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Brisketexan

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Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. 12 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    "Water projects" feels very vague to me. What are the projects going to do? I see rivers running dry and business/residents/golf courses continuing to up their usage. Before we pump more water out of the ground, that is not naturally being replaced, we should land on priorities. 

    I don't trust the state of Texas to plan for the future.

    It's not a groundwater pumping amendment.  It's for developing/improving water infrastructure (every drop of water not lost through leaky pipe is an extra drop in our supply), and about developing different sources of water:

    Quote

    It would also support the newly created New Water Supply for Texas Fund, which is designed to implement innovative water supply strategies such as marine and brackish water desalination; oil and gas produced water treatment projects; and aquifer storage and recovery projects. 

    The last one isn't about producing water that originates from aquifers, it's about using aquifers as storage mechanisms (inject water when you have it up top, draw from what you injected when you need it).  This prop is the kind of thing the legislature SHOULD be doing - managing the business of the state, and husbanding and improving our resources.

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  2. 2 minutes ago, Welch said:

    I’m all for preparedness, but how is this any different or any worse in terms of solar energy than a cloudy day across much of the state?

    An eclipse reduces solar irradiance significantly more than most cloudy days will (filtered/reduced solar rays vs. no solar rays).  And....that's the extent of my knowledge on the physics of that.  I just know that it's a thing.


  3. We 100% agree on your last statement.

    Tell us the play you think Israel should make.
    And remember, their enemy has unambiguously declared genocide of Israel and all Jews everywhere in the world to be their goal. That enemy has just slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians.
    In a situation where your enemy fundamentally declares “it’s you or me,” what sane human wouldn’t choose to kill the person saying that?
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  4. I don’t like painting in broad Arab/Muslim/etc brush strokes. I’ve lived and worked in the broader Islamic world (not the Levant) and it just ain’t that simple. I will say this— there is a massive grievance industry, and if you scratch at it, the real anger isn’t that what the West did. The anger is over the fact that the West and not Islam was strong enough to do so. 

    There’s a WHOLE lot of this. If we’re going to talk about centuries old shit…ok then. The “Muslim world” (Ottoman empire and variations thereof) attempted to conquer “the west.” The Battle of Vienna put an end to that in the late 1600s. And the people that would become the remnants of the Ottoman Empire have been bitter as hell about it since. Yeah, there’s an old, old grudge running through ALL of this shit.
    In fact, it’s big enough to be a “but for” thing. But for that, the conflict between the Muslim world (which happily uses the Palestinian people as its primary proxy) and “the west” wouldn’t be remotely what it is today.
    Any of y’all think a world dominated by Muslim powers instead of western ones would be any better than what we’ve ended up with? Don’t delude yourselves.
  5. The Azerbajan/Armenian war will go down in history as the end of tanks as we know it.  That's what makes the Russian incursion into Ukraine so stupid.  
    Hamas is likely baiting the Israeli's into moving into the urban areas with thanks and APC's.  Israeli's should surprise them with going more Old School.  They should lay siege to the entire area.  Starve them out.  Deny them the glorious battle.  They'll get hungry enough and they'll come out.

    That’s horrific.
    It’s also the smart play.

    War is hell.
    That’s why you really should avoid choosing that path if you at all can.
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  6. I don't disagree, what I disagree with is conflating Hamas with all of the Palestinians living in Gaza, and the numerous calls to just wipe them all out and get it over with in this thread alone. It's like I said in the CR thread, the exit polling after Hamas was democratically elected to lead over there is pretty telling of what the people wanted.
    I disagree that Israel has only bad choices in front of it. There's a lot of push and pull here and Israel has unnecessarily done more than it's fair share of both. I feel like you would have agreed to that statement a few days ago.

    I don’t disagree that calls to exterminate all Palestinians in Gaza in response are wrong, and I would oppose any action to do so.

    But understand, the Palestinians there KNOWINGLY chose to throw in their lot with a movement that LITERALLY HAS GENOCIDE OF ALL JEWS AS ITS PLATFORM. You don’t get to just waltz past that and say “yeah, ok, I see that…but the real reason I voted for them was because they have good ideas about public sanitation and jobs programs.” The Palestinians in Gaza made a very poor choice. And they have been paying a price for it, and are about to pay a horrific additional price for it.

    As for Israel’s choices…what GOOD choice does it have in front of us? Allowing Hamas or any militant in Hamas to survive is a non-starter. They have made it plain: us, or you. Israel would be stupid to choose anything other than “eliminate Hamas.”

