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august948

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Everything posted by august948

  1. Just a rough estimate. Google maps shows the beltway to be somewhat of a square 22 miles by 22 miles. That gets us 484 square miles.
  2. ....no you just missed my point entirely.
  3. IKR, they need at least four of them to be toll lanes to extend the katy tollway all the way to downtown. Maybe we need 6 or 8 new lanes total.
  4. Considering that the land area inside the Beltway is almost 500 square miles, I think we'll be fine. How much urbanity do you really need?
  5. I'm a real hoot all the time, brother.😜 Cold war 2.0. The US has four strategic enemies, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. There are others that don't like us that much, Venezuela comes to mind, but the rest are all bark and no bite. Iran and North Korea are a pain the the nether regions, but they are only regional powers at best. That leaves us with Russia and China. Until early March 2022, we thought the Russians were still a great power (so do they, btw, which is the root of this problem). They had a couple of weeks window to overrun Ukraine and establish a puppet government and failed spectacularly. At that point we realized, institutionally, that the Russians are a paper tiger and have been grinding them down ever since. That will continue into the near future until they are no longer any more than a regional power. This is the unspoken reason why we've been drip feeding them weapons instead of rushing them in. We need maximum grind on their military age population and the massive stockpiles of soviet-era munitions. They are already in a demographic decline and we're helping that along. On the other side of the planet, we've been building up a ring of allies and bases to strangle China, if necessary. China's also got a major demographic issue. One of two things will happen there. Either they'll strike out at Taiwan, run wild for a few months and then get crushed by blockade and sanctions or they'll slowly rot on the vine as we pull our trade away from them. They have to have imports and exports in order to survive.
  6. Are we taking Russian proclamations seriously now? Relax, by the time the next US president is inaugurated Ukraine will have most, if not all of it's territory back and the ring around China will be ever tightening. There's a bigger game afoot now, one that's going to dominate the coming decades. Also one that is bigger than any US president, Trump or otherwise. Politicians say all kinds of flurf, but when push comes to shove US dominance will be the agenda. Is Musk Derangement Syndrome a thing now? Asking for a friend.
  7. And no matter how much we raz each other on our favorite Texas teams, when it's Texas vs the world...
  8. No need. The long term plan is to absorb the UT system and rebrand it's flagship as UH - Austin.😛
  9. Wait, wasn't the Hunter Biden laptop thing all just a Russian hoax?
  10. Not at all. What I'm saying is if there is really a case, an actual legal case not media/political hyperbole case, they should have brought it well before now. They've already got convictions on Jan 6 rioters. Not suggesting extortion...just making a prediction, one that applies to both sides. Surely you're not going to tell us that Democratic led investigations are always good-faith and Republican led ones are always bad-faith? Even if you are right and the timing of the prosecution and court date is just a 'coincidence', the optics will strongly suggest otherwise. The ball is already in play now on this one and we'll see how it affects the election, as it surely will one way or the other. Bookmark this discussion and come back to it after the next presidential election or two and we'll see how things go.
  11. And from here on out it will be completely legit to actually try to "lock her/him/them up" during an election instead of just blathering about it at political rallies. Pandora, meet your new box. We'll see how this turns out in the coming years.
  12. So why wait until the start of primary season to charge him and then set the court date the day before Super Tuesday? If it's an open and shut case, why didn't they just go ahead and do it earlier? Or, alternately, why not just let the majority of voters who don't want him to be president do their thing and deny him office? My point here is we're dangerously close to having impeachments, rioting, and prosecution of political opponents become the norm. Surely you're not in favor of that just so you can "get" Trump?
  13. Given the massive nature of the federal code, not to mention state codes, it's not that hard to find something to charge someone with if the prosecutor has the inclination. But why did they wait until an election was coming up to charge him? Why did they get a court date the day before Super Tuesday? It's all just a coincidence? You can pretend this isn't a political prosecution intended to influence the election all you want but the evidence begs to differ.
