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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Whoa--hold on here, friend. Submarine attacks on merchant shipping was not solely a German practice. It was the practice of the United States Navy to attack Japanese merchant vessels (both cargo and passenger) from the outset of the War in the Pacific, in direct contravention of the 1936 London Protocol on Submarine Warfare. The primary difference is that the USN's unrestricted submarine warfare was successful. By Summer 1945, the Japanese merchant fleet had been destroyed; the Home Islands were on the precipice of starvation. But wasn't different was the targeting of passenger ships without forewarning. For example, In 1942, USS Grenadier sunk the Taiyō Maru on its way from Manila to Singapore, killing more than 1,000 civilians. In 1944, USS Nautilus sunk the passenger liner America Maru, killing around 500 civilians (mainly women and children) evacuating Saipan. As to gas attacks, both sides used prodigious amounts of gas during World War I. Neither side used gas in World War II, but the historical record pretty clearly establishes that Britain would have done so had Germany invaded England. So you know what--let's focus on things that actually show the moral shortcomings of the Germans and maybe lay off where we ourselves live in a glass house.
  2. There is no hate quite so vicious as Christian "love."
  3. So I'm on board with the general idea that cultural purity as a concept is rubbish . . . with one big caveat: philosophy. Unlike most countries in the world, the United States of America is not an ethno-state. Japan is a nation because that's where the Japanese live. Ireland is a nation because that's where the Irish live. Germany is a nation because that's where the Germans live (at least, it's where they live now after they all got kicked out of Czechia, Poland, and elsewhere after WWII). But the United States of America is different. It's not a nation because it's where some people called the "Americans" live; it's a nation because that's where a group of people set up a government based on certain self-evident truths, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States is not an ethno-state; it's an ideological state. And it has been from its foundation. So when the Cubans come in and bring their hot women and their delicious sandwiches and their rockin' music and their curious take on language and their questionable taste in fashion, it doesn't threaten the foundations of the United States. Because the United States is not an ethno-state. It doesn't matter whether we're eating hot dish or Cuban sandwiches or pizza or listening to R&B or salsa or country music. It only matters that we broadly agree on the basic rights and liberties and obligations enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But when the Cubans also bring along their love of fascism and try to re-establish the Bautista dictatorship here, then I do object. And I do have a problem with the importation of that bit of their culture. And if they are unwilling to adopt our culture on those points and want to import their own ideosyncratic culture of kleptocratic fascism, then I think they absolutely should fuck all the way off and be deported. I single out the Cubans on this because that's whom the post I'm quoting is about, but that goes for any nationality. Russians who think Putinism ought to be emulated here; Arabs who think a North American caliphate would be a splendid idea; Chileans who come here thinking we ought to have an American equivalent of the Pinochet dictatorship; or a certain Persian who thinks she shah was just great and we ought to import the absolute monarchy of pre-revolution Iran to the United States--fuck all of them.
  4. Yeah--it's today. UT actually seems to be playing this exactly right. Loudly express its willingness to sign up and appease Geriatric Joffrey while doing absolutely nothing to actually sign up, which would imperil its academic standing.
  5. Honestly, this country does deserve to be shit on for electing this guy president.
  6. Any nation who regarded themselves as a free people would rise up and guillotine a self-styled "leader" who posts such a thing. I'm dead serious--"let them eat cake" pales in comparison to this.
  7. Hasn't the primary justifiction for employing Kyle Flood always been that he's the guy in charge of recruiting? I wonder how necessary that position is in the NIL/Portal era.
  8. I hear James Franklin is available.
  9. The sound mixing sucks in Victory. I crowd noise and you can’t even really hear the whistle.
  10. So I was at an event last night with some interesting people who have information to which I am not typically privy . . . and yes, I'm purposefully being very vague here . . . and I heard some "very informed speculation" (how it was posed to me). According to my informant, when the filing deadline comes in December, Ken Paxton is not going to have filed to run for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn; he will have filed to run for governor against Greg Abbott. The underlying facts are that Paxton's fundraising and polling have been disappointing after Hunt announced his candidacy. A lot of MAGA donors see Hunt as being every bit as MAGA as Paxton without any of the baggage. Pazton's camp is starting to get concerned that he might end up third in a three-candidate race. Meanwhile, there are some people (e.g., Tim Dunn) who aren't altogether thrilled with Abbott. And they see Paxton as a viable alternative. Here's my caveat--none of that makes any sense to me. But fuck--these are Republicans we're talking about. Nothing they do at all makes any sense to me. So I mean, I guess. Maybe.
  11. I don't think that's at all accurate w/r/t the French. I'll let one of our more knowledgeable posters speak about the experience in Louisiana, but in Quebec the French were pretty libertine when it came to mixing with the local indigineous population. That's probably to be expected because the male-female ratio of French people was way out of wack. It was largely a fur-trading colony; there weren't just a whole lot of mademoiselles.
  12. Hell—they bear the Chargers just two weeks ago. They’re a dangerous team with Dart playing at MetLife. But on the road, they still look like hammered dogshit.
  13. Speaking of places that we're sure are money-laundering operations . . . that TCBY on the corner of MLK and Lavaca is definitely one, right? I don't think I've ever seen anyone go into or out of that joint. But it's been there since I was in college (which was a very long time ago). I mean, there's just no way that place is legit, right?
  14. Ghost of LL

