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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. They're welcome to call me. That'd be a fun lawsuit.
  2. Right. And that is not a "political party" as that term has ever been understood in political science. I don't really know what it is, beyond a complete and total clusterfuck.
  3. I did read the thread. I just don't draw the same inferences as you do. So there were meetings between Hamas and Hizbullah. No shit. There are routinely meetings between Hamas and Hizbullah. But one cannot conclude from those meetings that they coordinated this particular attack. In fact, there's no evidence that Hamas and Hizbullah coordinated the timing, means, and methods of Hamas's present attack. There's no evidence of any coordination; all the evidence indicates a complete absence of coordination. And the Hamas statements you identify reflects that this is a Hamas-only operation. When the Hamas spokesman says "we have been preparing for this for two years," the "we" in that sentence is Hamas. That is very clear from the context. I used the Leroy Jenkins analogy purposefully. I have no doubt that Hamas joins in with Hizbullah, the IRGC, the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad in regular meetings to discuss how they're going to go attack the "Zionist Entity." But Hamas is charging in on its own right now and leaving everyone else to decide what to do now.
  4. You talk as though the GQP is a party, and it's just not. At this point, it is a non-functioning coalition of about four different parties. But in no way does it resemble an actual political party right now. But I agree that electing Hakeem Jeffries is incredibly far-fetched. The only thing that is even more unlikely is any Republican getting 217 votes. And if no Republican can get to 217 votes, then we're going to have a governmental shutdown in a month. And what do the "Republicans"--put in scare quotes, because I don't concede that there is a such thing as a "Republican" anymore--do at that point? I mean, one of those parties within their nonfunctioning coalition will be happy to watch it burn. But another of those parties is going to be very worried about its own electoral prospects in 2024. How long are they going to let a governmental shutdown go on because of the likes of Matt Gaetz?
  5. Broadly speaking, the Speaker can determine what bills can make it to the floor for a vote. But obviously, everything is negotiable, and Jeffries would have to cede some control over floor management to any Republicans who would vote for him. So, I don't know. And really, nobody does. It's never been done before.
  6. But all evidence indicates that there is no coordination between Hamas and Iran/Hizbullah. If Iran were coordinating all this, presumably it would have had Hizbullah conduct attacks from Lebanon at the same time Hamas was attacking from Gaza. But there has been no meaningful attack from Lebanon. The only thing Hizbullah has done is fire off some rockets that were already positioned and could be fired off with little/no preparation. Nor has there been any real move by Iran against . . . anybody. Iran could ramp up its activities in the Gulf to draw the United States Navy away from the Eastern Mediterranean. Or it could prompt action from the Houthis to strike at the Saudi oilfields. Or it could do all manner of shit in Iraq. It's done nothing. It's issuing a bunch of mean tweets, and that's it. That's not to say that things can develop. This is a serious shooting war in a volatile region. But it is to say that I don't see any basis to believe that there is some grand scheme or stratagem at play here. It looks like Hamas just Leeroy Jenkinsed this shit.
  7. I am increasingly convinced that Hakeem Jeffries is the next Speaker. Problematically, he won’t be elected until January.
  8. That's exactly right. My brother-in-law was an air traffic controller he retired about five years ago. He was hired around 1986, when he came out of the USAF. His problem was that there were a huge number of people with higher seniority who were hired right after the PATCO strike, so he always got stuck with shitty shifts and working on holidays. Yeah--all those guys are gone now. And at 3.7% unemployment, we just don't have the available pool of people to replace them.
  9. Yeah--I didn't remember that, and thanks for clarifying. I just remember that, as a BA shareholder, that was a hit.
  10. It depends. Some weapons systems, such as the F-35, are developed from the outset in conjunction with international partners. The United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark, and Canada together contributes $4.4 billion towards development costs of the F-35. The United Kingdom contributed 10% of the planned development costs as the sole Tier 1 partner. Other weapons systems are developed by the likes of Boeing and Lockheed and are never picked up by any military, so it is the shareholders--and not the taxpayers--who are on the hook for that. Lockheed's Skunkworks does a lot of that. Some of what they learn gets incorporated into subsequent designs that are picked up by the military. But plenty of it just goes in the trash. And then there are other weapons systems for which there is a design competition. The F-35 is another example. Boeing also submitted a design in the Joint Strike Fighter design competition (the XF-32), but it ultimately wasn't chosen. The taxpayers don't pay for that; Boeing bears all the risk there.
  11. He needed to run for Dodgers' pitcher. They could've used him. And yeah--I know Steve Garvey was a first baseman. I don't care. I bet he'd have an ERA lower than 25.
  12. Yeah--we also did the Conrad when we were in Tokyo in March. I will tell you that we really liked it. The service was fantastic, and the views in really all directions are great. But we stayed there on points. I'm not sure I'd be up for $900/night.
