bit and express support for the unions.

    If you really want to scare the shit out of fattie and the other right wing losers, figure out a way to organize white collar labor.  That would be cool as shit; I would sign up today.

     

    My second stint at UC Berkeley was as a postdoc where, like all other postdocs and many other staff positions, I was actually represented by the UAW. This was in the physical sciences, so not the kind of crowd that would join the picket line alongside Humanities. The UAW was entitled to a small fraction of my salary, even if I wasn't a member, but my health insurance was badass.

    "Hi, I'm Todd. Your UAW representative. Are you interested in becoming a member of the union? We have monthly meetings and your monthly membership dues would be XX."

    "No. I'm too busy."

    "I understand. Are you aware that xx of your monthly pay goes to supporting us regardless of your membership?"

    "Yeah. I'm cool with that. Keep up the good work. But really, I'm too busy." 

    My experience may be unique, having worked in Libtown, USA. Now, as a researcher in Corporate America with a family who thinks my healthcare premiums and deductibles are too damn high, I'd be down with union membership. Still, I think the incubator of the concept is earlier in the professional career, i.e. in academic environments, and those folks are too overworked to care, and too beholden to unsympathetic faculty.

    /csb

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  2. 16 hours ago, Satchel said:

    Can anybody explain why the Magalitia thinks its conservative to support a guy who blows passenger planes out of the sky, throws political opponents out of windows of high rise buildings, poisons journalists, murders incarcerated dissents and kills thousands of innocents in Ukraine?

    7d82825b-43a7-4f86-ad76-ae6a8bb235ec_tex

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  3. 4 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

    How about the two who went to US Military schools?

    How about the one who was actually born in Ukraine?

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  4. Joe told Bibi he'll be on his own in any counterattack.

    https://www.axios.com/2024/04/14/biden-netanyahu-iran-israel-us-wont-support

    Quote

    President Biden told Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a call on Saturday that the U.S. won't support any Israeli counterattack against Iran, a senior White House official told Axios.

    Quote

    Behind the scenes: Biden told Netanyahu the joint defensive efforts by Israel, the U.S. and other countries in the region led to the failure of the Iranian attack, according to the White House official.

    "You got a win. Take the win," Biden told Netanyahu, according to the official.

    The official said that when Biden told Netanyahu that the U.S. will not participate in any offensive operations against Iran and will not support such operations, Netanyahu said he understood.

    U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke on Saturday with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant and asked that Israel notify the U.S. ahead of any response against Iran, a senior Israeli official said.

     

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  5. We caught the show in Llano and the clouds did the whole disappearance thing about 30 minutes before the show and stayed mostly away until the finish. Just badass. I'm thankful my family let me drag them a lot farther away that originally planned in order to find someplace clearer. Game balls go to the DFW NWS page and their cloud cover predictor app, and the restaurants, coffee shops, and taprooms of Llano that seemed well prepared for the influx of people. 

     

    On 4/8/2024 at 8:41 PM, pantone159 said:

    I think these are called solar prominences? I saw an orange dot and did not realize what it was until you posted these photos. Thanks!

    I'm not sure why they are red/orange though.

    The red color comes from a single wavelength of light from the emission of hydrogen atoms, called H-alpha, at 656 nanometers. The sun's outer atmosphere shows this luminescent light emission due to the input of magnetic energy, rather than the incandescent light emission seen on the much denser surface.

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  6. 13 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    Also, I never subscribed in the first place and sure as shit didn’t consent to receiving texts. So where could they have gotten my number, and could they have legally texted me?

    If that's a real screen grab above, then it seems like you have experience in freely posting your number onto the WWW.

  7. Most of them would vote for it under normal circumstances. It's on-brand and understandable that House progressives don't want to ram a bill through in this manner that gives funding to Israel. 

    (Mea culpa if the discharge petition isn't the Ukraine/Israel/Palestine/Taiwan conglomerate foreign aid package that was part of the dead border bill.)

  8. The comment upthread regarding the Uyghurs is pertinent. Is TikTok filtering searches and restricting content covering issues sensitive to the Chinese? History suggests that it probably is, which is admittedly problematic.

    Is there any evidence TikTok has been slanting content toward one political party or promoting content about election fraud or otherwise attempting to disenfranchise voters? That's an immensely bigger problem but also much more of a stretch. China has largely been agnostic towards US partisanship.

    If this becomes law, it will be really unpopular among young people, a key Democratic coalition. No wonder the Republican-led House passed it so easily. I think the Senate needs to think long and hard about this bill, as they should, and Biden needs to come to his senses. He needs to hear from Dems at the state and local level who use it effectively to reach younger voters.

    And if the other option is letting Musk or Mnuchin get their hands on it, hell-to-the fuckin' no! Given the choice between TikTok being ran by the Chinese or by MAGA, I'll take the Chinese anytime every time.

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  9. On 3/11/2024 at 7:06 PM, Chuckie Finster said:

    Dunno where best to put this, but this seems shady as fuck

     

     

    The hearing was a dud, apparently, just like they all have been. I say let Trump-world get involved as often as they wish. 

    Stakes are scary high, but these dipshits can't get out of their own way.

  10. 11 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

    Six flippable Republican House members in California will benefit from energized trumpsters looking forward to voting against Schiff. There are only 45 truly competitive House seats. 

    Schiff’s unforced and cynical error may keep the House in Republican hands. 

