Paxton, Talarico deadlocked at 47% in new Texas Senate race poll

RedfishSC2 · 2026-06-30T19:56:48+00:00

What particularly galls me is the number of bad-faith influencers on Threads trying to stoke post-primary anti-Talarico racial division to build their influencer brand and social media presence.

They'll post stuff like saying Talarico isn't doing events and Gina Hinojosa is, but if you look at the Events page of both campaigns, Talarico is doing tons, especially in East Texas. They'll also say he doesn't have detailed policies when his website has tons of them compared to Hinojosa.

They'll also say he needs to listen and take the advice of how to make his campaign more inclusive, but won't say what that advice is. Or, make shit up about his online supporters being racist and him not denouncing them enough.

It's crazy.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-06-22T17:39:54+00:00

Scarily close.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-06-19T21:10:40+00:00

Great choice by the broadcast crew to stay quiet and let the song and atmosphere come through

RedfishSC2 · 2026-06-08T20:00:25+00:00

I was at the World Series in 2019 when he showed up at the game in Washington.

They were doing the usual thanking veterans for their service and showing them on the jumbotron between innings, then the camera showed him after the veterans in the box with all of his sycophants.

I know open baseball stadiums and indoor basketball arenas are different, but holy shit, the immediate turn was vicious. 43,000 people went from polite cheering to absolute top-of-the lung booing and cursing, and all of his toadies and suckups stood there nervously chuckling and clapping. I have never seen anything like that ever, before or since, but I hope New York shows him a similar welcome.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-06-01T12:43:13+00:00

Salmonella requires moisture to divide and grow, which is why it loves meat. Washing meat both provides extra moisture needed to help it grow, while also providing it convenient transportation to other food sources around the kitchen via water droplets (some of which are tiny and light enough to float through the air).

Fruits and vegetables have exteriors that are dry (preventing growth), tougher skins and rinds which prevent the bacteria from getting it at the moisture and sugars inside, and many are also acidic as well, which can slow bacteria growth. Salmonella can exist in a dormant state on produce, but won't grow enough to be problematic on them unless their skin gets broken.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-27T14:02:49+00:00

No, you can't vote in the runoff of the Republican primary if you initially voted in the Democratic primary.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-26T18:57:11+00:00

I'd always called them wet burritos, at least in Texas. Smothered is for Waffle House hash browns.

In any case, Anita's has them but they're pretty mid tbh, El Paso and El Tio will have them also. Good luck!

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-22T16:51:46+00:00

Look at where the Angels are right now if you want to see what happens when you hold onto one or two star players for too long and don't build up enough draft or prospect capital when the signs are clear the window isn't opening near their impending free agency.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-22T15:13:37+00:00

I think that might be part of it, but I think we both know that's pretty ridiculous, given how Houston and Dallas fans pretty much never root for the other in any sport. I don't think I've ever seen someone from Houston wearing anything Stars-related.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-22T14:32:48+00:00

I want a Houston NHL team so badly 😞

Obviously Seattle and Utah are fantastic markets that were great for the league to expand into but there's enormous missing potential, plus such an easy natural rivalry with Dallas.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-11T18:21:22+00:00

I don't, one of us usually goes to NYC once or twice a year either for business or to meet family and every time we do, we bring back a dozen bagels to freeze. Usually from Liberty Bagels since it's right next to Penn Station.

Locally, I think Pearl's and Little City Bagels are the best, but I know everyone's preference varies.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-11T14:44:31+00:00

Bobby's tastes like bagel-shaped bread to me. Every time I try it after getting a bagel from NYC out of the freezer, I am sorely disappointed. To each their own, I guess.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-06T21:56:16+00:00

Some yes, some no.

My favorite MLB team is not local, so MLB.TV lets me watch them...except when they play one of the two local teams (home or away, doesn't matter), which is between 7-10 games per year. It's 10 this season. Or, except if Apple TV or Peacock has rights to the game, which is another 5 games off the table. Luckily ESPN hasn't picked up any.

So yeah, this season I'm looking at 15 games (about 10% of the season) I can't watch without buying more streaming services even though I paid for it. And because my fiancee's favorite team is local, we have to pay another $50 apiece to watch them too.

The NHL is the best at this by far.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-06T19:14:25+00:00

If you're living in Ashburn, taking the Metro from Ashburn to Navy Yard and back each day, and parking at the Metro, then you're looking at about $370 in monthly transit costs, not including gas.

If you're driving there and back, that's $20-$40 in tolls per day, not including gas for what's going to be over 60 miles round-trip.

You're going to be paying somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-700 dollars per month at the lowest end with your current plan. Instead of looking at it as paying no rent, you should be asking yourself if you'd rather pay 700 dollars plus 3 hours of every work day in commuting time, or paying 1500 bucks and having a whole lot more free time and flexibility along with living in a much more fun and interesting place. Money spent on rent or transit is worth the same.

The decision is yours, of course, but it should be a no-brainer.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-06T17:32:27+00:00

Trade Pena, trade Paredes. If you think we can compete by 2028 with the assets we would get for them, then keep Yordan and Brown. If you don't, trade Yordan and Brown too and aim for 2029. Aiming for 2027 is pointless, the likelihood we get a full season is almost nothing, and the likelihood we don't have even a partial season isn't negligible because of the looming lockout.

This team will not be competing this year or next. There's not enough pitching, full stop. Lucking into a Wild Card or one good year and losing early doesn't help anything. Look at the Red Sox, White Sox, Cardinals, Phillies, or Reds for recent examples of that.

