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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. The craziest most awful thing about this is that giant fissures spewing lava just appeared in these folks' backyards. Holy hell, I'm mowing the lawn and Hades just cracks open in front of me?!?

     

    Yesterday, they had a story about a guy hanging on his back porch and a glob of lava "splatter" just up and splashed this dude's leg, crushing and destroying it. Now that the lava has reached the ocean, there's the additional concern people will essentially be breathing acid with tiny shards of glass and shredding their lungs.

     

    Fuck all that. I'd rather risk the infrequent tornadoes we get around these parts.

     

     

  2. Is the distribution of assets dictated by public policy?  I'm not talking deed restrictions either.  WTF does the court have to say about my shit with regard to protected classes?  It should not. 

    Now, if my wishes are made public and that disuades people from voting for me, then I should have calibrated accordingly. That should be the only repercussion of said stipulations, IMHO. 

     

    Slorch, while I get where you're coming from and respect your belief in private property rights, you're ultimately relying on the State to enforce the terms of the contract. The State, however, has made it clear (no matter your opposition to the rationale) that it will not enforce contracts that discriminate according to race. Without State-backed enforcement, the contract is only worth the paper it is written on.

     

    We get that you're opposed to it on principle, but the law was settled on this back before you and I were born. That's just the way the cookie crumbles, bro.

     

     

     

  3. I'm a baby boomer, UT class of '73. George H W Bush, a very moderate Republican, spoke at my commencement. I'm as pissed as you are the way evangelical "Christians" are voting. It is not the Christianity I grew up with in the '50 and '60's. I am from Van Zandt county, which went for Trump something like 85%. I'm sure my east Texas former classmates and relatives think I'm crazy. Most of them stopped their education at high school and think Trump is doing a great job.
    I'm really hoping for a Beto victory so that my faith in the decency of our state is restored.
    Here's to the Free State of Van Zandt!
  4. We do the same thing here, because garbage disposals don't exist.
    And it works fine.  I don't know the flow rate of our toilets but in 5 years I've never been able to clog one....and damned if I haven't tried.
    Where exactly is "here"?
  5. 10 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

    For fuck's sake, Texas Ted Cruz was a mime in high school. A Christian mime. 

    Pasted_Image_3_10_16__2_52_PM.jpg

     

    4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

     

    What greater contrast can be drawn?

  6. 3 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    Remind me of Mr. Obamas again......    This kid of argument only works when you're honest about your own teams choices.

     

    There Russians did not sway the election. Hillary Clinton swayed the election. She sucks.. that's pretty much her in a nut shell. Power hungry, lying, unethical, criminal amoral hump of a human would be descriptors of her.

    First off, given your emotionality and multiple typos, I'm going to give you a pass because I think you're drunk. But the comparison between the credentials and experience between the candidates in our last presidential election is a farce, and you should know that. We were given a choice between two candidates. One who had served as a senator and as secretary of state. The other was a seven-time bankrupted real estate developer, who actually stopped developing and became a "brander", as well as a game show host conspirator who questioned a president's nationality.

    By no means am I implying that Hillary was the perfect candidate, but given the choices, she was definitely the preferable one. 

  7. 18 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    Funny they've been trying  to prove the Russians did cost her the action, and darned if they haven't been able to yet.  But I guess cause you hold the opinion they did yours is the only valid argument for why she lost... 

     

    She sucked and people were tired of her ass.

    Remind me Trump's qualifications again?

    The notion that the Russian propaganda campaign had zero effect is dumb. I'm not saying, however, it was the deciding factor but we should consider the following:

    Clinton received 227 electoral votes. Had she won PA, MI, & WI, she would've won the election with 273 electoral votes. Combined, Trump received  6,657,304 from those three states. Clinton, on the other hand, got 6,578,227. The difference was 79,077 or 0.6% (less than DKR on a bad day).

    Are you actually stating that 1 out of 167 persons couldn't have been swayed by disinformation? 

  8. 18 hours ago, Pasken said:

    For those of us with family in Houston, another traffic light between Austin and Houston bit the dust. The light next to Bucky's in Bastrop is now a bridge. There are 4 more bridges to go on the project and most of them are near Austin. I remember making the drive back to school after a holiday before the bridges in bastrop and when they were still building Ben White in south east Austin...ugh. 

     

    Now, if only we could get rid of the left-lane homesteaders...

    • Like 2
  9. 20 hours ago, Aphelion said:

    "Be very careful not to confuse "deferring to an authority on the issue" with the appeal to authority fallacy. Remember, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance. There is always a chance that any authority can be wrong, that’s why the critical thinker accepts facts provisionally. It is not at all unreasonable (or an error in reasoning) to accept information as provisionally true by credible authorities. "

    https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/21/Appeal-to-Authority

     

    Personally, I find it would be an error in reasoning to believe the accounts of miracles performed by Jesus: he walked on water; he healed lepers with a touch; he cured the blind; he fed hundreds with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread; he turned water into wine; he was dead for three days and then came back to life (sort of as a ghost-spirit thing). As a critical thinker, logic tells me those are impossibilities.

