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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. I don't think they think they can use Republican votes for anything. That would be stupid. As you rightly say, nobody will remember who voted for what. You're dead correct that we have waaaay too many examples of Republican officeholders taking credit for shit they flamboyantly opposed (e.g., the Biden Infrastructure Act). They think that without the ACA subsidies, the cost of healthcare will go up both this year and, importantly, next year. The premiums for 2027 are going to come out right before the midterms, and they're going to be catastrophically awful. Trump and the Republicans will be rightly blamed--not because of anything anybody voted for/against, but for the far more basic reason that a Republican is in the White House. That's why I say it is a cynical play. And I love a cynical play. Because those are really the only plays that work. This is what happens when elected officials try to play pundit. They just can't help themselves. They love to tell you how much more they understand about electoral politics than you do. But playing pundit gets in the way of effective messaging. So you're right. They need to cut that shit out. The message is the Republicans were going to starve people, and we couldn't let that happen. Period. Then shut the fuck up. How's that going to play in the next election, a CNN reporter might ask? "I don't really know, and it really doesn't matter--the Republicans were going to starve people, and we couldn't let that happen." Are you concerned that your base is going to be angry that you didn't get more, an MSNBC correspondent might enquire? "I's hope not, but it really doesn't matter--the Republicans were going to starve people, and we couldn't let that happen." But these people are all fucking assholes who are super-eager to let you know that they know more than you do. Dumb fuckers.
  2. There is more and more chatter that Mary Peltola is going to run against Dan Sullivan for that seat in Alaska. And a number of recent polls show her tied or ahead of him. As a reminder, she won the at-large House seat in 2020, but was narrowly defeated in 2024. So she has a record of winning a statewide race. Alaska is politically a really weird state. Given the candidate issues the Dems are having in Maine, Alaska may be a more likely pick-up than beating Collins.
  3. You're not missing anything. The Senate Democrats played this to maximum cynicism. And as a cynic myself, I appreciate it. Plenty of Democratic voters and unrealistic expectations about what was achievable in this shutdown. But realistically, very little was achievable through this (or really any) shutdown. That should've been clear once it became evident that Republicans would starve Americans and crash the air-transit system. Once that happened, it just became a game of maximizing blame on Trump and the GQP. Is there a possible universe in which the Republicans cave and extend the ACA subsidies? I mean, maybe. Probably not. But maybe. But in that universe, it works to the GQP's electoral benefit. And while there are plenty of us who would be happy to see the shutdown continue through the 2026 midterms . . . that wasn't realistic. The political impact of that would've been highly unpredictable. Right now, Trump is getting the blame. But he has a larger microphone and a lot of corporate media at his back. The narrative could've quickly swung. So the Dems took their fairly modest winnings and went home. I understand that move. I don't particularly love it. Maybe I kind of hate it. But I definitely understand it.
  4. Way to blow all the energy you had coming out of last Tuesday, y’all. Just master-level failing.
  5. But what if--and I think this is the point of the entire discussion--the Democrats are? This dovetails completely with my feelings on CA Prop 50. I hate it. I absolutely fucking hate it. But I'm very happy it passed. Gerrymandering is a scourge. It has undermined the concept of our democracy from the beginning. And so I have been very happy with states that have thrown redistricting to nonpartisan commissions and otherwise professionalized the process of districting in the way that pretty much every other western democracy has. And so California's abandonment of that--albeit temporary (maybe)--is a step back. As a Texas voter, I effectively don't have any congressional representation. But that's not to say that people in California should be denied representation. California's repudiation of representative democracy is every bit as noxious as Texas's. But that's where the equivalency ends. California's is temporary. Its redistricting process snaps back. And if you want to re-institute our democracy, you're going to first have to use some anti-democratic means. It sucks. But we're not going to pass a new voting rights act or protect individiual liberties if Democrats give up any hope of ever having a House majority. It's the same deal here. So long as people are fat and happy and never face any consequences of their noxious voting behavior, that behavior will continue. We need to make them slim and unhappy, maybe to the point of revolution, if we want our democracy back. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I'm far too comfortable to do any watering. So is Brisket. So is pretty much everyone on this board. It's typically hungry people who water that tree. That's just reality. It was hungry people who watered that tree in Paris in 1789; it was hungry people who watered that tree in St. Petersburg in February 1917.* And in our country, it was hungry people who voted out the Republican Party for two generations starting in 1932. You may want a democracy because it is most consistent with your ideas. But until it becomes evident that democracy is the only way to fill people's bellies, it'll always been tenuous. Donald Trump is making that connection now; we ought to stand aside and let him. * Note that it was decidedly well-fed people who chopped that tree down in St. Petersburg later that year.
