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The whole local single-party hegemony thing that constantly manages to assert itself throughout the country is one of the biggest ways that democracy in our country turns into a sham. Like I'm fully pessimistic about how well the dems would change things after seizing power, but anything is better than the same goddamn shitheels getting away with murder day after day because The Party has their back. The big hope I had for Beto was that finally the system could start cracking open, but in a presidential run, he's just some guy in a sea of whatever.
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Aug 7, 2019 06:09
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Still, it's not like Beto has some magical sword that can slay the beast. Most of the current primary candidates could probably manage it, and among them, Beto's just another face with slightly darker hair. And securing the presidency doesn't do anything to disrupt republican hegemony over Texas and it leaves a senate seat just that much safer for republicans to hold onto.
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Aug 15, 2019 17:11
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Proud Christian Mom posted:Its of those things thats always bothered me ever since Ted Cruz ran as an outsider. Bitch you went to Princeton and Harvard, and then clerked for Rehnquist, and then worked for W, and then was the Solicitor General for Texast; you're as in as anyone else can be. I fundamentally do not trust this pipeline. See also "fiscal conservatives" routinely spending more money and increasing the debt more than their opponents. It's a complete fiction to manipulate their base that nobody ever bothers to call out.
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Aug 16, 2019 18:53
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Honestly California is way too big for its own good. It makes the state a special boy in the electoral college, but it means less representation in the senate for all those people. The state government has a greater dominion than most state governments, which in theory means better central administration of problems and more resources to draw upon, but in practice there's double the special interests pressuring the state government so nothing can get done. Of course, all the actual plans that have been drawn up to divide California are awful and intended to separate the wealthy from the rest of the state to defund everything.
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Aug 28, 2019 17:25
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I think it's an interesting idea to try making a domestic terrorism task force, at least because for a while people were being all shy about saying terrorism about all this violence because muslims weren't involved. Practically, it'll probably be underwhelming from refusing to address the most important factors in countering these events to not really caring that much about them in general. Maybe they'll figure out some weird workaround that doesn't clash with any of the lobbies they want to suck up to, or maybe it'll wind up with some kind of crackdown where they come up with reasons to beat random people with truncheons.
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Sep 1, 2019 06:44
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No almost about it, gun rights activists threaten to murder people all the time. That's the entire point of militia movements.Mistaken Frisbee posted:one of those many politicians who stereotype all of Texas, move here to get elected, then declares themselves to be the expert on "real Texas values". They usually don't know poo poo about the state, or care. Honestly that's probably the truest Texas experience. Coming to Texas from afar and then being accepted as part of it so that the newcomers take it as their own.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:31
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No Safe Word posted:Y'all is just efficient It's not at all though. "You" is already plural, there's no point to adding something that then needs to be abridged to bring the word back to what it was. It is a tumor of a word. 'Course, my feelings about the contraction come from when I was much younger and first moved here and was still grumpy about it. In my brain, I have it filed as one of those dumb southern things, right next to the Confederacy.
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Sep 10, 2019 23:59
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You'd think getting literal death threats from people would make them want to reduce the ability to carry them out.
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Sep 12, 2019 20:43
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zoux posted:It's not really but hell yeah lets fcukin do this Well, it really is. It's not an earnest death threat, it's not a serious threat. But there's really no meaning to "I'm gonna use my murder tool on you" other a threat of death. At best it normalizes the idea of murder as a viable part of the discourse. And it's a regular part of the gun debate that legal action should be taken against.
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Sep 13, 2019 06:44
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It's a real crime that kids in parts around here aren't taught about the Comanche. They spent the better part of two centuries as the dominant power that shaped everything else around here. In some ways, it's for the best that they declined, since they relied a lot on raiding and slavery, but they're worth learning about all the same. History is big and complex and white nationalists just try to ignore all of it.
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Sep 19, 2019 18:24
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zonohedron posted:As someone whose Year Of State History was Montana history, not Texas history: do you have a) a good starting point for adults to read or b) something I might be able to use to supplement my kids' history classes in a few years? I've mostly gotten what I've learned from "The Comanche empire" by Pekka Hämäläinen, but I've also heard good things about "Empire of the Summer Moon" by S.C. Gwynne.
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Sep 19, 2019 21:12
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When the capitol was first moved to Austin, it was a terrible idea to go to the middle of nowhere, and there was a whole lot of ridiculous drama over it. Therefore, if they move the capitol again, it needs to be to like the middle of a desert in New Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Archive_War
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Oct 3, 2019 06:52
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I have a theory that most of the stereotypical boisterous texan attitude is all an elaborate ruse to cover up the fact that Texas has been a major hub of immigration for the entirety of its existence. Underneath all the bluster it's all a lot softer, but so long as the threat of the mythical True Texans is maintained, people can randomly be ostracized as unwelcome outsiders. But then my family came together from basically the four corners of the country, so I've always been suspicious of locality loyalty movements anyways. Historically, railing against carpetbaggers was a southern cover for fighting reconstruction and trying (eventually successfully) to rebuild the power structures that had been damaged during the civil war.