    Why should I defer to the authority of second- or third-hand stories (even provisionally) told by illiterate fishermen and superstitious goat herders from the bronze age? If they're telling me these kinds of unbelievable stories about a god-man, why should I even accept that the individual they're describing is real when they've already lost their credibility?

    Essentially, you're asking me to discard all logic and do something akin to taking the word of the ancients that the exploits of Jason and the Argonauts or Hercules were entirely real and unfabricated when most likely their stories are allegorical and only based (maybe) on a kernel of truth.

    • Like 1
  10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-fbi-source-for-russia-investigation-met-with-three-trump-advisers-during-campaign/2018/05/18/9778d9f0-5aea-11e8-b656-a5f8c2a9295d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2d6950af3e91
    Secret FBI Source for Russia Investigation Met with Three Trump Advisers During Campaign
     
    The professor took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with Carter Page, whom Trump had named a few months earlier as a foreign policy adviser.
    But the professor was more than an academic interested in American politics — he was a longtime U.S. intelligence source. And, at some point in 2016, he began working as a secret informant for the FBI as it investigated Russia’s interference in the campaign, according to people familiar with his activities.
    There is no evidence to suggest someone was planted with the campaign. The source in question engaged in a months-long pattern of seeking out and meeting three different Trump campaign officials.
    For years, the professor has provided information to the FBI and the CIA, according to people familiar with the matter. He aided the Russia investigation both before and after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s appointment in May 2017, according to people with knowledge of his activities.
    The FBI formally opened its counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign on July 31, 2016, spurred by a report from Australian officials that Papadopoulos boasted to an Australian diplomat of knowing that Russia had damaging material about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
    The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium.
    The conference was held days after Page had traveled to Russia, where he had delivered a speech at Moscow’s New Economic School that publicly criticized U.S. foreign policy.
    Page had been on the FBI’s radar since at least 2013, when the FBI caught two accused Russian spies on a wiretap discussing their attempts to recruit him. Later in 2016, Page became a surveillance target of the FBI, which suspected him of acting on behalf of the Russian government — an assertion he denies. Page has accused the government of abusing its authority by unfairly targeting him.
     
    goes on to say he met with Clovis and Papadopoulos. Pretty sure the sources identity will become known now more than just the Post with this writeup.  I've abbreviated some of the above so people can read the article.  
    Is this the same professor who lived in England, headed up some foreign policy school, and disappeared?
  11. Adding to what I said above:
    During the 2016 election, I think I saw a total of three Trump bumper stickers and zero yard signs. On the other hand, I'd venture to guess about a dozen Hillary yard signs and double that on stickers.

    Both counts were underwhelming and yet Trump still garnered about a third of the Travis County votes. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with my neighborhood and commute, but I also think that many are choosing to not publicly proclaim their support nowadays for whatever reason.

  12. Signifying little but more than nothing and as a rural Texas resident, I have yet to see a single Cruz sign.
     
    Not one.
    I'm not sure if the yard sign index is indicative of anything, but my neighborhood is full of Beto signs and bumper stickers. I'm inclined to guess it's more a measure of enthusiasm than anything else.

    There are likely tons of die-hard Republicans who will do their duty and pull the lever for him, because R, that we'll never see in yard signs nor bumper stickers.
  13. 37 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

    Serious question: y’all really think Beto will win?  

     

    I've been on record since the outset: No, I don't think he wins. That said, my support for his candidacy over Cruz won't be diminished. If we played the game as you seem to be suggesting, we might as well not hold elections at all.

    While winning this election would be my preferred outcome, I would be very satisfied with a close showing to demonstrate to the Texas GOP that their political monopoly over this state is on shaky ground and is diminishing by the year. Afterall, Trump only beat Hillary by 9 points and Mitt beat Obama by 16. With Dallas, Travis, Bexar, Harris being solidly blue over the last two presidential election cycles and some evidence that the suburbs are turning purple (Ft. Bend is blue now), then I do think the right Democratic candidate stands a chance of winning statewide office against a shitheel Republican. 

    And let's face it. Ted is an immensely dislikable guy with questionable accomplishments after "representing" this state the last several years: everyone on Capitol Hill (from both parties) hates him; he's a smug and arrogant weasel; he barely ever shows his face in front of the people he supposedly represents; and I can't think of a single accomplishment he's made since becoming a senator. In other words, I do think he's vulnerable. Moreover, this is an election year where the party in power historically loses seats in Congress.

    So, let's try out that theory and see how close we can get. I've donated to Beto and plan to volunteer some of my precious time to his campaign in the coming months. Ted, like Granny Goeb, are not real Texans and I don't want these pretenders to feel like they represent me in any way, shape, or form.

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