  6. As someone who is doing a home renovation right now, I owe Donald Trump (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Chip & Joanna Gaines) a real debt of gratitude because I can point to everything he touches and tell my contractor/decorator, "for the love of god and all things holy, don't do anything like this. In fact, do the exact opposite."
  7. Counterpoint: these type of things will sometimes be leaked by the subject candidate around this time in an effort to innoculate him against the issue later. It could be that Talarico's team saw that he's following a bunch of porn stars on the Gram and decided to get out ahead of it. Had this come out two weeks before the primary . . . that'd be bad. Two weeks before the general election--catastrophic because of the aforementioned reality that we hold Democrats to a ridiculously higher standard than we hold Republicans. Let this come out a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, and it's completely forgotten by Christmas. But if anyone tries to bring it up in February, it just gets dismissed as "old news" and Talarico's people would say "this came out months ago and nobody cares."
  8. What an unb3elievable catch.
  9. Nah--that's kinda where I am.
  10. Where did this Penn State team come from?
  11. You know, that costume is still in my garage. I wonder if people would still understand the reference. It's been a minute since I've seen pedobear on the Internets.
  12. She's going to lose really badly. Like, embarassingly so.
  13. As someone who loves (1) electoral politics and (2) geography, I absolutely adore shit like this. Of course, there's real good reason for that. The coascoastline from 100 Million years ago left fertile soil that was ideal for plantation agriculture. It's not that the only plantations were there; it's that the plantations that were there could grow larger and required more slaves. And when those slaves were converted into sharecropper-serfs tied to the land, they stayed. Hence, those counties remain disproportionately Black and disproportionately Democratic. The past is never past, man. An ancient coastline dictates voting behavior in the American South. The 19th Century imperial borders between Germany and Russia dictates voting behavior in Poland. You just can't understand electoral politics if you don't have an appreciation for history.
  14. Remember, remember, the Fifth of November!
  15. Because as last night makes very clear, Republicans are taking a disproportionate amount of the blame for the shutdown. Hell--even Trump has said so. And by the way, once the president (of any party) says "we're taking the blame" for anything, the blame is placed. There's no walking that back. If I'm the Democrats, I hold out for everything I've ever had on my wish list. Because why would I want to reopen the government and let Trump pass his priorities through a unified Congress? Fuck that--leave the government shut down for the next year, and let Republicans take the blame. They'd get fucking wiped out in the midterms. Which is why, one way or another, there are going to be just enough Republicans who like their jobs to get through some compromise.
  16. I guarantee that United Airlines is not going to have to cut just a whole lot of flights. But I have to tell you--I'm not exactly sure there's a mechanism for this under the Airline Deregulation Act. The point of the ADA is that the government doesn't get to tell the airlines how many flights they get to operate. There are a handful of exceptions at certain airports that have unique restrictions like slot controls, a perimeter rule, or gate limitations (LGA, DCA, and DAL, respectively). But broadly speaking, I don't know that the DOT has legal authority to tell the airlines to cut air traffic by 10%.* And if you're the airlines, you're telling the DOT "fuck that--tell general aviation it's grounded." It's honestly a pretty reasonable take. It's definitely a take that the industry group (A4A) will take up. But it's also something real and tangible that Democrats can take up. "The Trump Administration made you miss Thanksgiving so that Elon Musk could fly his Gulfstream to Bermuda." That fucking sells. * Cue @Brisketexan jumping on here to tell me that I'm "soooo adorable" for thinking that this Administration needs legal authority to do anything.
  17. I think people ignore the role Covid played in all this. Covid was a traumatic time, and we all have nostalgia for the Before Times. And I capitalize "Before Times," because we all know what I mean. I could use it completely out of context, and you'd know what it means. And Trump was the president at the end of the Before Times. So for a lot of people, he represents that normality that they'd want to return to. They don't remember how badly he fucked up Covid. Because we all just blocked out a lot of shit that went on during the Covid Times. It was just that traumatic. And really, for a lot of people, Biden is more closely associated with the Covid Times just because when our minds and memories kicked back on as we departed the Covid Times into the After Times, Biden was president. That's my hypothesis, at least. I'm sure there's a psychology thesis in there somewhere. Maybe someday someone will write it. I have a very good friend who is an elected officeholder and who is running for office again in 2026. He was recently asked by a constituent about his position on Israel, and he expressed his frustration to me. He complained that he is a state official; he doesn't have shit to do with foreign policy or the State Department or anything to do with Israel. So why would anybody ask him this question? I disagreed with him, and I'll tell you what I told him. It's not about Israel. Everyone knows you can't do anything about Israel and Gaza. Ok--not everyone. We have plenty of morons out there. But I know. And I'd ask you the same question for exactly the same reason I'd ask a candidate for the school board about his position on abortion or a candidate for the local MUD Board his position on immigration. It's a question about your values. When I ask you whether you support what Israel is doing in Gaza, I'm really asking what are your values. Do you know right from wrong? And does your conceptualization of right and wrong comport with my own. Because if you think that Israel bombing women and children in their homes is right; if you think Israel deplying the military to starve a civilian population is justified; if you think Israel's targeting of journalists and aid workers to facilitate its program of starvation in Gaza is morally correct, then I have my answer to every other policy issue. We don't have to talk about medicare expansion, or tariffs, or transportation policy, because I know your values don't line up with my own. So I'm going to vote against you.