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Oct 8, 2019 20:20
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:Dallas Dallas Dallas Yeah, but how many presidents has your city killed smart guy
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Oct 9, 2019 16:39
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Ideally if you just implement a working progressive tax system, it doesn't matter if the wealthy benefit equally from plans designed to help people who are less well off. They'll still be paying out more into the system than they get back out.
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Oct 24, 2019 18:48
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My body just can't handle the 70 to 40 jump all at once, it doesn't know what's going on, my sinuses explode, I think "well, at least I can start layering clothing again" but then I start horribly overheating. I need gradual change to acclimate over. I can deal with hot, I can deal with cold, I can't rapidly switch over between the two.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:17
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Yeah, because it's so important to have blank concrete under a highway. Shooing them off is only gonna make them pop up somewhere else. Although I suppose the hope is that they'll die quicker to the elements when scattered.
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Nov 7, 2019 18:30
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Marxalot posted:Is this going to turn out to be one of those "it would have been cheaper if we had just paid to put everyone up in a motel 6" things? That's how most homeless solutions seem to turn out. But it's never about the cost of welfare, it's about maintaining the class structure so the homeless can't interfere with those higher up.
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Nov 7, 2019 20:48
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/SophieNovack/status/1192871483187613696 Group founded to prevent women from getting a medical procedure leads to women getting insufficient healthcare, who'da thunk. I don't think I really understand conservatives talking about abuse and corruption. I think their definition of "corruption" is "the process of government", since that's what they seem dead set on preventing most of the time. Or maybe "corruption" is "any amount of welfare that could threaten the class structure, therefore being theft from the upper class". I don't think they're ever talking about embezzling public funds or endangering government programs or policies for self-enrichment.
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Nov 8, 2019 20:18
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I'm not sure if you want the Zodiac Killer on your side in a murder investigation.
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Nov 9, 2019 20:08
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TropicalCoke posted:No you guys this time we are really turning texas blue Without hope, we are nothing, so I can't say much wrong with the hope. It certainly seems like each time there's a little more effort and a little more return. But maybe that's just wishful thinking. Of course, the phrasing kinda belies a failure of prioritizing. It's not even really on the table for the whole state to flip, since the governor's not going to flip and Texas has a weaker legislation anyways. You can flip a few seats, you can even pull a major play and get a federal senator and some representatives. If you're really lucky, some snazzy presidential electoral votes as well. But so long as the state government maintains republican hegemony, opposition voting can be suppressed and conditions within the state won't improve. In the grand scheme of things, a big win will set the stage for future elections to siphon more campaign money away for both parties, which I'm not sure how to feel about.
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Nov 20, 2019 06:35
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I'm thankful for any opportunity to tell the confederacy to go gently caress themselves.sexpig by night posted:I really can't be clear enough, food gold costs like 5 bucks for a pack of sheets. This is literally just good fajitas with a side of caviar and even then it's a massive gouge. Everyone who eats it deserves food poisoning and Troy Guard needs to fall into a well. I'm always of two minds about that, since obviously it's a horrible thing that people who can just vomit out money with no good sense are so prominent that you can plausibly put out ludicrously expensive meals for them to buy, but you need to give the ludicrously wealthy something dumb to piss away their money on so they can cease to be ludicrously wealthy.
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Nov 27, 2019 02:42
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Panty Saluter posted:"poor choice of words" I'm not sure if they earnestly believe it or not, but generally the narrative they push is that you've got to be very careful and delicate about whatever you say even if it's something that WE ALL SAY in normal conversation. As opposed to the ideas in their head being repugnant to other people, and that being why people don't want them to be expressed.
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Dec 5, 2019 18:10
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And they write articles wondering why millennials are reluctant to have children.zoux posted:This won't help Can't believe they fired a woman just for publicly calling for some of the students under her care to be exterminated.
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Dec 7, 2019 18:24
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PostNouveau posted:Statue of Jefferson Davis on the UT quad: That's just history. How else will the kids learn? Statues don't mean we revere people. I'm not sure Santa Anna is even liked much in Mexico, seeing as how he was exiled at least twice. Cracking down on Texas was just one very ill-fated project on a career that had already turned to dictatorship.
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Dec 14, 2019 20:14
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I guess they're both half-right, since slavery was the most intensely divisive issue the founding fathers had, which is why they deferred it for a hundred years, and it's especially relevant since all of those hundred years of compromises only managed to further entrench slavery, despite all the people who acknowledged that it should end eventually. I don't know why it'd behoove a very moderate candidate to push the idea that everybody was wrong in the past but they just gradually got better with the progression of time without any hard work to destroy the opposition and actually change things, or why a very terrible person would want to push the idea that everything was good in the past and didn't need any changing at all.
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Dec 31, 2019 17:28
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edit: oh whoops, that's the wrong thread. Anyhow, the Republicans have had a surprising amount of success with their brand of being in favor of everything being worse in every way, and you can't rebrand that.
