On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 07:28:32 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:

> I went to San Antonio once for our anniversary — in February and it was
> hot and muggy even in the middle of February.

I was there in July, hot but not muggy. I wouldn't exactly say
disappointed but the Alamo wasn't quite what I expected. There has been a
massive conspiracy of photo cropping over the years.

On 10/25/24 15:43, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:50:25 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-24, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:35:00 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:53:13 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2024-10-23 2:56 a.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> If you mean “large cities”, those are in fact the backbone of your
>>>>>> economy. The US isn’t an agrarian society any more.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why should the value of someone’s vote depend on where they live?
>>>>>
>>>>> If the people in those "large cities" do not receive food, what will
>>>>> happen to them?
>>>>
>>>> They won’t be able to make the machines that the farmers use to farm
>>>> their crops. There would be no electricity generation or fuel supply,
>>>> no manufacturing of farmhouses, no laying of roads for the trucks to
>>>> supply feed and fertilizer and seed and take away produce. Nobody to
>>>> pay the farmers. Nobody to educate them on how to grow their crops.
>>>>
>>>> The whole system collapses.
>>>
>>> You are so fucking ignorant it's pathetic. Do you really think they
>>> manufacture tractors in New York City, Baltimore, or LA? Harvest the
>>> lumber needed to build houses? Drill wells for oil and gas? Mine coal?
>>
>> I don't think he's ever done any real work in his whole life.
>
> As usual he is talking out of his ass. When I took a break from
> programming in the '90s I drove OTR and went to all of the lower 48 except
> Vermont and Maine, as well as western Canada. I know where I picked up
> manufactured goods or agricultural products and where I took them.
>
> Trucking is sort of like a chess game. When you get a good paying load
> going from Point A to Point B you're also looking ahead to how you're
> going the get a load from Point B. Shippers aren't stupid and realize if
> the loads going out are scarce they can pay less than the actual cost if
> the trucking company wants to get the truck moving. For example I've
> brought a lot of carpet to Denver, either from the mills in GA or imports
> from the LA ports. About the only thing leaving Denver is dog food from
> the Ralston Purina plant. (or people food. It sort of worried me that the
> forklifts came from the same direction).
>
> Particularly in the big eastern cities you'd bounce (run empty) several
> hundred miles to get a load. Take carpet to Brooklyn and you find there is
> absolutely nothing shipped out of Brooklyn. You need to get to rural PA.]

I thought Purina was made in Switzerland.

On 10/25/24 16:50, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 09:09:48 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>
>> If you like heat and humidity you would love Texas. I lived there. I'm
>> not anxious to ever return.
>
> Humidity? Ever been in Midland? I liked the Confederate Air Force museum
> but they seemed to have moved to Dallas and gotten woke. I suppose the
> planes didn't change but still...

That part of Texas smells of oil wells. Even the dry soil that's ought
to be light brown in color is oily darker brown.

On 2024-10-27, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 07:28:32 -0000 (UTC), RonB wrote:
>
>> I went to San Antonio once for our anniversary — in February and it was
>> hot and muggy even in the middle of February.
>
> I was there in July, hot but not muggy. I wouldn't exactly say
> disappointed but the Alamo wasn't quite what I expected. There has been a
> massive conspiracy of photo cropping over the years.

We went there also. I agree with your assessement.

--
“Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy
what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:59:24 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:

> On 2024-10-24 3:19 p.m., rbowman wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:35:00 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:53:13 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2024-10-23 2:56 a.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If you mean “large cities”, those are in fact the backbone of your
>>>>> economy. The US isn’t an agrarian society any more.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why should the value of someone’s vote depend on where they live?
>>>>
>>>> If the people in those "large cities" do not receive food, what will
>>>> happen to them?
>>>
>>> They won’t be able to make the machines that the farmers use to farm
>>> their crops. There would be no electricity generation or fuel supply,
>>> no manufacturing of farmhouses, no laying of roads for the trucks to
>>> supply feed and fertilizer and seed and take away produce. Nobody to
>>> pay the farmers. Nobody to educate them on how to grow their crops.
>>>
>>> The whole system collapses.

Now that we’ve established that none of you lameass Dumbfuckistanis have
the slightest clue how agriculture fits into a modern industrial economy,
can we get back to the question I originally asked?

Namely, if you consider all your citizens to be “created equal”, why do
you not count their votes equally?