    2025 ACL

    I never heard of Dylan Gossett, but he’s pretty good.
  15. Ghost of LL

    2025 ACL

    Starting tomorrow afternoon, I'll be there and holding court in the Platinum Lounge.
  16. The really weird thing is that the ban on facial hair in the Navy is a pretty recent phenemenon. It was only implemented in 1984 to ensure a proper seal for modern firefighting equipment. But before that, facial hair in the Navy was very common, if not the norm. And of course it was. We're on a fucking ship. We have limited supplies of freshwater. We can't run around wasting it on fucking shaving. Save that shit for shore; when we're underway, that's just a fucking waste of time and water. I wonder if Pete Kegsbreath wants to go back in time and ask Bull Halsey or John Paul Jones why they were being so woke for allowing beards in their command.
  17. It’s a sad moment when you’re in the very last games of the day and ESPN switches its scorebug to the NFL.
  18. There is no way these two teams are going to score 21 points.
  19. What the fuck did Auburn do to SEC officials?
  20. I hate the way the tush push is officiated. Whatever yardage Hurts might get is given, no matter for how long his forward progress is stopped. But the second he fumbles, well his forward progress must’ve been stopped.
  21. So it’s just now the ACC’s bit that every year they’re going to have a preseason top-10 team just crash and burn?
  22. I love football again!
  23. It’s not just that they lost, it’s that it wasn’t a fluke. It was actually kind of a fluke that they got it to within a touchdown. They really weren’t competitive.
  24. Bud Light was/is a very working-class brand. But beyond that, Bud LIght is kind of a stale brand. It lacks the hipster appeal of Old Style and PBR. At the same time, it lacks any marker of being new or different or better than any of its competitors. Against that backdrop is the fact that in America in 2024, "working class" increasingly means "Hispanic." You don't need to have had much experience with Hispanic workers to know that Bud Light has been a perinneal favorite. Bud LIght has now taken a hit. It's no longer the best-selling beer in America. The best-selling beer in America is now Modelo. Which is owned by . . . [checks notes] . . . AB InBev. You know--I've never subscribed to the conspiracy theory that New Coke was just a ploy to take Coke off the market for six months to cover for the introduction of HFCS. It's a fun theory, but I've never bought it. If I did buy that theory, then I'd definitely believe that AB InBev purposefully concocted the entire Mulvaney kerfuffle to manufacture a "popular" shift from a stale brand to a brand that is more marketable to the 21st Century American working class.
  25. That's the only answer. Even if 1% of its subscriber base canceled Disney+--and that would be a metric fuckton of people--that's a tiny price to pay for Disney to remain in the regime's good graces. If, however, the talent refuses to produce the content, that's a gamechanger. Nobody pays for Disney+ for movies that came out 30 years ago. It requires new content to command the fees they charge. If the talent goes on strike, then Kimmel is back in a couple weeks. If they don't, then I don't want to hear all their overdramatic speeches at the Oscars about how democracy is at risk.
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