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Jan 7, 2020 05:13
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In theory, monetizing academic sports can help schools pay for things, but in practice they suck that value right back out with expensive equipment, facilities, and coaches. It also relies on extracting value out of students without reimbursing them in any way. It's good to give students some physical activity, but it should never be done at the cost of compromising the main purpose of schools.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:20
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I thought business Republicans were generally willing to tolerate any kind of poo poo so long as there's the barest hint of lower taxes or less regulation. And they have a habit of being a lot stupider than they think they are, so it's pretty simple to placate them.
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Jan 12, 2020 06:49
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Mistaken Frisbee posted:I still never understand the argument that voting is "just what the system wants" when the system actively works to suppress voting for marginalized groups and doesn't give a poo poo what voter turnout looks like. So this theory is all that makes sense to me. I think the idea is more that they want a violent rebellion to happen, and they would rather bet on that than consent to anything else. It makes more sense in more broken and authoritarian system, where just trying to build support publicly and engage in politics can land you and all your associates in jail or in exile if you have political opinions that the establishment disapproves of. Related is accelerationism, the idea that if you want a violent revolution, it's better if all conditions get worse and worse, so the people being hurt will be more likely to support your revolution, and if anybody actually makes conditions better, you'll lose that support. In a less extreme example, it's like how it's hard to file taxes, and "anti-tax" politicians will fight hard against attempts to simplify taxes, because if taxes feel more burdensome, they can continue to campaign on lowering them. But then there's also people who just wanna gently caress poo poo up and will seize on any kind of loose justification to do it.
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Jan 14, 2020 23:56
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:lmao i love how it carefully avoids the college part of denton I remember having a professor describing it as taking big pizza slices out of cities to keep their influence from concentrating. Interesting that they're pairing it with a big slice of southwest Fort Worth. I have no idea what that means, since I've never gone further west into FW than Six Flags.
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Jan 28, 2020 02:13
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Great for local government to become one of those sham dictatorships.
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Jan 31, 2020 02:42
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I was under the impression that it was the Republican party's security in keeping keeping the state under its dominion that kept political ads at bay. Although lately I started seeing some ads from plano's foreign mayor about how she's a great choice to vote for in a district I don't live in because of how racist against immigrants she is. I get the idea behind doing the primaries one state at a time, doing a national vote all at once is hard and it's not like internal party leadership has any guaranteed democratic protections anyways, but there's no reason for the same idiot pigfuckers to go first every time and have consistently disproportionate influence.
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Feb 4, 2020 19:14
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In order to avoid giving flyover states disproportionate influence, they should give the power to decide the primaries to all the non-state entities that normally don't get a vote like Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa. Make all the candidates jet set around the Pacific making promises about the Jones Act.
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Feb 4, 2020 21:51
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I was thinking about the actual election where votes from non-states don't count. DC actually gets some electors, but there was at least one time where their electors abstained in protest of DC having a vote.
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Feb 5, 2020 03:52
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In even less ideological terms, it seems like they'd prefer to keep power consolidated under centralized authoritarian rule rather than risk being swayed by local interests.
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Feb 12, 2020 04:08
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I feel like I'd trust Bloomberg more than Pete because at least I know what he is, but they're a distant 5th and 6th (and only because I don't remember more people I could put between them and the ones I actually like) as centrists who are running because they want to avoid any real change or attempts to disrupt the current state of politics. And then all the way further down the line you have J'Biden literally endorsing republicans.zoux posted:Would someone please tell me why everyone is freaking out about this more than I've ever seen people freak out about a disease outbreak ever. Even the ebola scare wasn't this bad. Potentially dangerous epidemics are scary even before they actually start really affecting your country. There were the scares for ebola, sars, chicken flu, swine flu, but what's spooky about coronavirus is that it had a steeper graph curve of infection cases. There are also a lot of scary stories of things that the Chinese government is doing to fight it which may make it seem worse than it is, since they're trying to both suppress the fear of the disease as well as the disease.
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Feb 13, 2020 17:46
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Surely they will get more votes by refusing to be affiliated with strong positions that people care about and inoffensively keeping their heads down.
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Feb 16, 2020 06:01
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It's crazy how they'd all rather keep suckin' the pissfuck's dick and destroy the pretense to legitimacy of their own religion rather than try challenging him in a primary. I guess on the bright side when Trump falters, the entire party will probably implode again until they find another fascist darling. Arcella posted:
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Feb 18, 2020 00:25
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It's really amazing that aside from the racists who were all in on Trump because of the things he said that weren't lies, there were a lot of genuine idiots who bought into the absolute lie that the wealthy businessman with vague mob connections and a shitload of legal violations would somehow sweep away the corruption and establishment. Also I feel obligated to plop this video in here even though it's not political. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXI_VI_KD_k I hope this thread title lasts until California has its regular drought.
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Feb 18, 2020 21:06
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