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austingirl

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Posts posted by austingirl

  1. Rain has slowed there from what I hear. Still supposed to get some tomorrow but hopefully it won't be as torrential. This is my grandpa's street in PA this afternoon - Angelle Dr., near the old TJ campus.
    3ece6d5dba9ab068c89dd116e9022388.jpg


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1
  2. 1 hour ago, F250 said:

    I just got a call my from my mom who is a conservative Republican, actually a former Republican activist and got an earful on Trump and the Republican Party. She will disown me and my siblings if we do not vote for Beto. I was the first one notified.

    Ha, I had a lady tell me that yesterday. Maybe it was your mom.

  3. 2 hours ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

    I don't necessarily enjoy that this is happening. I have to imagine that if they are risking their life to make the journey, their current situation is dire. So we can accept them and integrate them in a step process or we can turn them away.

    History tells us that our country was built on inviting the weak and huddled masses. That this country was morally superior to all others. So that tells me we need to find a way to make it work.

    Luckily, there is a market for these people to come and contribute. Our lives are all made easier due to the contributions of (il)legal immigrants. They take the jobs others don't and do it for next to nothing. In return, they pay taxes (see above) and have a lower crime rate than the rest of the population. 

    Now in regards to the Demi Moore thing, I have no understanding of your point. But I do find it interesting that in our anthem, it states "home of the brave" and here you are so afraid of someone online that you are threatening them with your second amendment rights. Let alone your shaking fear of these families. 

    Right, and I'm one of the liberal pansies he's always railing against.

    2 hours ago, bolverk said:

    Banned now. Good riddance.

    So he's really gone? Is that because of all the neg rep? Do we have some kind of auto-ban system when someone gets enough neg rep?

  4. 11 minutes ago, Zepol87 said:

    Man what a pussy you are. 

    And why are we talking about the first and second amendments? Do you think mine and others' anger here is because you said fuck off? You can tell whoever you want to fuck off whenever you want. That has nothing to do with anything.

    (Not you, Zepo.)

  5. 12 minutes ago, TSipper said:

     

     

    We owe this girl and her family nothing. I do not care if they are fleeing violence, that is not the responsibility of this country. 7 billion people on this planet, is it our job to take all of them in?

    Go fuck yourself.

    Jesus. I hope you and yours are never in a position where you have to beg someone else for help only to hear "we owe you nothing." Some of y'all are acting like you built this country with your bare hands and that you're protecting it from howling Injuns coming to rape and pillage, instead of asylum seekers. One slight cosmic shift and it could've been any of us born in a country we needed to flee at some point. I highly recommend y'all read Home by Warsan Shire. An excerpt:

    Quote

    no one leaves home unless
    home is the mouth of a shark.

    All this is going to come back on us and we will pay, as a country. I don't know when and I don't know how but I firmly believe it. The bill always comes due. 

    • Like 3
  6. Update:

    Yeah, it's gonna rain more more than it looked like yesterday.  Complex pattern shaping up, definitely gonna rain hard SE Texas, depends on whether the trough moves up towards us.  

    Tue-Thur, maybe into Friday or Sat even.  The thing has slowed down and is moving pretty snaily.   It's gonna rain a lot down SE of Austin to the coast.  How much of that gets up here still up for grabs.

     

    But it's gonna rain around here, oh yes, it's gonna rain.

    Back late tonight/early tomorrow w/more.

    They are getting pounded. And not in the good way. Some of y'all may remember this from last year's Harvey thread but my grandpa's house was flooded then and he passed away before we could finish renovating after the flood. They updated EVERYTHING in that house, not just flood-damaged stuff. My parents just sold the house and it closes next week. Dad told me today the street is already underwater and they've gotten emergency alerts about the severe flash flooding - they didn't get those even during Harvey. I hope beyond hope these people don't get flooded again. This is my cousin's street in Bridge City.

     

    7f2205462a935c270748471f265f1b52.png

  7. 2 hours ago, David Dennison said:

    My grandmother was a Democrat of the Old South variety til the day she died. 

    My pawpaw was a yellow dog Democrat. He was also racist AF. He stopped voting in 2008 because his options were a Republican or a black man.