  13. I'm sorry--what part of "my wife is super-horny because of the pregnancy hormones but not yet too fat to travel, so we're going to Cancun for a long weekend so that I can put it in her butt repeatedly" do you object to?
  14. Not typically. We only have two hospital ships. I have long argued that we ought to have far more. They're former oil tankers that only cost about $200M to convert to hospital ships. And for the most part, they go around the world providing medical services to people in areas that have suffered natural disasters or other catastrophes. Aside from there being an obvious need for such vessels, they are hugely effective at bringing goodwill to the United States and increasing our soft power abroad.
  15. The water projects being developed are the ones set out in the State Water Plan. And that is compiled by engineers and staff from various water suppliers and utilities. So we're talking about new reservoirs, desalination, direct reuse (i.e., taking water that is discharged from wastewater treatment facilities and directly reusing it), etc. With climate change and the continued growth of this state's population, it's desperately needed. The funds would be managed by the Water Development Board, which is probably the single most competent/least corrupt of the various statewide governmental agencies. My default is to vote against constitutional amendments. But this is a good one.
  16. Fucking A, Ranger friends!
  17. Ok--yeah, that's bad. But can we have some real porn talk for a minute? When (and why) the fuck did every other porn video on the internet become incest porn. Go to your porn aggregator of choice, and damned near every other video is going to be step-something. Or dads swap daughters. Or moms teaching daughters how to fuck. I mean, c'mon porn industry--I just want a good video of a guy delivering a pizza and walking in on an in-progress pillow fight between two besties. Not step-sisters. Not a mother and daughter. Not even cousins. Just two unrelated women and a pizza guy (who is also unrelated by blood or marriage). Is that too goddamned much to ask?
  18. In what I'm sure is completely unrelated news, USS Nimitz and HMS Prince of Wales just sailed out of Norfolk.
  19. I'm not sure about that. For one thing, I don't think it's at all clear that Iran is coordinating this. Iran supports Hamas; that's apparent. But I don't know that Iran put Hamas up to this. If Iran were coordinating this, it seems to me that you'd also have Hizbullah also attacking Israel from the north. The fact that you don't see anything more than a handful of rocket attacks--something that could be put together on a very spur-of-the-moment basis--indicates to me that Hamas may have completely Leroy Jenkinsed this shit. But for another, Israel has its hands full right now. It still has infiltrators trying to kill Israelis in Israel. It doesn't yet have its defenses fully manned in the north. I don't think it really wants to bite off a full-scale war against a major regional power without first securing its own situation.
  20. Yeah, it's Russia. And this time there needs to be a proportionate response. They're testing us with the mining of Romanian waters and drone strikes that have strayed into Romania. If we don't respond to the test, they'll push even further until the only response available to us is a full military commitment.
  21. It had peace because it was peaceful. Well, I mean, you had the Crusades. But there wasn't any dispute between Jews and Arabs . . . primarily because there weren't any Jews. After the Jewish Revolt was put down in 70 CE, there weren't very many Jews left in the Roman province of Palestine. That's the whole genesis of the Jewish Diaspora--they fled and settled throughout the Roman world. In Palestine, all that was left was a small Jewish community in and around Jerusalem. And a whole lot of those who were still there a thousand years later were killed in the massacre at the hands of the Crusaders when they took Jerusalem in 1099. Jewish resettlement of Palestine didn't start until the Zionist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Zionism didn't have any real traction before Herzl's publication of Der Judenstaat in 1896 and the founding of the World Zionist Organization the year after. Between 1882 and 1914, the Jewish population in Palestine increased from 24,000 to 94,000. It was 450,000 in 1939 (roughly a third of Palestine's population). This dispute is a creature of the 20th Century and the Jewish desire to have a homeland. And I'm not begrudging that. But the need for a homeland in Palestine arises directly from the fact that they didn't have one there for 2,000 years. That's a good analogy. I would only add that it's slightly off because there aren't a bunch of Aztecs scattered throughout North and South America who are being discriminated against and routinely pogrom-ed. . . . because blowing up children is the humane way to do it.
  22. Ummmm, do you even Viking, Bro?
  23. Yeah, ability does limit aspiration . . . as evidenced by the fact that you didn't have a threesome with Sela Ward and Suzanna Hoffs last night. And by the way, if you think merely aspiring to commit genocide merits the intended victim wiping you out, then you ought to be real careful. By that formulation, Russia ought to have an FSB hit squad tracking you down. And by your formulation, they'd be justified in doing so. But even if they were justified in killing you--a point I do not for a minute concede--it would have very negative consequences for Russia. And so even aside from the moral and legal point, there is a practical point. And so from every standpoint--moral, legal, ethical, and practical--Israel needs to show a little restraint here and not follow the Brisketexan Guide to Justifying Genocide. Yeah--that's a war crime. And it's fucking gross. But beyond that, Israel's supporters in America don't do Israel any favors by loudly encouraging it to commit war crimes.
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