The commute and parking situation is a big part of why I left. Pre-pandemic, being single, mid 20s making good money, SF was awesome. All major cities have an underbelly, and honestly, SF always felt much more tame than a bunch of other major cities I would party in while visiting friends. YMMV.
I’m in the Seattle metro these days and stores are well stocked. Every so often they will be low on their selection of eggs or chicken, but never actually out of anything.
Related- help wanted signs are EVERYWHERE, and my experience hiring says alotof folks want to just work part time. How the hell are they affording that?! Govt stimulus checks aren’t nearly enough…
yep, well aware of both. I’m actually dealing with the resin issue right now (and have been for awhile). I have a resin-putty product (devcon) that I’ve been using forever, and never had a problem getting. Last September I tried to order the product I buy, and I was initially told a month leadtime, then it became an indefinite lead time, and I had to switch to another product. My usual product STILL isn’t available. The comparable loctite product had the same issue. As far as corrugate goes, our filters have been going up in price like crazy. About a 30% increase in price since 2 years ago. And all the boxes I buy have gone up. The last two times I’ve placed big ULINE orders, multiple boxes that are normally stock items were simply unavailable. This is the first time in my 15 years doing what I do that I’ve seen ULINE out of stock on any box. Crazy.
Makes sense, and is probably why I’m not seeing it as much. I a couple miles from downtown Dallas, so if any area would be capable of avoiding these shortages, it would be here.
So I have a fun story about this one. I had a college roommate who had a piece of shit 20 year old truck, and the only thing of any value at all was his radio. Which wasn’t even worth THAT much, it just wasn’t the original one. He always left his doors unlocked so he wouldn’t have to deal with a smashed window in the event that a thief wanted to break in. Well, one day at our apartment, an idiot thief decided to smash his window and take the radio WITHOUT TRYING THE DOOR FIRST. I’m not sure he ever actually fixed the window. We were pretty fucking broke, lol.
Agree with this. The worst parts of SF aren’t any worse than the worst parts Dallas. The thing about Dallas is so that it’s so big and spread out (especially when you include the suburbs, or extend it to the DFW metroplex) that you have these pockets of shit areas that are right next to awesome areas. There’s little centralization and compartmentalization in the way you often see it in big cities. You can have a million dollar house, drive 2 blocks and find 400 dollar/month apartments that barely have running water. There’s no, like, isolated shitty areas. Basically every good neighborhood is right next to a garbage one.
I’ve had the same issues with Uline and other big players like MSC and McMaster. Four week lead times on 316 SS screws and other mundane items that are typically available.
Of course food is affected. Most of us have seen it with our own lying eyes. Of course people report on Joe Biden speaking clumsily about food shortages, much to Jen Psaki and zecarlos consternation. Of course zecarlo calls those people illiterate liars.
Well, the problem is in SF, it’s not limited to the ‘worst parts’, its basically the whole city now. They are paying people to come and be drug addicts on the street. I wish that was some stupid conspiracy I made up, but I am not joking. Abbott is a neo-con shill, get him the fuck out of there, but for God’s sake, do not put a democrat in power. Look at what they have done to this country in less than 2 years. Sure there’s a good one here and there, but how can you trust them? The bait and switch happened too many times to ignore.
Abbott has the power to secure Texas’s border and he’s not doing it. He could be a hero, a darling and a sure fire GOP candidate for 2024 if he would just secure Texas’s border, but he won’t do it. Primary this guy, get him the fuck out of there.
These are desperate times.
Biden dared to say yesterday that all the things he said in Poland, never happened. One thing about biden is when he gaffes, be sure to believe the gaffe not the clean up in aisle 10. I’d feel bad for Pstaki if she wasn’t such a snake. Being biden’s press secretary has to be murder. But she’s a true believer.
I have to believe that the people in power want to burn it all down, at this point. A normal person would be trying to fix inflation, stop war, stop crisis’s, take a measured response to sanctions that wouldn’t hurt us, while hurting it’s intended target. But they do it anyway and then blame everybody else, anybody else, including the citizens they are supposed to be working for. Power for power’s sake.
I got a gut feeling something really bad is going to happen, soon. I don’t know exactly what or when, but people are starting to hit their breaking points. I see it all around. Yet nothing, no crisis too big, no suffering too grand will move the needle on the left’s agenda. Things keep getting worse and they double, triple down. When is it enough?
Hell, I could list off all the things going wrong, but I don’t think these server have that much space. It’s pretty much everything. I haven’t found a single person anywhere to tell me one thing this administration has done right. Not one. So I will ask again, what has this administration done right? Is there a single even little success? Can we survive 2.5 years of biden?
Putin’s not the only one whose got to go. But then what, Kamala? Sure we can wait for elections and hope that the masses aren’t as brainwashed as they seem, but then what happens if they are? Where is the breaking point?
I shop mostly at ALDI. They were rotating food in and out of their line up before any of the Covid stuff. If something is expensive at the moment, they don’t stock it. It can be frustrating, when you like an item and the next week it isn’t there, but their prices are so low I just keep coming back for what they do have.
