RickRussell_CA

The relevant:

“I better win or you’re gonna have problems like we’ve never had. We may have no country left,” Trump said at his weekend swing-state rally. “This may be our last election. You want to know the truth? People have said that. This could be our last election.”

Eh. The article goes on to quote pundits who claim he’s threatening voters – that if he doesn’t win, he’s gonna do something to end democracy.

Seems kind of overblown to me. First, Trump would have to do something (laugh) and second, this is normal posturing. If you elect the other person, it’s doom and gloom, if you elect me it’s 4 more years of good times. These folks would have watched LBJ’s Daisy and concluded that LBJ was planning to nuke the country if he didn’t win.

People trying to make sense of Trump’s incomprehensible blather are always gonna come out looking silly.

I went through two defective EVGA cards within the original card’s warranty period. On the second card, EVGA tried to deny my warranty.

They eventually made it right, after I shamed them on Reddit.

But can it run Crysis?

Compared to Defense, State, Homeland Security, Attorney General…

Well, I’d like for him to get a shot BEFORE he’s a senior citizen.

I just wish Mr. Buttigieg wasn’t confined to such a low-stakes role in the administration. It’s great that he gets the occasional moments like this, but he’s not exactly being set up for a run at the Presidency in 2028.

This is going to seem minor, but it was a shock to me.

I grew up in Texas. I lived in very metropolitan places – near downtown Dallas, and near the Houston medical center. So I never thought that I was culturally isolated or anything.

When I finally left the state for a job, I went to Los Angeles, circa 2007. In my first week there, a lady pulled up next to me on the street and asked me where the courthouse was. I had a vague idea, but explained that I was new to the area so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. People familiar with the LAX area will know that the nearby courthouse is a tall building with something resembling a crown or halo, I pointed her toward that.

It wasn’t until a couple of minutes later I realized what seemed strange about the encounter. The lady was of African-American descent.

I thought back on 3 decades of living in Texas, and I cannot once remember being approached by a black stranger and asked a question. Not one single time. Houston has a large homeless population, I had many encounters with panhandlers. I couldn’t remember one single black person.

In fact, as I thought about it, a HUGE difference between Texas and California was that black folks on the street behaved very differently. In California, they looked you in the eye, they said “hello”, etc. In Texas – at least, up until I left in 2007 – black folks were strictly “heads down, eyes on your own business”. Even thinking back on some black friends and co-workers, I realized that they behaved very differently in public than my white friends did.

The whole thing made me sad for my black friends back in Texas. And now that we know how police treat black folks, I guess I can see why they behaved the way they did.