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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. Counterpoint: this approach is evidence of how utterly fucked we are as a society. That's because the ONLY motivating factor for any policy action or item is "but what about ME?" It's the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" problem, nationwide. Government action X hurts the fuck out of person Y. Who cares? In fact, it's worse than "who cares" -- it's "awesome! Suck it, other guy!" It's only when Government action X ends up hurting YOU that you say "wait, Government action X is bad!" The dominant social dynamic in the US is -- for example -- people only worry about massive losses in the availability of healthcare when it hits them. When THEIR hospital closes, when THEIR medicare coverage evaporates, etc. The contra-approach -- one that is functionally dead in this country -- is that people should worry about massive losses in the availability of healthcare that hit their neighbors and fellow countrymen. We should ALL want Lorene and Cletus to have access to basic healthcare, because a healthy commonwealth is a good thing. It's an objectively good thing. It doesn't matter whether it directly benefits me or not. We should want a government that doesn't shit on basic constitutional rights because that is bad for the commonwealth, and destructive of basic governing principles that are social positives as a whole. TLDR; the approach above is just more of "all that matters is the 'me' good, zero consideration for the common good."
  2. It really can't. If there's one thing you can count on aggies for, it's keeping a sufficient stable of heifers suitable for, ummm....."breeding."
  3. The perfection of this era is not that the Super-MAGA approach to education puts a state dead-last. Nope. It's that MAGA looks to what they did in Oklahoma and says "oh don't you worry....we can do even WORSE." We are a full-on kakistocracy. It's shittacular beyond anyone's capacity to imagine even a few short years ago. Objectively speaking, it's one of the most amazing historical transformations ever seen. Rome fell over centuries. We may manage to destroy our nation and empire in a year or less, all to feed the ego of a single psychopath, and to provide the opportunity for a handful of oligarchs to suck all the blood from the corpse, leaving an empty husk but who gives a fuck they got theirs.
  4. "The Commerce Department says" We've already gone full-on "Ministry of Truth." Fantastic. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
  5. I’m a big fan of the one on TX 332, in Freeport. There’s nothing else anywhere close except entries/exits of chemical plants (Dow is a big one across the street). I just picture some refinery worker stopping at the end of his shift, dirty and sweaty, stopping in and saying “if I pick up some of this strawberry lune and a Thundercock 1200 strap-on, Linda Lou won’t be able to say no to a night of freakiness.”
  6. God I love this. Now apply that standard to…Ken Paxton….almost every single Trump appointee…Tom Homan…etc ad nauseam. Exhibit infinity in the case of “anyone MAGA doesn’t like must be perfect, but anyone within MAGA is bulletproof no matter what.” No objective rules or laws.
  7. "My defense will require de-classifying the entire investigative file I am accused of lying about. Your move, DOTARD."
  8. Discussion of the proper order of usage of a zucchini, lotion, and hot sauce will do that to a relationship.
  9. Yep. Queerer than a football bat (NTTAWWT). Seriously. Just be your true self and suck some dick. You'll be so much happier, AND you won't have to project all your self-loathing onto being hateful to other people.
  10. 1) I've spent the night there, for work. Hell, I've had a high-profile case in Nolan County. 2) The place just ain't the same since Allen's Family Style Meals shut down.
  11. I dunno. But there is one thing I do know with rock-solid certainty: he thinks about sucking dick at least 40 times every day. There is a 100% chance that dude is a self-loathing closeted gay man. Overcompensation by "masculinity" this and "head of the family" that and "gays should be executed" is a guaranteed tell.
  12. Just remember, when MIA went in for his first round of cancer treatment, I doordashed him some supplies.
  13. Yeah, I was a Houston kid. The brutality of the oil patch in the 80s very much hit close to home there as well. It really was felt Texas-wide, and Texasville very much struck a cord. I grew up in a family with deep ties to the oil patch, and in a city with an economy and well-being closely tied to the industry, so saw the pain, lost classmates, things got lean, all that. No rapture stuff, though...I was a Catholic school kid.
  14. I remember reading Larry McMurtry's Texasville, set in the oilpatch in a time of depressed oil prices, and thus a lot of depressed people in the oil patch: "In this arresting, funny-sad sequel to The Last Picture Show, McMurtry's small Texas town of Thalia has gone from boom to bust practically overnight, a victim of the mid-'80s oil glut. Under the strain of financial calamity, the townsfolk are becoming increasingly irrational -- one man dreams of bombing OPEC, the mayor is going quietly mad, sexual mores are turning bizarre, and the civic leaders are pressing on with a centennial celebration even though there's nothing to celebrate."
  15. "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." -Winston Churchill
  16. He asks a question "why are we doing this" (meaning being completely divisive and hate-filled and such)? Answer: (and this is a really depressing answer, but it's unavoidable) Because this is who we are, and this is what we want. "We the People" are not fed, at all, by anything that smells of "the common good" these days. Instead, we are fed entirely by fomented hatred and demonization of the other. We aren't happy unless someone else is having pain inflicted upon them. That's the only way you know that your version of society is working: you see the people you don't like being hurt. We are fed and driven entirely by negative inputs, not positive inputs. We still hunger for those somewhere inside us -- it's why cat videos and such are popular. But we are now so conditioned to the contrary that there's no f'n chance. The worm does not and will not turn until things get much, much worse, and at long last, we break. But man, the amount of suffering it's going to take to get there....ouch. Which leaves some of us in a really shitty place. As a first principle, we don't want ANYONE, ANY member of society to suffer/get burned. FFS, some of us have been waving our arms about it for better than a decade. Yet, we've been shown a mile-high stack of plain evidence that the only thing that has any possibility of changing our path is if the suffering becomes too great to bear or accept.....bottom line, we have to get burned. So we're sitting here simultaneously saying "don't touch the hot stove," but also thinking "okay, go ahead and touch it, the pain will teach you that burns are bad when nothing else seems to be able to."
  17. I wish you were wrong. But you're not.
  18. Nope. Hell, coulda been the crappy conference room salad and sandwich I had in the afternoon. It was a shitty food day, ate every meal at my desk.
  19. You laugh, but because of that episode I learned that Albania: - borders on the Adriatic - its land is mostly mountainous - and its chief export is chrome Who says TV isn't educational?
  20. And....we had to fight the bloodiest war in hour history to get to that resolution. And then afterwards, we built monuments to the people who fought brutally to maintain the institution of slavery (and yes, that's why they were fighting, read each state's declaration of secession which fucking SAYS that was the reason). And now, Charlie's team is fighting like hell to keep those monuments to the people who fought to maintain slavery UP AND IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE. For being someone so proud that we abolished slavery....they sure fight hard to venerate the treasonous bastards in our country who killed hundreds of thousands of Americans trying to KEEP slavery.
  21. I mean, is that maybe insensitive and such? Yeah. Is it also kinda funny? If you've ever watched/been to any city council meetings anywhere....yes, it's a bit funny. Among the real-deal citizen comments, there are often shenanigans, unserious people, etc. For the most part, city councils handle them well -- the dude who shows up at every council meeting to offer public comment on how the lizard people are here and tainting our drinking water, etc. -- they treat him politely, thank him for his comments. But it is a tough part of the job, separating the wheat from the chaff at citizen comment time.
  22. I mean....he posts on Surly....so.....
  23. "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me!"
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