On 2024-10-29, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 15:59:24 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>
>> On 2024-10-24 3:19 p.m., rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 05:35:00 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:53:13 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2024-10-23 2:56 a.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> If you mean “large cities”, those are in fact the backbone of your
>>>>>> economy. The US isn’t an agrarian society any more.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why should the value of someone’s vote depend on where they live?
>>>>>
>>>>> If the people in those "large cities" do not receive food, what will
>>>>> happen to them?
>>>>
>>>> They won’t be able to make the machines that the farmers use to farm
>>>> their crops. There would be no electricity generation or fuel supply,
>>>> no manufacturing of farmhouses, no laying of roads for the trucks to
>>>> supply feed and fertilizer and seed and take away produce. Nobody to
>>>> pay the farmers. Nobody to educate them on how to grow their crops.
>>>>
>>>> The whole system collapses.
>
> Now that we’ve established that none of you lameass Dumbfuckistanis have
> the slightest clue how agriculture fits into a modern industrial economy,
> can we get back to the question I originally asked?

You haven't "established" anything, dipshit, except for your glaring
ignorance about the U.S. economy and government — but that's been well known
for a while now.

> Namely, if you consider all your citizens to be “created equal”, why do
> you not count their votes equally?

Because 1) the U.S. is a Republic not a democracy. And 2) because all U.S.
citizens are ALSO citizens of the sovereign states where they live. These
sovereign states joined the Union with certain pre-conditions that would
insure that the small states would have some check and balances against the
larger states. And 3) because the U.S. adopted the Electoral College and
that's just the way it is. Live with it.

Read some history. Get a clue. Come back and explain what you've learned
when you learn something. Or stay stupid. Your choice.

--
“Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy
what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

On 10/24/24 7:09 PM, Joel wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On 23 Oct 2024 19:46:30 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> Do you know how the Electoral College is formed?
>>
>> I know about the “Three-Fifths Compromise”. That allowed the
>> slave-owning states to get more say in the election of the President
>> augmented to some extent by their slave population, without those
>> slaves getting any actual votes. Clever, don’t you think?
>
>
> It was fucked up, and then they had the audacity to secede because it
> was threatened. Fuck crackers.
>
>
>>> Washington DC gets 3 votes despite not being a state.
>>
>> I wonder why there is so much opposition to it becoming a state ...
>>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Voting_Rights_Amendment>
>
>
> It would be a black-plurality, highly safely Democratic state, so the
> redneck states will never agree to it.

Specifically because it would be +2 Senate seats favoring Democrats.
Same holds true for Puerto Rico on the question of Statehood.

Plus there's the other longstanding racism element of this which was
alluded to ... its why we literally gave away the colony of the
Philippines in 1946.

US President Taft (1909-1913) favored Statehood; he had previously been
their Governor and believed that they were unready for self-government.
But ultimately, the combination of Filipinos not being white and English
speaking, and by 1939 being 16 million “colored people” in population,
it was seen as too big/populous/obstinate/hard for whites to take over
(see: Manifest Destiny), resulting in the territory being cut loose.

Plus there were probably some thinking further ahead, into the balance
of political power ramifications in elections: at today's population,
the Philippines would've been a prize with ~138 Electoral College votes.

<https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/post/2020/06/11/why-the-philippines-couldn-t-be-a-us-state>

-hh

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:43:00 -0400, -hh wrote:

> Plus there were probably some thinking further ahead, into the balance
> of political power ramifications in elections: at today's population,
> the Philippines would've been a prize with ~138 Electoral College votes.

Why is there an Electoral College? In a country which claims to hold the
truth to be “self-evident”, that all its citizens are “created equal”, why
does it not count their votes equally?

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 23:50:27 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:43:00 -0400, -hh wrote:
>
>> Plus there were probably some thinking further ahead, into the balance
>> of political power ramifications in elections: at today's population,
>> the Philippines would've been a prize with ~138 Electoral College
>> votes.
>
> Why is there an Electoral College? In a country which claims to hold the
> truth to be “self-evident”, that all its citizens are “created equal”,
> why does it not count their votes equally?

Give it a rest. We ain't all god's chillun and we ain't all equal.

On 2024-10-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:43:00 -0400, -hh wrote:
>
>> Plus there were probably some thinking further ahead, into the balance
>> of political power ramifications in elections: at today's population,
>> the Philippines would've been a prize with ~138 Electoral College votes.
>
> Why is there an Electoral College? In a country which claims to hold the
> truth to be “self-evident”, that all its citizens are “created equal”, why
> does it not count their votes equally?

Because the founding fathers of the United States wanted to piss off New
Zealand cranks. It looks likes it worked.

--
“Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy
what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

On 1 Nov 2024 01:45:22 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> ... we ain't all equal.

So you don’t believe that “we hold these truths to be self-evident”? Why
do you even live in that country, then, if you don’t believe in its
founding values?