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hornmpa96

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by hornmpa96

  1. 1 hour ago, LurkingHorn said:

    https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/23/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-white-republicans/

     

    Politics aside, this has the potential to be a pretty massive issue down the road. My simpleton math says that could potentially be about 1/3 of the state. You have to hope the reluctant folks will continue to come around, but Republicans have been pretty steady in saying they will outright refuse it:

    image.png.4dfb85918b1ba892e6a77fd789b4a30f.png

     

     

    If He Dies Ivan Drago GIF
     

    my thoughts on the folks who refuse to take the vaccine.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  2. 1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

     

    Republican politicians who refuse to consider those things are not dumb. They are appealing to a very small minority of gun owners who refuse to budge a single inch - maybe because they are not so law-abiding, or are afraid a red flag law would be used against them, who knows. Or maybe those gun owners are benefitting financially from the current system.  

     

    Most of the Republican politicians don’t care about the actual gun owners at all. They do care about the gun manufacturers who make money selling as many guns as possible. What do they care if some of them are used to murder children in school and grocery shoppers?

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  3. This is another reason to abolish the filibuster. A solid majority of the country approves of more gun restrictions, and this includes a lot of gun owners. Pass universal background checks, waiting periods, red flag laws, improve mental healthcare, and magazine limits, and hopefully that makes a difference.

    This gun owner supports all of the above. Those things don’t infringe on the rights of any responsible gun owner in a material way.

    • Hook 'Em 6
  4. 12 minutes ago, utee94 said:

    We're going to Playa del Carmen in July.  

    Trip previously planned for Europe in June 2020, will be postponed to 2022.  Budapest, Croatia, Greece.  We were doing Budapest because we had tickets to a Eurocup game there, but with the Euro allegedly still going forward in 2021, and us not being there, we might drop Hungary from the itinerary.

    If you haven’t been to Budapest before, I wouldn’t drop it. It’s a beautiful city.

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    • Like 1
  5. 9 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Rather than a wealth tax, which is difficult to implement, regulations to slow or prevent wealth consolidation should be implemented. The real issue is that wages have largely stagnated while revenues and profits have risen.  For public companies, you could mandate a pay scale that doesn't allow C suite employees to makes 100s of times the amount of low wage employees, and 10s of times the amount of key production employees. It is more difficult for privately held companies, but something can be figured out there as well. Owning things is not a "job" nor is it particularly productive and the "reward" of income needs to be better distributed.  Once we made a national goal of using money to make money without regard to what happens in between or what truly gets produced, it is easy to see how we ended up where we are with closed factories and poor job prospects for many. Those with existing capital just want to make more capital.  The industry is irrelevant. Employees are expenses. 

    C-suite compensation has grown because of the value of equity compensation which ties back to the amount of support provided to financial markets.

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  6. If the issue is “the rich don’t pay enough taxes”, that’s easily solved by treating capital gains and dividends as ordinary income subject to tax at marginal rates. Additionally that could be included with the proposal to Mark publicly traded assets to market annually. 
     

    If the issue is “wealth inequality”, that seems much more complicated and I would venture that discussion would start with the enormous amounts of support provided to the financial markets in this country which drives inflated asset values in assets disproportionately held by the wealthy.

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  7. 13 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

     

    SydneyCarton - Thanks for providing insight into the REPs.

    Curious to get your thoughts on this comment from the WSJ article:

    “But recently, competition in Texas has been declining amid a wave of mergers in the industry. Texas is home to 2 of the nation’s largest retail energy providers, Vistra and NRG. Marketers now owned by the 2 companies accounted for three quarters of the retail electricity sold in Texas.”

    Assuming some smaller REPs go bankrupt due to this event, it doesn’t seem if there is significant competition actually taking place.

  8. Reading these posts on leasing makes me realize how lucky my family has been leasing our place in the Hill Country. It’s been with the same core group of hunters for the last 40 years. When we’ve needed help, they always offered a helping hand. Both groups developed a significant amount of trust over the years.

    The only difficult discussions involved whether kids could hunt for free. Our pricing was always based per gun. Some of the group didn’t like it and ultimately left the lease.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  9. 1 hour ago, Dr. Beeper said:

    Correct. It also happened in 2002. No, I don’t want to pay more for electricity for 10 year storms. ERCOT really fucked up, but any explanation will likely be lost on this crowd. And lol at the Highland Park graphic, and generally anytime Wanker Bob posts. 

     

    15 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

    One last response here. This particular event is like a 100-year event, and it’s not a joke to me at all. I’ve not once commented on any death situation as if it were acceptable. All kinds of jackasses putting words in my mouth, like that moron wildcat (I have no desire to live in a society with you or your ilk, and am confident we are worlds apart)  

    The solution of “let’s just pay more for electricity” is a really neophyte dumbass simpleton response. 

    How am I supposed to read the first quote?

    People are actually dying during this event whether through a house fire started by candles or carbon monoxide poisoning. As a Texan, I would willingly pay extra for electricity to ensure plants are properly able to withstand weather extremes. I would even include paying extra for the produced gas to winterize the supply lines.

    if that’s a dumbass simpleton response, please educate me because I don’t want to see additional Texans dying in the next 10 year storm provided we can improve the situation.

  10. 37 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

     

    2.  Transmission and infrastructure - This is owned by one company.  For the Houston area, that is Centerpoint.  For Central Texas, it is Oncor.  In Austin, a lot of it is Austin Energy.  They own the lines.  In most bills, they charge your retail energy provider.  Usually you see a "Transmission Charge."  This is what is supposed to reimburse these companies (with a small margin) to maintain.  Again, not sure if that charge is enough for wholesale improvements.  I doubt it.  Infrastructure is expensive.  Hell, here we have a water main break almost constantly causing massive street and subway flooding.  Why?  Cause replacing 100 year old pipes underground is fucking expensive.  And while downed lines due to trees breaking, etc.. is causing some of the outages, this is not the massive reason for this outage (it is on the supply side here).

