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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Two different Simpsons references and a Trading Places reference all in one sentence? Bravo to you, sir. That's some peak Gen-X energy right there. Well, it's not like she's going to have to worry about voting in future elections. So she might as well blow this last one.
  2. I'm pretty sure the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard got teleported to Newport News in 1943. It was some World War II experiment, I guess to spread out heavy industry across the Atlantic Seaboard. I'm pretty sure it was called the Move A Shipyard To Newport News To Impress Churchill Experiment.
  3. I kind of would've, too. But I talked to the guy in Houston who was in charge of their program and he had some really interesting insight on that. A lot of them fell out of touch with family not because of any conscious desire on the part of the family. Instead, it was more often at the initiative of the person who eventually fell into homelessness. Without a home or a job, there was no physical place to find them. And very often, the homeless person was too ashamed about their circumstance to answer a call on their cell phone (if they were able to retain that). It's only when a social worker gets involved and convinces them to make that call that they get over that shame and reach out to their family. And in the vast majority of cases, the family is (1) relieved that they're alive and ok and (2) willing and eager to help. Pretty sure a lot of their "solution" was buying them a bus ticket to Austin. Not sure Austin can use that strategy. That's Williamson County's solution, for sure. I don't remember the specifics, but I think Houston will buy a bus ticket if there is a family member in the destination willing to receive them. But they're not just buying a ticket to some random city (whether it be Austin or San Francisco).
  4. Dallas. I mean, before the One Big Beautiful Bill cut the funding the city was using to address homelessness. But Dallas actually had a very successful program to address homelessness. And before that, Houston developed a really good program. It's similar to what Dallas was doing. Essentially, you target a homeless camp and send in police, santitation, and social workers in a single sweep. You take the people to a temporary center for processing, where they stay for 72 hours. During that 72 hours, the city identifies what they need. Some just need a call to a family member who takes them in. Other people need serious mental-health services. Anyone still there after 72 hours gets sent over to a longer-term facility that gives them an apartment for some amount of time (I think it's six months), where there are various social services available. The end result was that something like 90% of the people left before six months, having found permanent housing (often with family who didn't have the first clue that they were homeless). Anyway--there is a formula for successfully addressing homelessness. Cities that are pretty close by have implemented it. It's not rocket surgery. We just refuse to do it.
  5. I know you're joking. But that's not really how it works. Look at 19th Century Ireland or 20th Century Calabria or 21st Century Syria. When you cause the upper middle class to leave, that class doesn't get filled in by people who were lower on the socio-economic ladder. It's that the oligarchs (the Anglo-Irish nobility, the Mafia, the regime-adjacent Alawites) take over whatever wealth is left over while the lower classes get even poorer from the reduction in economic activity. And really, that's when real poverty takes hold, leading to mass emigration and foreign restrictions on migration. The lesson for the investing classes is this: emigration from a failing state is like a run on the bank--it's irrational to start one, but once it has started, it's irrational not to participate.
  6. But the humorous thing is that the investing classes who live disproportionately in urban areas--which is to say the people whom these MAGAts hate and on whom they want to inflict the most pain--are doing just great, thank you very much. They don't really care that groceries are more expensive. I mean, I think they are. Maybe. I mean, I really don't know how much one banana can cost. But at the same time, this little AI bubble we have going means their income is up bigly. And part of being a member of the investing classes is that when the time comes, they can parachute out of this country with no problem. There are dozens of countries that will give you a visa if you meet (often shockingly low) passive-investment-income requirements. There are plenty more countries that will give you citizenship for investment. There are already plenty of people leaving. There are plenty more who will leave. And if this country really tanks, there will be tens or hundreds of thousands who will just leave this place behind. But those farmers and small-town merchants in Iowa? They're stuck here.
  7. A 6.1% contraction in GDP is . . . bad. For comparison, the peak-to-trough drop in GDP during the Great Recession was only 4.3%. It could be a whole lot worse. The Great depression was around 30%. But . . . we're not done yet, Iowa--we could still get there.
  8. I did the same thing—went to take a nap at halftime. Woke up and turned on the World Series. Didn’t know we won until just a minute ago when I switched it over to the aggy game to check the score and saw it on the scroll. i couldn’t be more shocked.
  9. Let’s money-whip Cignetti.
  10. Goddamn, you're still this fucking bitter about that? I mean, I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun on that trip. Dinner at Galatoire's the night before and then four-dozen after-argument oysters at Felix's? That was a damned good time. Of course, Edith Jones didn't chew my ass out at oral argument. So maybe that colors my perspective.
  11. This has some real Fort Sumter vibes. And if you don't see that, then you need to pick up a book. Well, as a matter of fact, . . . .
  12. I don't agree with futureman very often . . . and this certainly isn't going to be one of those times. I like pickles. A lot. I'll order extra pickles on that tuna sandwich. But the logistics of that are going to be a problem. A pickle doesn't have the give of bread. So when you bite into a pickle, all the sandwich fillings are going to shoot out the other end--especially with a non-solid filling like tuna. So hard pass.
  13. I'm sorry--you're right. I was imprecise in my statement. He's the most popular Republican holding state office in Texas (and I include Cornyn, Cruz, and the various MOCs in that).
