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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Huh--I guess I don't have enough experience with sex dungeons. Mine has a very different vibe from the vibe at the Moxy.
  2. He's on IR.
  3. I mean, if you were watching any sporting event Saturday night other than Dallas Stars hockey, well--I just don't know what you are doing with your life.
  4. Sei Less is really good. I went there the last time I was in New York (stayed at the Moxy at 36th and 7th because I was going to a show at MSG). It is definitely not a rough area. Admittedly, I was not getting into fights at 2 AM. But still--the whole area seemed pretty damned safe.
  5. Ralphie doing a couple minutes of play-by-play makes me so happy.
  6. So are we just not going to talk about Donald Trump sucking Bill's dick?
  7. Well, I have been meaning to lose some weight.
  8. I don't think it's flooding the zone. I think it's more a function of seeing that the Dems are going to just drip-drip-drip out emails every day from now til next Christmas, and they want to get it all out in one big dump.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Way to blow all the energy you had coming out of last Tuesday, y’all. Just master-level failing.
  13. 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.
  14. 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."
  15. 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."
  16. What an unb3elievable catch.
  17. Nah--that's kinda where I am.
  18. Where did this Penn State team come from?
  19. 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.
  20. She's going to lose really badly. Like, embarassingly so.
  21. 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.
  22. Remember, remember, the Fifth of November!
  23. 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.
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