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Brisketexan

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Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. 7 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Brisket fatalism turned up to eleven today

    It's just math.

    Show me how my math is wrong, and I'll be thrilled.

    Otherwise, scotch, comfy chair, deck of Titanic.  On the bright side, there's plenty of ice that crumbled onto the deck, so we've got that going for us.

  2. 6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Bark at the GOP all you want but the problems don’t go away with the downfall of the Republican Party.

    This.

    The Trumpkins are here, they exist.  And they aren't going away.

    Build a hypothetical "new GOP" WITHOUT the Trumpkins.  You know, a "new GOP" that will actually have the numbers to win political races.  You can't do it.  1) You can't build a new GOP without the Trumpkins.  And 2) the Trumpkins are never going to accept being put back into their cave/dark corner.  Those two facts mean that the GOP is now the TrumpOP, and will be for the foreseeable future.

  3. 7 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    In other words, it’s now pretty clear that many Trump supporters feel threatened, frustrated, and marginalized—not on an economic, but on an existential level. Now what?

    Now....it all turns to shit.

    Can whites and minorities get along in this country?  I think the answer is "as long as whites are completely comfortable with their prospects of maintaining total economic and cultural dominance, MAYBE.  But once white folks let fear of losing complete power control their thinking?  Not a chance in hell."

    The dominant culture reached a point of magnanimity and decency in recent past decades because it had the luxury/could afford to do so.  And minorities saw their lot improve, significantly.  But now....the dominant culture fears that it won't maintain dominance.  And it's responding with a hale and hearty "fuck all the rest of y'all."  And it still has the numbers and power to do so.

    It's going to get a LOT worse.  Note that I don't say "worse before it gets better."  It's just going to get worse.  There is no "better" on the horizon.

    • Like 1
  4. 8 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

    [certified Surly response]  It's piss.  [/certified Surly response]

    8 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    I am not celebrating anything, in terms of the trajectory of our culture and our politics. Its not completely clear to me where we disagree on the big picture. You say that Trump has taken over the GOP, it's the party of Trumpkins, and as such represents a threat to the Republic. I say that the GOP has a cancer, and they brought this shit on themselves through their own failures, and will be a crippled political party for the foreseeable future. Good riddance, fuck the GOP. Then you start telling me about Czars and the Shah and why we should not challenge the status quo. I know that you don't think I am hysterical enough about Trump for your liking, but other than that I am not sure that we are too far apart. You just seem unwilling to commit to fact that the GOP is going to die and will be replaced by a new political coalition, whether it carries the GOP label or not. Maybe I am wrong, and if I am I am sure that you will regale us again with another metaphor involving your bloodied genitals.  I might suggest a bloody vagina next time though. 

    You think that the GOP is going to die and be replaced by some new political coalition.  You are bad at math.  There can be no right-of-center coalition in this country WITHOUT the Trumpkins.  They are too big a group for any other outcome.  And now, instead of them being a marginalized part of the coalition (look, every party, every family, every everything, has an embarrassing family member/group that they hide in the corner and are just cordial to on holidays and such), they are the DOMINANT force in the coalition.  And they don't listen to logic.  They don't listen to reason.  They will never fade back into the corner.

    The outcome is that the GOP is the Trumpkin party.  It's not going to die.  It's going to survive.  And in response, the Dems are going to push back too hard the other direction.  You'll have your choice of a chunky shit sandwich, or a runny shit sandwich, but make no mistake -- once one of the major parties decided to go full-on shit sandwich, it is our destiny to be served shit sandwiches 24/7.

  5. still, how do you fuck up iced tea? that's unforgivable. 
    and you're damn right i judge restaurants by their availability of quality citrus for that iced tea. don't give me a fucking lemon juice package. chipotle is on my shit list for taking the citrus behind the counter. given a choice between sonic and DQ, i'm going with sonic, because their tea game is stronger.

    I agree on the importance of tea.

    McDonald’s tea, for $1 any size, is worth a try. Hell, I don’t order food, just grab a tea there.