  14. Cross-posting from the Abbott thread, the "informed speculation" I heard at the event I was at last week--to which you were invited but you did not show (shame on you, by the way)--was exactly this. 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. You're exactly right hwn you say that Texas Republican voters are trained to vote with maximum cynicism. And Paxton's camp is starting to get concerned that he might end up third in a three-candidate race. And that is to say that he would end up without a job in government, which is pretty bad for a guy of his criminality. So 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. There are some people (e.g., Tim Dunn) who aren't altogether thrilled with Abbott. I don't know if it's all about marijuana, but I think that's a large part of it. And they see Paxton as a viable alternative. Now, I've got to tell you--that last bit doesn't make any sense to me. Greg Abbott has a $100M war chest. And he's probably the most popular Republican in Texas. I suppose Tim Dunn could challenge him on the money front. Maybe. But really--why? And even if you could challenge him on the money front, Ken Paxton isn't going to challenge him on the popularity front with a Republican (or any) electorate. So Paxton running a real risk of missing a run-off in the Senate race makes some sense to me. But the running against Abbott bit doesn't. But maybe the last part just flows from the first part. Paxton has to be desperate to hold public office given his criminality. Any office. He could've stayed AG, but he's probably burned his ships on that. So he's got to find something else to run for. Anything. So maybe this does make some sense.
  15. It was the second very short offseason in a row. And it's a team that's focused entirely on April and May. I'm not entirely surprised that they've come out in October looking a bit lackluster. That being said--the defense is terrible. And that needs to be addressed soon.
  16. So our own Marian Reforms, eh?
  17. And it's not unique to the United States. Go to rural (particularly Western) Canada. Go to rural (particularly the Midlands) England. Go to East Germany. It's the same deal right across the developed (and developing) world. If you lived in Chemnitz on October 2, 1990, and you had the least bit of education, ambition, and good sense, you moved. Maybe you went to Berlin. Maybe you went to Frankfurt. Hell--maybe you went to Vienna or Brussels. But whatever--you got the fuck out. Chemnitz was an industrial city with non-competitive industries built by the Communists; it wasn't going to do well in a new capitalistic economy. And anyone with half a brain could've figured that out. And they did. So who's left? The people with less than half a brain. And their descendents. Oh--and more than a few people who have fled places like Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. And boy do the less-than-half-brained natives hate them. Because those are people with the smarts and drive to flee a bad situation. But don't worry, dear Chemnitzian--they won't be there for long. They'll move on, leaving you behind again and making Chemnitz even less dynamic and desirable. But in the meantime, Chemnitz votes AfD. In the same way that Leeds votes Reform. And Kamloops votes Conservative. And none of those are good for the democracies in those countries. Somehow, we've got to deal with those left-behinds. I mean, they disgust me, too. They disgust me in the way the crazy fat homeless woman on Congress Ave. who half the time has her nasty-ass tit hanging out disgusts me. She's super gross and I wish she didn't exist. But if we don't deal with her in some way, she's going to break into the new Japanese deli there between 6th and 7th and destroy the joint. And I like the Japanese deli. So I guess we have to figure out some way to deal with her stupid ass before she destroys the things on Congress Ave. that we like.
  18. I get both instincts: sympathy and disgust. I share your sympathy for them. They were born in a shit town that was dying through no fault of their own. hey don't have the education or skills to make the town attractive to any industry, and they don't have the wherewithal to attain the education necessary to be successful in the modern economy. That shit's fucking hopeless. And it's even more hopeless for them in a society that broadcasts to them the successes of people who had the good fortune of just being born a couple hundred miles away. But I also share in the disgust. The rural poor in America live in circumstances and with opportunities the rural poor across most of the rest of the world could only dream of. Shit--the reason the rural poor have a feeling of having been left behind is that they have been left behind--literally--by anybody with the least little bit of intelligence and ambition, who left those shit towns ages ago to find better lives in Boston or New York or even fucking Providence. And I can't feel much but disgust for someone who is prevented from improving his circumstances simply by relocating to a real city by nothing more than his own fear and inertia. Before 2016, my sympathy outweighed the disgust. But then they decided to declare war on the rest of the country. So now, fuck them.
  19. That's not exactly true. Trump's approval rating has steadily declined over the last six months. Now you and I will agree that it hasn't gone down nearly as much as it should given the state of the economy and that 2/3rds of Americans say the country is on the "wrong track." But given the stickiness of the cult we're dealing with, it's not nothing. But regardless--we don't need them to see the light. Who really gives a shit if they see the light. I don't give a fuck about their redemption or personal salvation. I just want them not to vote. And every actual poll of actual races (and some that aren't actual races, but are indicative of voting behavior, like the generic congressional ballot) indicate that there is a lot of Trump approvers out there who probably aren't going to show up to vote in 2026.
  20. I feel like I got some cheap points here. Have I walked a factory floor? I mean, yeah--when I was doing a site inspection in litigation. Oh--and when I went on the field trip in elementary school to the Mrs. Baird's factory. That was fucking awesome. You got a slice of buttered bread at the end. Have I gone fishing in the last 12 months? I mean, yeah. But I don't think deep-sea fishing in Mexico really gives me the working-class bona-fides they're looking for. And I saw most of those movies because Mrs.LL has shit taste in movies, but I like to get laid.
  21. 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.
  22. There is no hate quite so vicious as Christian "love."
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
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