    Israel has been plenty piece of dick, including in the past couple of years. But by choosing to escalate the fight to the existential level, Hamas makes politics and everything below extermination/survival irrelevant. You sacrifice all high ground when you do that. You sacrifice your claim to continue to live when you do that. If I walk up to you and say “I will not stop until I kill you,” and then I attack you…you’d be an absolute moron not to kill me. Immediately.

    Hamas has chosen a war of extermination. It will get what it has chosen. It will get a lot of Palestinians killed in the process. I’ll likewise suggest that maybe those people shouldn’t have happily supported a movement of genocide, even if it did promise a good street sweeping program.
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  7. They killed tourists, including Americans.  Again, why?  What are these guys trying to accomplish?  

    The Hamas terrorists? They’re trying to seek revenge.
    The actual nation states who put them up to it and helped them do it? Instability and chaos. And, riling up their own oppressed people to hate a made-up enemy to distract them from their own shitty regimes (seriously…there’s no real historical reason that Iran and Israel should be deadly enemies).
    A lot of Palestinians will die so that Iran’s mullahs can distract their own oppressed people for a while longer.
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  8. Let's go with that point of view.
    Assuming all of that were true and the Palestinians merely wanted a peaceful state of their own, why not use passive mass resistance like Ghandi, MLK, or Mandela?  The world would be very sympathetic like it was with those three.  Taken to an extreme, instead of suicide bombings, why not have someone commit suicide in the town square every day until the "occupation" ends?  The world would be horrified and it would end by next week.
    But it's not really about that.  They don't want their own country.  That's no fun.  Who picks up the trash?  Who makes the trains run on time?  Rather, it's about a pile of dead Jews.  

    This.
    The Palestinian cause has a stunning ability to repeatedly shit away their status as the sympathetic party in the local conflict.
    That is largely because they are useful idiots perpetually being played by much larger nation states (over the years, that means Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Qatar) to be the turd in the punch bowl of any potential Middle East peace. Arab and Muslim countries have a strong interest in having a perpetual “evil enemy,” as it helps shitty, oppressive states unite their people. So, “forever war” against Israel is a key to maintaining power. And what better way to wage war than with useful idiots you’ve never actually helped anyway (note how very little, proportionately, of the Arab oil wealth has ever gone to helping Palestinians)?
    Israel regularly does itself no favors. Recent heavy-handedness included. It creates a narrative that makes it much easier for their enemies to foment anger and violent action. And around we go.
    One thing is certain. The lot of the Palestinians in Gaza is about to get much worse. That is the lot of a people who launch a war. That the nation states that urged them to do so will not suffer similarly is the way of the world. It’s a stupid way.
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  9. Forum a June article of the documents Trump kept:
    According to the indictment, documents Trump took “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for a possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
    So Trump was storing and bragging about his info that many presume was related to Israel. Now Israel is being attacked in a method that circumvented many of Israel’s defense?

    I wouldn’t be that shocked if there’s a connection. I would be surprised if it’s ever revealed that there was one (if in fact there was).
    If there was, and Israel discovers it….they won’t touch a former POTUS. Not directly. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see them turn some intelligence efforts to utterly torching him.
    I think all of this is low probability…but the mere fact that it’s not preposterously impossible is mind-blowing. This fucking timeline. It’s truly surreal.
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  10. Holy shit so they basically stormed this festival and mowed everyone down. Wild. 

    Yeah….that’s going to create some problems for Hamas. Slaughtering unarmed civilians of multiple western states…will draw attention. And not the good kind.

    We are not a great species. In spite of two previous examples showing the experience to be a massive net negative, we’re doing all we can to have a WWIII. Brilliant.

    Also, we have good friends whose daughter was at a kibbutz, got word today that she was safely evacuated we’ll clear of Gaza. So, a tiny bit of good news.
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  11. I can’t come up with what Hamas’s play was here….other than getting manipulated by Iran and Russia into serving their ends (fucking shut up).
    Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza are going to suffer greatly. Which is how Hamas’s “allies” want it. Utterly stupid. But that’s the order of the day.

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  12. That 3rd one just gave me the reason to tap out.

    Oh…you should have held on to see the fourth.

    There’s still 20 minutes left. They’ll score a fifth one.
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  13. I know a lot of us are pissed off after that shit bucket of a performance, but at least we don't have to endure that 3 hour drive home in the brisketmobile, shrouded in the misery of the loss and corndog farts. 

    Add boudin ball farts to the mix.

    Furk.
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  14. They’ve given up on winning elections. It’s all there laid out, the idea is to disenfranchise as many people who may not vote for them as possible, gerrymander state legislatures to ensure a permanent majority, and then appoint POTUS via rhe legislature. That’s the literal plan. 

    How do we know that? Oh yeah….BECAUSE THEY FUCKING TOLD US THAT’s EXACTLY WHAT THEIR PLAN IS.
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