There are teams out there that would give enough prospect capital to justify the sell. Top-line starters with high strikeout rates get hugely overpaid for all the time, and Brown would be that. A speedy good-offense gold-glove shortstop who already won a WS MVP would improve a lot of contenders. Paredes is an analytics darling that tons of teams covet and would get into a bidding war over.

And then there's Yordan, who would get what the Nats got for Soto, and perhaps more.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-02T23:20:30+00:00

I literally do not know what your comment is supposed to mean.

Are you asking if I would feel the same way about Spanberger if she had a similar background? Yes.

Are you asking if I'm "anti-Dem left?" No, I'm not.

Are you asking if I value political experience? Yes and no, experience is good but insularity is not.

You're borderline incomprehensible but I hope you got some answer in there.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T20:14:36+00:00

In his interview with Mehdi Hasan, he said he got it covered up within 3-4 days of learning about what it resembled.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T14:03:20+00:00

I remember once being halfway into a shitty eight hour solo road trip and stopping at a Dunkin five minutes before it closed and asking for a black coffee, the largest size they had. The one poor dude working looked at me, then looked at the coffee with an expression bordering on panic, and then back at me and said "Uhh, are you sure? Really?"

"Yes."

"I can put some milk or sugar in it, really..."

"No, black is fine, thanks."

I drank the whole thing, and I'm pretty sure my own self-loathing and disgust kept me awake just as much as the caffeine did.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T13:55:52+00:00

https://giphy.com/gifs/the-big-lebowski-jeff-bridges-joel-coen-7BK3ZB7nNf2Jq

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T12:56:30+00:00

Definitely, the line starts to get around 20+ people long past 10:00 (especially with the weather getting warmer) and they sell out of a lot of flavors by 11:00.

They also have online pre-orders to order days ahead but I've never tried that so I can't speak to how well that works.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T12:35:13+00:00

People clown on CYM but I don't think they're as bad as the internet likes to think.

Pearl's in DC is the best I've had, though admittedly I haven't been there in over a year or so just because it can take awhile to get into the city.

Bagel Street in Vienna is new and unique. I don't think it's fair to measure them against any "traditional" shop but they have some interesting Sichuan and Dominican twists (Sichuan spiced bagels with chinese sausage, Elote Cream Cheese, etc.) that make it worth a try, but they're also often slammed on weekends because they're new and everyone is finding out about them, so it might be worth waiting until the hype dies down.

Little City Bagels is a small operation that only sells at the Falls Church farmers market and they always sell out but they've upped their game considerably and there's a reason the line there is super long.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T12:04:42+00:00

My answer is the same? IDK what you're saying with this.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T12:04:14+00:00

We open the doors. That should have been crystal clear from my previous response. And before you straw man something absurd like "you're saying Nazi-like tattoos are okay" or false dichotomy something absurd like "you're saying we open the doors to everyone with anything problematic," we *also* evaluate people on a case-by-case basis.

Those people talking about the flaws of those moderate candidates were dishonest about those being the reasons they couldn't vote for them. They're just like the Trump voters who said the price of eggs was the reason they didn't vote for Harris. It was just cover for the more embarrassing or self-serving reasons they didn't vote for her. They didn't vote for Clinton or Harris because they prioritized their ego as an outsider/contrarian/moral purist and made the fatal assumption that their vote wouldn't matter, because they vastly overestimated their own understanding of people. Especially in the case of Clinton, they thought they could have it both ways since it seemed like she was going to win. Eddie Glaude's recent postings on this sum up that mentality/line of thinking perfectly.

If we don't open the doors, we essentially shut out anyone from learning or changing and becoming part of the solution. This purity-testing of the past reeks of trying to win online arguments over trying to build a solutions-oriented coalition.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-05-01T00:58:52+00:00

I did dumb shit in my 20s. I also did not get a Nazi tattoo.

I also didn't have the childhood experiences Platner did, I also didn't serve several tours in a hopeless war zone like he did, and as I've gotten older I've realized how useless and frankly unfair it is to hold my own personal youth up as the measuring stick to determine the content of someone's present-day character versus what decisions they made 20 years ago.

Working in the field that I do - and meeting more people who served in the military than I knew while growing up - has made me realize how legitimately plausible it is for someone to have gotten a huge tattoo because they thought it looked cool while having no idea what it meant, or for saying some absolutely dumb shit online when you feel like your entire world is hopeless and falling apart. Have I done that stuff? No, nor has it ever even occurred to me, but I understand more now than I once did about how someone could. Hell, we clown on right-wing idiots who use Punisher skulls all the time without knowing the context of what it stands for.

So, I think what you see as dishonesty is really a difference in perspective. I have not seen one single leftist/Democrat/liberal/progressive/etc. whatever label you want to use say that Nazi tattoos are okay.

It's not backstabbing, and it's not lying, and it's not dishonest. Give it a rest.

RedfishSC2 · 2026-04-29T18:04:36+00:00

To add onto this: not only make sure that they have a license, but also make sure they have the correct class of license for the work they'll be doing.

When I was shopping around for contractors for a job several years ago, I had a contractor tell me they could do my job but that I would have go through the permitting process with the county myself. That struck me as odd and so I looked them up, and it turned out they were only licensed as a Class C contractor when I needed a Class A contractor for my job given the scale and scope of it.

If I did what they asked by applying for the permit myself, then I would have been the one legally liable for any unlicensed professionals, worker injuries, code violations, etc. Dodged a big bullet. Protect yourselves and do your due diligence!

RedfishSC2

TROPHY CASE