    There is no universe where Garvey would have placed any worse than second.

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  11. 16 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

    Well folks, I ate my lunch about 8 feet away from a guy who was wondering why somebody hadn't eliminated the president. And if you kill him, you know you gotta kill the vice-president as well. I eased around and saw a geezer in a motorized wheelchair. For context we were in the cafeteria of my Mom's assisted living center.

    Then Old Boy segued into how the main reason you wouldn't want to kill both the Prez and the VP is because the Mob Squad [his term] would be in charge. You know the Mob Squad, AOC and her crowd, they hate America.

    Then his table-mate changed the subject to how the turnip greens were pretty good but he'd added too much vinegar.

    Motorized Wheelchair has aged out of his days of dreaming (?) of church bombings. When we left he was sitting alone in a darkened room while the rest played Bunko.

    My restaurant eavesdropping just a few days ago revealed a man who thought it would be great for Trump to pick Tim Scott as his VP in order to lock up the black vote. Because it's that easy.

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  12. 27 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

    A lot of gaslighting going on here. Thanks to Citizens United—elections are rigged by billionaires. And Schiff—like Feinstein—is more favored by billionaires than a reform-minded Porter who threatens their stranglehold on political power. 

    Schiff propping up a Repub candidate will hurt Dem candidates in close races—as California Repubs will have a reason to go out and vote against Schiff (a man hated by trumpests) and every other Dem on a ballot in swing districts. 

    Finally, reform minded Dems (who appreciated Porter’s approach to corporate malfeasance) will be less enthusiastic to vote--lowering turnout. 

    Stop gaslighting. 

    Bolded is absolutely true. There are Republican reps that need to be shown the door and a D sweep on the Senate ticket in November would have made that easier. 

    But the idea of outside influence propping up Garvey at the expense of Porter is some next level Leftist dooming bullshit. Let's not pretend there aren't actually Republican voters in California. I think there are more who live there than in Texas. In any case, Schiff and Garvey both doubled up Porter's margin. There's no way she could have closed that gap, dark money or not.

    The real problem was Lee running and crowding the progressive lane. She probably would have gotten my vote if I still lived in CA. East Bay represent!

  13. 9 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

    Is this even remotely apples to apples though?

    Outside of Biden, I haven’t heard of a single Dem on the ballot other than Phillips and that’s only because he was the only me to raise his hand and try to do something when Biden wasn’t on the ballot in NH

    Democrats in coherence: why that's bad for Biden.

    - NYT, probably

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  14. On 2/28/2024 at 2:07 AM, Voldemort86 said:

    Of course there’s a TX democrat party operative idiot in there telling us not to.  I’ve been voting this way for 10 years. I think the point is to just vote against people you hate as much as possible. 
     

    I vote against bathroom Dan, indictment Paxton, and hot wheels Abbott several times a cycle and I love doing it.  They’re a joke.

    I'm considering voting in an R primary for the first time ever, just to stick it to Cheeto, Rafael, etc, but I'm not willing to go down that path if I'll get my mailbox filled with batshit GOP flyer trash. What has been peoples' experience?

  15. 11 hours ago, Js1 said:

    That poll isn't terrible actually

    They have Trump +7 and the GCB is GOP +4.  So they have Allred outrunning Biden by 7 points

    We can debate the accuracy of the D-R head-to-heads, like Trump +7 over Biden. That result is obviously subject to the perceived partisan lean of the sample set versus the actual partisan lean, which is of course unknown. The comparisons within party, OTOH, such as between Biden and Allred, are likely to be more accurate because the partisan lean of the sample set doesn't really matter as much. 

    IIRC, the last poll had Allred running ahead of Biden by a similar margin. A national environment like that in 2020, when Trump beat Biden by 5.5 in Texas, could see Allred beat Cruz.

  16. I read lots of screaming on here about the Left, and I get it. The Left is VERY online and punches way way above its weight in communication capability. You'd think they would be the bloc to make or break the Democrats.

    Here's the thing: politically they are irrelevant, as the following evidence will support. Certainly not enough to warrant the hand wringing on this board. There just aren't that many of them, at least those who vote.

    Biden has been crushing the primaries up until now. If the Left was such a large presence, surely they could drag themselves to the polls and vote for Marianne Williamson at a greater clip than the 2% she has been getting? Nicely matches the 2% Tulsi Gabbard was drawing back in 2020. Now, Bernie had a good showing in the primaries in 2020 as a Leftist, but he at least has some responsibility and mainstream cred after being in the Senate like 20 years. He heads the Senate Finance Committee, FFS. That takes the edge off.

    Next comes the Border Bill, which - let's be honest - was a fucking awful conservative's wet dream of a bill. It had the potential to be a total wedge issue for the entire left-of-center crowd. But most Democrats would have happily voted for it and Biden was going to sign it. Why? Because they know damn well that the number of independents/moderates they could have courted vastly outnumbered the amount of Leftists they would have pissed off. It was a total poison pill but worth it electorally, because the Left is loud but otherwise inconsequential. Now it's the Republicans, in their extreme idiocy, who decided to not only torpedo their own Democrat subversion efforts, but to OWN it. Fucking clowns. There are Republican strategists tearing their hair out right now.

    AOC is basically a team player at this point. Ditto Bernie and Warren. Sadly, they have both stopped talking about single payer healthcare, but there is a simple explanation. 

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