  8. There are tons of those idiots all across Texas. Hell, I’m related to plenty of them. The good news is that we don’t have to flip them to win. Here are other things going the dems way that will eventually matter more.
    1. Texas voter turnout is consistently in the bottom 5 states. That means there are a ton of votes left on the table that aren’t committed to positions on which they will never change their mind. When dems have a functional party in Texas they will be better at getting these people to the polls. My perception is that many of these people are more likely to vote dem than pub. 
    2. We won’t need too many from number 1 to get over the hump with demographic changes. Old whites being replaced by diverse youngs that are much more liberal. It’s been talked about a lot so no point in rehashing it.
    3. When there is enough of a shift for the national party to send financial help and organization, things will come together. We are basically operating with no party structure and have a guy that might win anyway. 
    The way I see it playing out is that the demographic shifts will continue for another 5ish years and then the national dems will realize that Texas could be in play in 2024 for the presidential election. Organization will ramp up, money will flow, votes that have been on the sidelines will show up some, Texas goes blue and never looks back. It’s going to happen faster than some people think. HRC was about the worst possible candidate for Texas and got 43.2% of the vote. How much will it take from my points above to pick up 6-7 points?
    ETA: hrc (with a terrible campaign) lost Texas by a the smallest margin of any dem since 1996. Hillary. Clinton.


    Yep. We don't bother trying to flip strong Cruz supporters. Once you ID yourself as such we make a note of it and you get a "Thanks and have a great day!" Then we move on.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
  9. 14 hours ago, Dr. Teeth said:

    No one will admit to voting for these guys. But they will vote for them. 

    Oh, they admit it. Plenty of people admit it. Some quotes:

    "Our government works best for the economy when special interests, PACs and corporations control Congress. The last thing we need is for Congress to be controlled by the unwashed and uneducated masses. Your candidate seems to have little or no knowledge with respect to the inner workings of our government."

    "[Beto is a] Great guy, wrong color. Sorry!"

    "You lost me at Democrat. That's the last thing we need is another Democrat in the Senate or Congress. Ted Cruz will get my vote and will easily win this election because Texans are not idiots."

    [This one was a wrong number.] "First off my name is not [a girl's name]. I have a cock....2nd...I will never vote for Looney Liberals ruining our country...3rd...Remove my number from your list...And 4th.....MAGA.!!!!!!"

    "He'll no I'm not voting for some dumbass libtard #MAGA"

    "Well let's see. He appears to be Pro Death of the unborn, our most helpless and defenceless. His promotion of open borders is tantamount to inviting low wage scabs to cross the border so that they can steal jobs from our citizens. He favors ending the war on drugs even though our life expectancy has declined (for two years). Open borders will only result in increased heroin and fentanyl imports, increased addiction and even more death. What's not to like? KEEP TEXAS SUCCESSFUL!! VOTE REPUBLICAN!!" 

  10. 2 hours ago, The Royal We said:

    I've voted Republican or Libertarian my whole life, but Beto will probably be the first time I'll vote differently.  He seems to be one of the few voices of sanity out there at the moment and also seems to be a very decent human being at the same time.  Sounds like someone I can and should support as much as possible.

     

    1 hour ago, Jiggy-Z said:

    I have said this before on surly, perhaps in this thread: I was in 8th grade when Reagan won in '80 and have been "republican" ever since.  I never really voted at except in a few school board type elections where it is not so much about the party affiliation.

    Along the way, I listed to Rush and Sgt. Sam on KLBJ, especially back in the early/mid Clinton years-I was was pretty sore at Bush I losing back in '92.  Somewhere in the later Clinton years I got tired of their shtick-just too hateful and their extreme arguments would never stand up to any simple logic applied.  For the 2000 presidential election I wanted Bush to win but was OK with Gore-seemed like a descent enough guy.  Pulled for Bush in the post election FLorida debacle.

    After 911 I went harder right, mostly because I thought Clinton had botched the missile raid on Bin Laden because he rushed it to deflect on the Lewinsky thing. 

    Bush did some nutty stuff, but the thing I remember most was the gas and commodities price escalation-or rather an interesting explanation I heard from the right for the gas price increases-If you remember gas prices went through the roof in 2008 without a corresponding like increase in the price of oil. Demand for gas had a slight increase, there was some reduced refining capacity and the price of oil did go up-but none of those factors in total would have accounted for the increase.  As the questions got harder for the administration and the oil companies as profits soared , there was a lot of talk about demand and the markets adjusting to it as the reason.  This is when I called bullshit on the whole thing-as an oil company you don't get to charge 3 times as much for doing the same thing.  It was a fix, a bone thrown to the oil industry.  The analysis is more complicated than I am making it, but that is what turned me off of "conservative" talking points.

    Then came the 2008 election, which should have been a landslide for Obama: Bad economy (with no cover for party in power), bad Republican VP candidate, beleaguered populace from unending and pretty sketchy war, gas prices, food prices, etc.  I came to the conclusion that there might be a racial problem. 