  14. Think of it as the booby prize for them losing out to us on pretty much everything else that matters. 😛
  15. TxDOT, sweetie, go start the grill. Papa's going to throw on a big juicy steak for this one. 'Bout time they expanded the Katy inside the loop. 🥂
  16. Now we pretty much have to elect Trump in 2024, whether we like it or not. Democratic party operatives have already shown that impeaching during a election year and burning and rioting in American cities in the run up to the election can influence the presidential election. Now, if they are successful with this they will prove that weaponizing the legal system and pursuing political prosecutions can also influence the presidential election. If they are successful with that you can be sure that you will be seeing these tactics used over and over and over again every election cycle from now on. Good job Dems, I'm sure y'all thought this all the way through.
  17. If she's elected I'll really feel bad for COH employees. She's got a long, dismal track record with staff. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sheila-jackson-lee-chiefs-of-staff-tunrnover_n_880330 https://www.texastribune.org/2019/01/23/sheila-jackson-lee-steps-down-two-powerful-posts-not-congress/ https://dailycaller.com/2011/03/02/congressional-bosses-from-hell-sheila-jackson-lee/
  18. Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: "I Stand Here as a Freed Slave"
  19. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee on North and South Vietnam
  20. From Texas Monthly... https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/mooned/
  21. Illustration by Slug Signorino Cecil replies: Dear Gene: I am saddened to report that DO NOT HUMP does not have any of the off-color significance that seems to give many of the Teeming Millions their principal reason to go on living. It refers to a common method used to sort freight cars known as “humping,” which involves the use of a man-made hill, or hump. A track heads up the hill and branches into numerous parallel tracks on its way down the other side. To make up new trains, a switch engine pushes a string of cars to the top of the hump, where the cars are uncoupled one at a time. Having determined the car’s destination, a worker in a nearby tower pushes buttons or throws levers or whatever to get the track switches (you know, those things where one track divides into two) lined up properly. The car is then given a nudge, causing it to roll down the hump and onto the right track. The advantage of humping is that it’s a lot faster than having switch engines shuttle back and forth all day making up trains. The disadvantage is that it’s sometimes a little rough on the freight cars and their contents. Occasionally a car derails going down the hill, meaning the crew has to stop working and try to get the wheels back on the rails, which is not much fun, particularly in the middle of winter. What’s worse is the possibility that the car may roll down the hill too fast and crash into the car in front of it, jostling or damaging both the cars and what’s inside them. Special gimmicks on the rails called “retarders” are supposed to slow things down and prevent this, but they have been known to fail. Accordingly, cars with especially delicate contents are marked DO NOT HUMP, which tells the yard crew to set the car aside for special handling. This applies particularly to the tank cars used to haul hazardous chemicals, many of which have DO NOT HUMP stenciled permanently on their sides. The railroad business, I might note, is one of the few fields where a guy without advanced training can still hope to wreak major environmental havoc. An old high school teacher of mine once told me about the time he worked in the steel mills helping switch coal cars. During his first week on the job, he was asked to participate in a risky maneuver known as a “flying switch.” The idea was that the locomotive would head toward a switch pulling a single coal car behind it. At the right moment, somebody would uncouple the car and the locomotive would scoot ahead through the switch onto the main line. Once the locomotive was clear, my high school teacher was supposed to throw the switch so the coal car would roll onto the side track. Everything worked great until they got to the part where the teacher was supposed to throw the switch. For reasons that time has mercifully expunged from his memory, he waited to throw the switch until after the coal car’s front set of wheels had headed out toward the main line. The back set, however, was now headed onto the siding. You see the obvious problem this presents. My teacher had the privilege of watching a magnificent slow-motion disaster in the making as the coal car sort of rolled sidesaddle down the line until the tracks got too far apart, whereupon it toppled over and spilled 50 tons of coal all over creation. A great moment in railroading — nearly as funny as the time I almost knocked out the side of a building with an overhead crane. But we’ll get to that story some other day. Cecil Adams https://www.straightdope.com/21341767/what-does-do-not-hump-mean-on-the-side-of-railroad-cars Where is this?
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