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Dbeasy

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Dbeasy

  1. You know what they say; baby hands, baby….
  2. My daughter’s Russian friends just got back from Alabama. They were deeply confused when their waitress in an Alabama diner was fawning over how awesome Putin is. Seriously. This is how stupid these people are.
  3. Because your on miles, is AA not comping you a hotel?
  4. Since this whole thread started with a reference to Osama Bin Laden, it’s an interesting fact that Obama approved the Bin Laden raid knowing that it could fail just like the Jimmy Carter hostage raid, costing him re-election. Defense Secretary Gates and VP Biden both recommended not moving forward with the raid. But Obama did it anyway. That’s real leadership. He put his political future aside and did what was best for the country. What a novel concept.
  5. The United States of America has always been imperfect, more imperfect than many of us ever realized because of our upbringing within the country. We've always been fed our view of the world, instead of other's view of us. But, most of the time the U.S. has eventually done the right thing, and that made the country respected enough around the world to become the world leader. But all of that progress and reputation is under attack by politicians and a President who have foregotten what made this country successful. The old saying that a reputation is built over years (or 200+ years), but torn down way faster is very applicable to the current situation. What makes it even more gut-wrenching is that 40-47% of the country either doesn't understand this, or doesn't care. It's embarrassing travelling internationally right now. It's sometimes embarassing being from Texas right now. But, I remain hopeful that intelligent, charismatic, un-indoctrinated leaders will gain back control of our government institutions and insert integrity, honesty, critical-thinking, level-headedness, and morality back into these institutions. I don't believe it is as simple as Republicans/Trump bad, Democrats good. We have problems in both parties. And there are good people in those parties, although I have to admit that right now finding any in the Republican party is very difficult. If there are any, they're cowering from the orange moron makes them currently invisible. Similarly, we have few Democratic leaders making an impact. But, eventually I'm hopeful new blood will emerge and salvage this mess, in concert with major initiatives to expose and lessen the effectiveness of disinformation, which is really the root cause of the problem right now.
  6. Robertson had his stick held and three other guys didn’t get back. I want to see what the hell was going on there. Something wasn’t right.
  7. I’d really like to see highlights with a broader perspective of the field, like maybe from the Goodyear blimp.
  8. all pics must include the name. I can't handle the anxiety of spending precious seconds trying to recognize every player.
  9. OU Recruiting 2026: Intentional Grounding.
  10. Holy shit, I hadn’t been paying much attention to the softball playoffs and just was looking up the World Series bracket. While I knew A&M lost in the regional, I didn’t realize they were #1 in the country. Bawaaaaa.
  11. How do you know the German neighbors are both perverts?
  12. Don’t know if you’ve bought a car yet or what your budget is, but I sold my 2015 Lexus IS 250 to my long time friend who runs a wholesale car business here in Austin. But I think with this car he’s just selling it to the public from his lot in South Austin, rather than to a dealer. It’s a great car. It only has 54000 miles on it. High quality tires only a year old. Recently replaced battery. I don’t know the price but I’m guessing around $21-22k.
  13. Fiscal Year President Responsible House Control Senate Control Deficit (USD) % of GDP 2012 Barack Obama (D) Republican Democratic $1.327 trillion 8.5% 2013 Barack Obama (D) Republican Democratic $680 billion 4.1% 2014 Barack Obama (D) Republican Democratic $485 billion 2.8% 2015 Barack Obama (D) Republican Republican $442 billion 2.4% 2016 Barack Obama (D) Republican Republican $585 billion 3.1% 2017 Barack Obama (D)† Republican Republican $665 billion 3.4% 2018 Donald Trump (R) Republican Republican $779 billion 3.8% 2019 Donald Trump (R) Democratic Republican $984 billion 4.6% 2020 Donald Trump (R) Democratic Republican $3.132 trillion 14.9% 2021 Donald Trump (R)† Democratic Republican†† $2.775 trillion 12.4% 2022 Joe Biden (D) Democratic Democratic $1.375 trillion 5.5% 2023 Joe Biden (D) Republican Democratic $1.695 trillion 6.3% 2024 Joe Biden (D) Republican Democratic $1.833 trillion 6.4% 2025 Joe Biden (D) Republican Democratic $1.9 trillion 6.5% Footnotes: † Although Donald Trump was president during part of FY 2017 (starting January 20, 2017), the FY 2017 budget was mostly planned and signed into law during the Obama administration. Trump later signed supplemental appropriations. †† Senate control in FY 2021 was effectively split 50-50 after the January 2021 runoffs in Georgia, with Vice President Kamala Harris (D) casting tie-breaking votes, giving Democrats functional control starting late January 2021 — but this occurred after the FY 2021 budget was largely set under Republican control. I think this chart sums it up pretty well. Barack Obama did a pretty good job as President keeping spending under or around 3% of GSP after the 2009 financial crisis died down. Trump was an absolute disaster because he panicked during Covid and wildly overspent. Biden was ridiculously overspending, and here we sit with Trump in office and in control over both houses of Congress and the House passed a budget that will be the worst yet. Specifically for FY 2026, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the deficit could rise by nearly $600 billion, bringing the total deficit to approximately $2.3 trillion, or about 7.3% of GDP . Fucking disaster.