    I was/am no fan of Obama.  In addition to ACA, I saw little hope and change.  If anything I saw a doubling down on Bush II doctrines.

    So 2016 election would be wide open. I figured Hilary would get the D nod and hoped the republicans would get somebody good (a McKain or Romney type candidate would probably win easily).  I simply could not believe what I was watching as Trump surged and people got behind him.  Election night I went to bed early, thinking if the American people had any sense Hilary would be our president elect. I did not vote-it is Texas after all.

    Which brings us to today. I voted for the first time in decades in the democratic primary.  In the midterms, I am voting for Beto and anybody else that has a D behind their name-not because I think they are any better than the others guys necessarily, but this madness must be stopped.  

    These posts give me hope. I voted for W twice. I was actually down at the capitol on election night in 2000 cheering for him. Fast forward to 2017 and I was at the women's march wearing a pussyhat I knitted myself. Things change and it's ok to change with them. I've been asked so many times if Beto is a Republican or Democrat, and as soon as I say Democrat I get some variation of "I'm never voting for a Democrat! Texas is a RED state!" and it just makes me want to pull my hair out. 

  11. 14 hours ago, Stringer said:

    Esquire photo article that just posted:

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a21287606/beto-orourke-texas-senate-photos/

    I think this may be the money quote:

    “O'Rourke takes questions on the steps of the 1930s-era Cottle County Courthouse in Paducah. He is greeted by a small group wearing Trump gear and gun rights T-shirts, who tell him that "anyone who is gonna come this far to our town deserves to have us come out and give you a listen." A volunteer who knew one of the MAGA guys said he pulled her aside afterwards, saying of O'Rourke: "He's good."”

    Cruz is hobnobbing with the evil, Communist Hollywood elite (did I do that right?) and Beto is hitting every small town in the state.  

    This is awesome. I hadn't seen it yet. Thanks for posting.

  12. Haven't read all the responses here but I'll start with my standard response to this topic, which is: There but for the grace of God I go.

    We won the cosmic lottery by being born here. Sheer luck granted us American citizenship. I'm not religious at all but I recognize that a slight shift in the universe's design and it would be me that is trying to leave my country for one that gives a better life to my children. However I can help my fellow humans in this endeavor, I will.

    • Like 8
  13. 8 hours ago, RedDirtTexan said:

    Philip MINDFUCKED Stan with the "your girl may or may not be a Russian agent, just don't know, but maybe, so watch it." 

    MINDFUCKED 

    I kind of wanted them to pan out and show her talking with the Cigarette-Smoking Man and us to find out Stan was shacking up with a double-crossing US operative whose last name literally means Red Cave.

  14. I didn't expect it to go out in a blaze of glory a la Breaking Bad. I didn't exactly expect this either. What exactly did Stan tell Henry, and what happens to Henry now? Could he legally stay with Stan?

    When they were driving in the car at the end, I thought Philip was telling the driver to pull over because he realized they were about to be taken care of like Adriana in The Sopranos. Kept waiting for the turn into the woods. So Elizabeth fucking up the Gorbechev plan didn't get them excommunicated? I really thought that it was going to ruin their relationship with The Center and that they were going to leave them in the US.

  15. 15 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

    She had a big hit (can't remember the name) sometime around that cover.  It was a breathless girly "I'm gonna read my diary and play piano" type ballad.

    Vanessa Carlton. This was her big hit.

     

  16. 20 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

    I agree that she can really sing, but there was no reason for that song to be turned into some slick recording. There is a reason raw Janis Joplin with Big Brother is such an awesome song, it’s not the mix board, or whatever they call it

    Yeah, she has a great voice, but Piece of My Heart is one of those songs that's greater than the sum of its parts. Janis Joplin's voice made that song. Anything else, especially upbeat like this, takes away the raw pain of the song. Another one I think of similarly is Man in a Box by Alice in Chains. I can't imagine anyone besides Layne Staley doing that one.

    • Like 1
  17. Very Necessary was my first CD. I still know all the words to Shoop, and looking back, I'm kind of surprised my parents didn't take it away from me considering that I was in middle school and had no idea what the song was about at that point.

    As an aside, Coolio performed at the Port Arthur Mardi Gras one year and I got his autograph. /coolstorybro

  18. I was really sad to hear this. I met him back in the early aughts when I did PR for the UT College of Engineering. He was an advisory council member and I schmoozed with him and some of the other members (as an aside, Rex Tillerson was one, too) and we talked about his life at NASA, but honestly, more about his painting. He was such a great guy. The CoE has some amazing alumni.

    • Like 2
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