    I don’t put stuff in my tea, so don’t care about the other stuff.
  6. i can't even remember the last time i was in a DQ. i'm fairly certain the last thing i had there was a wholly unsatisfying steak finger meal. soggy and disgusting, and the tea tasted three days old.

    When done right, the steak fingers are solid. And if you don’t like their tacos and a dip cone, you’re a terrorist who hates America.
    • Like 2
  7. I hit up LJS about once every 12-14 years.

    I hit it slightly more often, but not a lot more.

    Cracked up when I hit the LJS I’m Brownwood on my way to a hearing the next day. In line on front of me we’re three dudes in full-on boots, spurs, hats, the whole nine yards. And they were for real, because Brownwood. Had a hankering for the fish and chicken combo, I guess.
  8. Much of it is cultural. I've done business in China for many years and had always been astounded by their lack of "entrepreneurial spirit". One evening, I was out with some Chinese colleagues drinking way too much Baijiu and asked why. "Simple", I was informed. "The tallest nail is the one that gets hammered down".  They want to make enough money to be happy, but not enough money to get noticed by the government. Too successful & the government takes over your business or restricts what you can do. Why invest in that?
     

    That culture predates the communists.

    Collective cultures like China’s have many advantages. Innovation is not among them.

    Individualist cultures like ours have many drawbacks. But they are ripe for innovators. I actually read a good piece recently about how the best innovation and invention occurs when creative types can work alone (as opposed to in a group).
    • Like 2
  9. Chicken Express is the tits.  Also, is DQ slowly dying like Sears?

    Chicken express has fried gizzards and gravy. I’m a fan.

    What’s sad is that a lot of those shitty little towns still have ONE restaurant: a Subway inside a gas station. Those are the most depressing fucking “restaurants” on the planet. Seriously, a gruel bar inside an orphanage would be a happier place.
    • Like 3
  10. Fundamental changes to address special interests and money is a fucking must. Maybe term limits need to happen too.

    You think Trumpism is getting us CLOSER to that?

    Man, if so, take that comedy on the road, you’re a funny man.
  11. Interesting that you picked the overthrow of autocratic authoritarians for both of your examples of when you should not challenge the status quo. Maybe you should have picked another one to round it out.  Someone like King George maybe.  Bunch of dumbasses, doing crazy shit to challenge the status quo without their viable replacement plan all mapped out and shit. 
    We need a major restructuring of our political alignments in this country. I actually think that we agree to a very large extent on our trajectory and where we are going as a country.  The status quo ends in a tightening political death spiral.  The GOP will not be saved, it is infected with cancer. But I do agree that we need to be thinking about what comes next. And it's more than just realignment of political coalitions. We have to make some fundamental changes to address money and special interests in politics.  I don't know all the answers, and that is ok. 

    We need a change.

    Maybe - just maybe - shooting ourselves in the fucking dick isn’t a good change.

    And watching fucksticks like you celebrating the bloody stump where our dick used to be, well, that’s just swell.

    But hey, we DEFINITELY need to burn down the order that gave us 75 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity globally. Yay, bloody dick stumps!
  12. 5 minutes ago, deft said:

    Can’t tell the mexia joke anymore. Dairy Queen has been closed there for over a decade.

    FUCK.  That's one of my go-to jokes.

    But....the OLD DQ in Mexia got turned into an italian restaurant by a Croatian (I think) guy.  Really good, and really affordable.

  13. 43 minutes ago, TornACL said:

    Wait....someone posted a queso recipe that required cheese to be CUT a certain way? Do you understand the process of how melting works?

    I'm sure some queso-nerd will totally pwn me, but I have generally found that the crazy complicated queso recipes are no better (and oftentimes worse) than the basics with some slight twists/additional flavors.

    I am not going to go out and collect a vial of free range milk-cow tears just to make fucking queso.

    But the free-range, hand-curated milk cow tears give it a great, artisanal mouth-feel.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
  14. 2 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

    Losing really bad forces the recentering is the point. 