  14. This is a very incomplete view of the situation. Yes government spending needs to be reigned in, for sure. But what’s matters most is reducing the deficit. And the ONLY way to do that, which every credible economist knows, is a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Instead, the Republicans express faux outrage at spending while diverting funds to defense and cutting taxes. It’s ridiculous.
  15. Their definition of “work” is that trading partner currencies drop by the same amount of the tariff, leading to Americans not paying any more for tariffed goods. However, this is a suspect “win” because that would mean a strengthening dollar, which would hurt exports. So I personally don’t see how it can end in a win. But a win would be defined by a more balanced trade (significantly lower trade deficits) with no inflation. Seems impossible to me given what they are doing.
  16. Agree. There is a chance the tariffs don’t produce inflation, or produce only transient inflation. Frankly, if it does work, great. The problem is that it will be hard to get the real story. I wish they would have implemented a more organized and targeted strategy to test it out, rather than Willy Nilly attacking the whole world at once, when all these trade partners know all they have to do is just wait us out until the stock market crashes. Then we will panic and cave. Just like Putin waiting out the U.S. to get tired of funding Ukraine.
  17. I do find it interesting that he was the guy they were going to hire the first time around and came back to him again the second time around as well. I guess that’s a good sign.
  18. Oh rates will tumble if the administration doesn’t start governing like adults, because crashing the economy will definitely lower rates. The only issue is that the deficit will get even worse in any recession.
  19. I always hated this album cover. But as a kid of the 1970's I went through my disco phase like others.
  20. The bolded part was written in a tone that suggests Trump’s policy actions are responsible for inflation improvements. That is almost complete fiction. Inflation is a condition that takes a long time to work its way thru the supply chain to become visible. It can take anywhere from a year to two + years for it to appear. Conversely, it takes several years to bring down. In addition, US inflation data includes highly lagging indicators, such as housing, distorting the real picture. Trump’s policies this far have had almost zero to do with inflation reduction, except for him executing crooked deals with Saudi Arabia to temporarily reduce oil prices in exchange for favors for the Saudi royal family. Zero. In fact, his original dumping of trillions of dollars onto the market during Covid caused the inflation we experienced during the Biden administration. To be fair, Biden did not tackle inflation aggressively enough to reduce it, but Trump was the original source of it. Now, Trump’s tariff policies are incredibly inflationary. In addition, his budget does not effectively tackle the deficit. For all of the spending cuts, he’s just giving tax breaks (new and extending) to wash away any deficit reduction and moving money to defense, which doesn’t need it. This is why longer term rates continue to remain stubbornly high. This policy is the wrong policy. The conundrum we all face is that a Democrat controlled government wouldn’t cut government spending, and a mixed Democrat Republican Congress and Presidency will never agree on anything for the good of the country because Republicans have been following a strategy since the Obama administration of never doing anything positive while a Democrat is President. So in summary, because of inept government leadership we will have higher inflation and deficits, and continue to spiral towards judgement day for the foreseeable future until US citizens start voting for candidates who solve these problems, rather than parties and candidates who are on the take from industries, the wealthy, and special interest groups. The only path out of this is a citizen who isn’t stupid.
  21. This interaction between you folks regarding economic policy was very enlightening. I learned something today. Pos rep.
  22. For just $19.99, I will share with you my secrets for avoiding scams. Click on this link to learn more.
  23. Outstanding page. I was pos repping almost all of the posts, laughing my ass off.
  24. I’m done with Marchment. He makes too many penalties and he’s not doing much on offense either.
  25. I had high hopes for Hakeem Jefferies but so far he’s been a wet noodle. I’m really frustrated with the entire party. I can’t believe with everything that’s going on with this administration that Democrats have so far been completely unable to capitalize on it. It’s so frustrating
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