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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. Serious question about this whole thing: why?

    If they kill cattle, pay the fucking rancher for his loss. IMHO, the potential threat of losing a species to a fungible cow is what's in the balance. The whole scheme seems designed to just reward small pecker people with some sort of "rewarding" compensation.

  2. Two other fine points for indicating OP is a sock:

    "too stupid to handle business"

    Handle you business is an Americanism.

    "why has it gotten so bad?"

    "Gotten" isn't used in England anymore. They dropped that usage some time ago. There, they would simply say "got".

    So far as I know, the Dutch learn the queen's English and not 'Merkin. The mistakes are subtle, but obvious, if you know what to look for.

    • Like 1
  3. 4 hours ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

    What movie is that? Have I been hiding under a rock?

    whoops found it. Can’t believe I never saw that before. 

    It was pretty fucking mindblowing when I first saw it in the 8th grade during the early 80s. That was my introduction to Pink before I'd heard of Dark Side.

    Needless to say, still a fan.

  4. 1 hour ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

    Very informative graphic 

    Agreed. Beto needs to really start working Ft. Worth, Plano, Wilco, Killeen/Temple, San Marcos, Corpus, and Beaumont/Pt. Arthur.

    If he flips a couple of those, holds and gets turn out in the big cities, and limits the damage in rural Texas with his townhalls, he's got more than a fighter's chance.

    If I were him, I'd be focusing on Dallas and Austin suburbs as well as South Texas (including Corpus). That's where his best chances to pick up votes are.

  5. 1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

    He has to be constantly suspicious of any potential coup, to the point that he's even executed family members. And he was educated in the west, so he knows that his country is massively screwed up and has no way of getting to be otherwise. And say he wants to improve it and try and rejoin the rest of the world? Well that just means that the generals and high level officials will lose their status and gravy train, further increasing the chance of a coup. They can't be too happy about his efforts so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if he isnt facing a ton of internal pressure not to make any sort of deal that would jeopardize their power.

    If I recall correctly, it was a Swiss boarding school. I've only know one person who attended one of those, and she's pretty screwed up. So who knows?

  6. 1 minute ago, CooterBrown said:

     


    Aren’t you in Germany? Which are you?

     

    I think he claimed the coast of Romania on the Black Sea, which could be an hour earlier. 5am Surly posting over coffee ain't too unusual.

  7. 16 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    I wonder what the actual vote count is. There are a lot of people in San Francisco, Atlanta, DC, and New York. There's a whole lot of nothing in a lot of those red counties.

    Weatherford might well be the biggest city in that whole stretch running north up the plains.

  8. Just now, OatmealRaisinCookie said:

    Hercule Peirot ladies and gentlemen!

     

    i do appreciate the “rally around the flag”. Technique the troll used. It’s actually made David Dennison a bearable poster

    That would be Poirot.

  9. Just now, Grade of D as in David said:

    It's the Netherlands, op is high, not drunk.

    "Highly" doubt OP is Dutch. Don't let the "I don't speak so goot Anglish" ruse fool you. The Dutch speak it better than we do. On a road trip to Amsterdam with a few frogs, we got lost so I waved down some random dude on a bike to give directions. Without even pausing, he responded in perfect English the correct direction.

    Those sneaky Dutch.

    https://youtu.be/QJ882QYzr-M

    • Like 1
  10. 47 minutes ago, slorch said:

    The draft, combined with civil rights movement in our own country coinciding with the Vietnam War would make me inclined to agree with you.

    9-11 changed our country in a huge way too though.  Anyone born after 2001 hasn't known a time of peace in the Middle East, with regard to our military forces all being home or on " non-combat" duties abroad.

     

    There were also 52000+ killed in Vietnam while around 7000 combined KIA have been attributed to Iraqi Freedom and the Afghani campaigns.

    I'm not going to take issue with your assessment that Civil Rights + Vietnam were more pivotal than Iraq, because I largely agree. I do, however, want to point out the KIA comparisons aren't entirely fair. An article I read a couple years ago touched on this and explained that our medical technologies have advanced enough that many of the casualties that were inflicted in Iraq would've resulted in deaths. Don't quote me on this, but I think they calculated a number close to 15,000-20,000 Iraqi war vets would've died with 1960s med tech. Still, it's less than half of Vietnam.

  11. Sorry, Beto aint winning. Just like Wendy Davis, the last liberal star of Texas, he will be swiftly defeated by a margin much bigger than what was projected. This reminds me of the Hillary sunshine pumpers talking all about how Texas was gonna be a battleground. Didnt work out too well. How do you think it is gonna ago with an incumbent senator that crushed Trump in Texas? 
    This is something you may want to reconsider. Trump only beat da Hildabeast by 9 points. Here's a nice visual to help you understand how precarious the Republican lead is in this state, especially the burbs around Austin and Dallas. Fort Bend already made the switch.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AUnited_States_presidential_election_in_Texas%2C_2016.svg
    • Like 1
  12. 1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    The French fought proxy wars for America with England all over the globe during the rev war years. They stretched the British military support and supply system and kept the Brits from being able to focus full attention to the colonies.  

    Had the British been able to focus full attention to the rev war there would be no USA Today in all probability..

    Yeah, that's a really good point.