     

    Improving transmission infrastructure shouldn’t be an issue. The owners get to build that into their rates charged by the electricity providers assuming it’s approved. Centerpoint has changed its business plan recently to increase capex to increase its operating income in the future.

    This is a power generation issue and Texas simply doesn’t invest in the capacity/weather-proofing for these events.

    • Hook 'Em 4
    • Like 1
  11. 26 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

    thanks for the answer.

    my opinion is that i suspect you are wrong, and it is based on republican house leadership mollycoddling that part of the base. they seem to be running shit right now.

    i do see some room in 74 million votes for what we would all call normal, but it seems apparent that republican legislators don't think they can win reelection without the "lot of crazy" going on.

    They can’t win primaries without the crazy vote. That’s why they will not vote to remove MTG from her committee assignments in public even though a majority of them would tell you in private she’s crazier than a shithouse rat and has no business in the US Gov’t.

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  12. 49 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

    From the text you used, "at a shooting range or in a shooting gallery or other area designated for the purpose of target shooting;" is the only place such a transfer can take place. So that pretty much means you are full of shit. There is no way I could loan a rifle or shotgun to someone for the weekend or whatever unles we are at something that complies with that text, which doesn't even encompass most hunting situations.

    First, I acknowledged that specific issue in my very first post on the subject:

    1 hour ago, hornmpa96 said:

    I agree that some of the language isn’t perfect, as arguably there is an issue with transport of the shotgun between the target shooting/hunting location. However, they did try and include some reasonable exceptions in the bill and if the Senate had ever actually allowed consideration of the Bill, maybe this issue could have been fixed.

    Second, let's look at the entire exception provided in the Bill:

    “(F) a temporary transfer if the transferor has no reason to believe that the transferee will use or intends to use the firearm in a crime or is prohibited from possessing firearms under State or Federal law, and the transfer takes place and the transferee’s possession of the firearm is exclusively—

    “(i) at a shooting range or in a shooting gallery or other area designated for the purpose of target shooting;

    “(ii) while reasonably necessary for the purposes of hunting, trapping, or fishing, if the transferor—

    “(I) has no reason to believe that the transferee intends to use the firearm in a place where it is illegal; and

    “(II) has reason to believe that the transferee will comply with all licensing and permit requirements for such hunting, trapping, or fishing; or

    “(iii) while in the presence of the transferor.

    They attempted to put in place reasonable exceptions to the requirements for background checks for temporary transfers which included your original example. With respect to the hunting example I utilized, I believe its reasonably necessary for someone to transport the gun from the gun's location to the hunting location. 

    So, who's being fucking disingenuous here?

    The Midland/Odessa shooter in 2019 specifically acquired his gun in a person to person transfer not subject to federal background checks. If we don't get this fixed, it will eventually come back to bite responsible gun owners in the ass. This was a reasonable bill and one which had bipartisan support in the house. Would I prefer it fix the issue you described? Of course I do.

  13. 3 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

    It really doesn't matter if they filed a seperate bill as an amendment. In fact, that is a problem. They are too clueless to do things right the first time for people who actually own and use guns to trust them. If they had complete power to do things on their own they wouldn't have bothered with the amendment.

    I’m using the text from the bill passed in 2019 by the Democratic lead House (you know when the “crazy Ds” had complete control). Based on your response, the actual text of the legislation doesn’t actually matter. What matters is what you read in the NRA mailer or heard on Hannity. Understood.

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  14. 1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

    If I recall correctly, Beto voted for the House's Universal Background Check bill, which I'm assuming is the same one as the last time I read the actual text of that bill.

    So, according to that bill, if your best friend, who you know has a LTC, wants to borrow your fancy over under shotgun for a weekend because he is considering buying his own, you both have to travel to a FFL, fill out the paperwork, and pay the transfer fee (which the bill specifically mentions there is no limit on what they can charge, hello extreme abuse in areas with few FFL's. Typically $25 or so now, but that would likely go up). And ye doesn't even have to go through an NICS background check because he has an LTC. But wait! It gets better. He is now legally the owner of the gun according to the federal government. I mean, if he died while it was in his possession and his grandkids found it you could try suing them to get it back, but they have proof you intended to transfer possession. But the real kicker? You have to do everything in reverse just to get your gun back. 

    This is what the Democrats consider "reasonable" gun regulation, and this is why they continue to lose in places like Texas. There isn't anything at all reasonable about that. Anyone who actually owns guns and hunts and has friends who also own guns and hunt and isn't super rich understands this.

    What’s your friend borrowing the shotgun for?

    If it’s for hunting, the Bipartisan Background Check Bill of 2019 passed by the House, excluded that from the transfer provisions. 

    Is it for skeet shooting? If so, there’s an exception for that as well.

    I agree that some of the language isn’t perfect, as arguably there is an issue with transport of the shotgun between the target shooting/hunting location. However, they did try and include some reasonable exceptions in the bill and if the Senate had ever actually allowed consideration of the Bill, maybe this issue could have been fixed.

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  15. 14 minutes ago, deadshank said:

    We refilled today.  Range conditions are poor and dry.  Recent rains have greened up a few things.  Low lying areas have some wild rye springing up.  Deer are really hungry. 

    It’s the same at my place. I’m pumping water into my tank overnight to try and get back to close to full.

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