    What I'm suggesting is that they won't lose really bad (sure, they may take a hit these midterms -- the party that won the presidency usually does - but I don't think it's a long-term problem).

    What I'm suggesting is that we'll end up with two extremist parties - I think the inevitable Dem response to Trump will be to lurch to idiotic Bernieism.  Those of us in the middle -- hell, that could end up being 60% of us -- will have to pick one or the other, as there WON'T BE an option for moderates.  Communists, or Fascists -- choose.  One of them will win every election, so which one do you want?

    Our future is thoughtless tribalism, and death to the other tribe.

  15. 40 years ago or so, my grandpa was a Railroad Commission field man in Midland.  When we'd visit, I'd ride along with him.  We stopped at the DQ in Crane one time, and they had breakfast.  Back when DQ didn't serve breakfast.  But as the only place in town, the local DQ said "fuck it, we're gonna serve breakfast."  I remember having some of the best damned biscuits and gravy ever there.  Kinda liked that local DQs would just do their own thing in addition to the standard menu.

  16. 3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Are we actually going to bemoan the death of the GOP in its current incarnation?  The modern GOP had multiple chances to govern according to the principles that they preached. Shrink government, fiscal responsibility, reel back the interventionist foreign policy. They wiped their ass with that shit once in power.  Trump is direct result of the GOP establishment demonstrating that they give not not one shit about governance according to the principles they ran on. Fuck the GOP. Good riddance. After enough people get sick of the blue wave, a new counter balance will be formed. 

    "Are we actually going to bemoan the death of the Czars?  They had multiple chances to govern in the interest of the people.  Burn it down!"

    How do we feel about the Czars' replacement?

    "Are we actually going to bemoan the ousting of the Shah?  He had multiple chances to govern more openly, without the secret police.  Burn it down!"

    How do we feel about the Shah's replacement?

     

    We can do this all day.  "Get rid of X" is a fucking stupid-ass desire unless you have a viable plan to replace it with something better.  We took an underperforming GOP and replaced it with a group that slings shit everywhere -- onto our food, our water....even in our raccoon wounds.  Even worse...I don't think that a new counterbalance will be formed.  Instead, our entire political culture is tilting to the extremes, with nothing in the middle.  Look at the kind of "enthusiasm" Trumpism is building on the other end -- a shitload of those folks think Bernie Sanders is the solution.

    Sooner than you think, we're going to end up with modern versions of the Communist Party and Mussolini's Fascists running against each other.  Yay.  What a win.

  17. Trumpism has subverted the GOP but it won’t last because it can’t.  They will get their asses handed to them and be forced to regroup and rebrand because the majority of America rejects Trump politics.
    What rises from the ashes of Trumpism in the GOP is the big mystery.

    Here’s the problem: math. The GOP has so fostered and grown the Trumpist bloc that it can’t build a winning coalition without it. If the GOP jettisoned half its membership (and yes, it’s probably around that), it would cease to be a viable party.

    There is no GOP without Trumpkins. Stop thinking that’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen.
  18. motherfucking fruit cake...it's honestly the only "food" i loathe.  my mamere' you used to make it and fuck all hell that shit was...shit.  just shit.  nothing redeeming about it at all.  just lazy as fuck candied shit turds wrapped in a shit blanket of shit cake.
    bSJi9IT.gif

    But when soaked in a shitload of rum....yeah, I still didn’t like it.

    But...rum.
  19. You should read the article before proclaiming yourself Nostradamus.  It hardly concludes that’s Trumpism will survive Trump.  
    The point it makes is that the old GOP order is gone... at least for now.  And that Trump didn’t create the new order - he just tapped into a huge undercurrent within the Republican base

    I get the Economist - I’ll read the whole thing at home.

    But they’ve been saying similar stuff for a while.

    I agree that Trump didn’t create Trumpism; what’s new is that the GOP has shed all of the rest of its identity to put Trumpism front and center. Before, it was a center right party that had Trumpists as a significant part of their coalition. Now, it’s a party that you can’t be part of UNLESS you’re Trumpist.
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