  13. 3 minutes ago, Dolemite said:

    The British were about ruthless as you could find back then and they would have gotten rid of all the Indians and blacks beat the hell out of Mexico and France. 

    And, yet, they were still defeated by a ragtag uprising with naval support by the French (at least in our timeline).

    Mexico and the Indian nations were largely defeated by a swelling American population fed by waves of European immigrants IMHO. Do those immigrants still arrive on these shores if the Colonies were still "colonies"?

  14. 3 minutes ago, Dolemite said:

    I wonder from time to time what it would be like if America had remained part of the British Empire. No Civil War, likely no WW1, so no WW2. Probably war with Spain to take Mexico and the South West.

     

    I don't know about those particular events, but I do agree that it's a fascinating thought-experiment. What if the Colonies and the King/Parliament had reached a compromise? Would the eastern US have essentially become a Canada-like outpost? Would colonization have spilled over the Appalachian Mountains, leaving the interior to the Indians? Would Mexico and several other Latin American countries have been inspired to declare their own independence against Spain?

  15. 5 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

    The NFL kneeling issue and Trump's taking advantage of it is perhaps the best illustration out there of how and why Trump grifted his way into being president. He correctly recognizes it as a lightning rod of trumpkin grievances and takes full advantage even though its really just a bunch of inconsequential bullshit. Here's the thoughts racing through the typical trumpkin head:

    Here you have rich, black, "thugs," i.e. a bunch of ungrateful, "stupid nigge_rs" who don't really deserve the shitload of money they are being paid (which one year salary also happens to be 10-30 years of pay for a typical Trumpkin);

    kneeling for and disrespecting "the flag" which oh by the way a bunch of God fearing white folk fought to protect (no thanks to the "thugs");

    and here come Trump and fan boy Pence to tweet about, stand up to, and walk out if necessary if these ungrateful "thugs" dare to disrespect "the flag" which really means they dare to disrespect YOU and your great old ass whiteness who fought and died for 'Merica. Well maybe not the dying part but you get the point.

    "The Wall," "The Hordes" The Thugs" "The Animals" "The Muslim Ban", etc, etc etc. 

    Its all just a bunch of race baiting, scaring the white Fox News worshiping olds. Sadly it works. Trump knows that all too well. 

     

    The thing is: I think Trump actually believes those things; it wasn't a grift. He's not that clever and is just an old, white paranoid Fox News disinformation consumer just like the cohort of out-of-touch dotards who voted for him. We have crazy Uncle Bob as our president.

  16. 9 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    OP's rules are pretty explicit.  I blew by 'em.  Internal events only.  Takes a lot of material off the table.  

    Yeah, the external conflicts were important for the construction of our collective identity, but I'm not so sure they were pivotal in building our "national character", although one could easily argue we saw ourselves as world builders following WWII.

    But, again, that's not the point of this thread. The idea is to point at the internal events that shaped our new and current Americaness.

  17. Revolution Era deserves more than a mere passing mention. 
    Reread MY OP and come back with a list.

    What I'm looking for is a list of internal political moments that, if they'd turned out another way, would've led to a different America than we know today (so not counting invasions, Revolutionary War, Pearl Harbors, or other international crises). One definitely could, however include the Constitution we have now versus the Articles of Confederation if one so chose.


    If you don't like the rules of the game, then don't play.
  18. This thread suffers from recency bias. 
    Well, other than your mention of the Revolutionary War, what do you got? Washington and the establishment of our current Constitution have received passing mention.

    • Monroe Doctrine?
    • Trail of Tears?
    • Manifest Destiny?
    • Creation of an "American Empire" on the heels of the Spanish/American War?

    Please, contribute more before criticizing. I don't see this as a partisan question. I'm just curious what y'all think are some of those critical moments are (aside from external wars) that define our history and who we are as a people.
  19. In chronological order:
    • Formation of parties
    • Annexation of Texas
    • Civil War
    • Lincoln's Assassination
    • Reconstruction
    • Teddy's Trust Busting
    • Great Depression
    • Civil Rights
    • 1968
    • Watergate
    • Trump
    Some of these could obviously be clumped together since they happened in rapid succession and are interrealated. I could also add in Dred Scott.

    The mention of 1968 encompasses more than the MLK/RFK assassinations, the Democratic Convention, Mai Lai, and Tet Offensive, but also includes the profound cultural shift that occurred as a result.
  20. Valdez is gonna pull this one out, isn't she?  Her campaign is (was?) so disorganized. 
    I think you're probably right. While neither candidate is remotely qualified, White actually seems to have a stronger grasp of policy. An argument could be made that he'd be more competitive as a moderate, but others could argue she'd be better positioned to energize the progressive base.

    One I'm happy about is that Kopser is ahead in TX-21, which is my district.
  21. What I'm looking for is a list of internal political moments that, if they'd turned out another way, would've led to a different America than we know today (so not counting invasions, Revolutionary War, Pearl Harbors, or other international crises). One definitely could, however include the Constitution we have now versus the Articles of Confederation if one so chose.

     

    As a follow-up, how do you see the crisis in confidence of the current administration within that historical context?

     

     

     

    Edit: They don't necessarily have to be ordered by their importance of influence. And you don't have to come up with a nice round number of five or ten - just a list that you think were/are potentially game-changing moments.

     

     

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