  18. So there's going to be something really extraordinary based on the SCOTUS arguments this morning. The Supreme Court is going to hold Trump's tariffs to be unconstitutional. Because duh. But what happens then? That decision isn't going to come out until March. And so what happens in March to all the money that has been collected from April 1, 2025 to March 2026? I don't exactly know how that's going to work, but one would assume that illegally collected taxes are going to get refunded. But therein lies the rub: to whom will the taxes get refunded? Presumably to the importers who directly paid the taxes to the Government. So that is to say companies like Apple and Ford will get huge checks from the federal government. But as we all know, Apple and Ford haven't been just eating the cost of those tariffs. They've been passing them along to consumers. So are they going to pass along that huge check from the federal government sometime next year? Fuuuuuuck no. They're going to take that windfall and buy back shares or distribute it to shareholders. In other words, that SCOTUS argument is setting up an absolutely enormous wealth redistribution from the consuming classes to the investing classes sometime in 2026.
  19. Meanwhile, with the early vote in, Austin Prop Q is going down 2-1.
  20. The county clerk here counts votes so slowly, we’ll probably know about California Prop 50 before we know about Austin Prop Q.
  21. Six in the morning actually is the peak departure time from AUS. The airlines want to maximize an airplane's productivity, so they want to get it in the air as early in the morning as possible. But there's really a hard stop around 6:00 AM for most people--they're not going to buy a ticket for a flight that leaves at 5:00. So virtually every gate at AUS has a flight that is going to leave within 20 minutes of 6:00. There's no other time of day at AUS that is that busy. After 6:00, the flights start to get staggered. So the early morning is the busiest it's going to be all day. They shouldn't. Trump and the Congressional Republicans have demonstrated over and over and over again that they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. If the Republicans want the government to reopen, then they need to give on the ACA subsidies. And it's pretty clear at this point that Republicans should want the government reopened. They're the ones taking the blame for this. You can see that in Trump's approval ratings, which are steadily declining. Every poll shows Republicans taking more of the blame for the shutdown. And when people can't go visit grandma for Thanksgiving, shit's going to get real focused. It's one thing to say you blame the ebil Democraps for the shutdown while it's not really affecting you. But when you're standing in an endless TSA line on Novmeber 25 and you know goddamned well the Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, that facade cracks a little bit.
  22. I'm actually not that worried about the officiating in the Georgia game, at least from the standpoint that I don't think Georgia is going to get some inherent favoritism from SEC officials. I say that for two reaons: 1) The SEC doesn't have an interest in Georgia beating Texas. The SEC wants more teams in the CFP, full stop. If Georgia wins, they're probably still in the CFP with only two losses. Texas, on the other hand, is probably out (not definitely, but probably). So if anything, the Conference should favor Texas winning that game. 2) I'm very skeptical of the conspiracy theories about conferences wanting certain teams to win. It would be just too big a conspiracy to keep a lid on. It's one thing for two or three referees on a crew to agree to something among themselves; it's quite another to have a crew agree with the league office about something. I just don't think it's realistic scenario. What is a realistic scenario--and one that could affect any game--is gambling. It's just really hard to watch the fourth quarter of that Vanderbilt game and conclude that one or more of that crew didn't have an interest in Vanderbilt +3.5. I think that's exceedingly rare. But as we saw--it does happen. But next time, it could just as easily happen in favor of Texas. It's completely unpredictable.
  23. That's really more of a side hustle.
  24. I mean, ok. I'm not going to argue with you that Austin voters suck. But they suck largely because Council does everything it can to reduce voter turnout among groups that would not suck nearly so much as the NA-ocracy that runs this place. So there's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation going on here. Regardless--the suckiness of Austin voters is no reason to vote for Prop Q.
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