I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about Kamala, at least not in the next election. I don’t think she’s ‘electable’. And I generally vote democrat (I did in the last 2 elections). If I like the Republican candidate in a couple years, and Kamala is on the Democrat ticket, I won’t have a problem with voting Republican. That being said, if the Republicans throw out DeSantis or Cruz (or worse), I can’t see myself crossing that line. Republicans would be smart to put up a more moderate Republican and ensure the white house in the next election.
I can’t speak for all ALDI stores, but I have not found that to be true. They have good produce IMO, and it is like half the price of everywhere else (my SIL is a manager at a competitor store, and she gets her produce at ALDI). They recently updated their meat section with different packaging and sourcing I believe. I have no complaints about any of that. Eggs, milk, and bread seem fine too.
I think they may be higher quality than a few years ago.
I also like how efficient shopping there is. Takes 15 minutes for the whole trip. I like that I only get one option for most items. Makes the store much smaller, and faster.
I’ve lived in Texas for 40 years, and I know a lot of people who live in, or have lived in, border towns. I don’t believe people outside of Texas have a real understanding of what the border crisis really is, and how difficult it is to actually improve the situation. I believe that if there was an actual simple solution, it would have happened by now. Think of all the political capital Abbott would gain if he could ‘fix the problem.’ Right? Abbott, if nothing else, wants power, he wants to be electable. Solving that issue would instantly shoot his popularity through the roof. The fact that he hasn’t done it is, in itself, evidence to me that things aren’t that simple.
I am not sure about this. The Republican base seems to want candidates more like Trump, than a middle of the road candidate. The Republican base for the most part loved Trump, much more than the Democrat base loved Biden.
A moderate would gain people in the middle / independents. I am not sure gaining those would be enough to offset the base not turning out for a moderate?
I am not saying you are wrong, just that I am unsure about it.
This is where the mindset of the average Republican and Democrat tend to differ. Republicans hold their party lines brilliantly, and will show up for WHOEVER their side puts up, where as the Democrat voters in the US seem to need more than that to show up at the polls. I don’t think the Republican side loses any voters with a moderate candidate. I agree that the fervor for Trump is strong, but we just saw Trump lose to Biden, so it’s clearly not strong enough to beat most candidates on the left. They have to go a different route next time, IMO, or they can expect the same results. Just don’t put up a candidate that fires up the left, and they’ll be fine.
Can I ask what you dislike about DeSantis? I find his policies and actions to benefit people on both sides of the aisle, particularly parents (which is an apolitical party).
That was their issue. They fired up their base and the Dem base. If they don’t lose support with a moderate, then they should do well IMO. I do think a moderate loses some base support though, just how much is the question? I can’t quantify that.
As am I. I can’t think of anything he’s done that jumps out at me as a major point of disagreement.
He’s got all of Trump’s backbone without the baggage, nails good policy and has a great command of spoken English. He’s also quite deft at the gaming aspects of politics.
I’ll have time for a more thorough response later when I can pull some sources, but I essentially disagree with your premise entirely. I think he does a lot of things to marginalize minority groups, under the guise of ‘this is good for everyone’.
I do agree with this in general, and I think that if he IS the Republican candidate, he has a pretty good shot at winning. I don’t think he’s the safest choice, but I’d still put money on him over Kamala. I just don’t personally like a lot of what he’s done, but everything you said here is pretty accurate.
No it wouldn’t too many politics are involved. There is a simple move towards a solution, enforce the laws as they are now and then see where we are. Instead the biden admin are illegally trafficking people across the country in the dead of night. They aren’t even beginning to think about trying, because they want the immigration. They are trying to shore up their voting base and the country has 2 million more people in it now than it had in 2020. I believe that is a conservative estimate, by any measure.
He would gain capitol from conservatives and many independants, but he would roasted on network news as a racist, bigot, fascist, xenophobe, which is likely what he’s more afraid of.
It’s evidence to me he’s kowtowing to the left, who currently hold all the institutional power. When the power switches more to the right, watch how magically brave he will get. Abbott is a coward. He’s afraid of the media, he’s afraid of the biden admin, he’s a coward.
In what way? What in your eye’s does a so called “moderate” republican look like. Besides we have those, right now. McConnel, Romney, and their ilk are basically democrats who call themselves republicans for some unknown reason. The last thing we need is for the republicans to become more democrat light. It would be political suicide. People are sick of the wokeness, the assualt on free speech, the destruction of our economy, etc., etc. The democrats are destroying this country in record speed. We don’t need speed bumps to our evitable demise, we need leaders who will do the will of the people.
Following the media narrative and basically doing nothing to stop the insane agenda of the left.
What we need is the lying to stop. And it’s starts when people open their eyes and see those lies for what they are, a tool of the power hungry.
You really think he’s afraid of that? He never has been in the past. If he was, he wouldn’t have taken a hard line on the trans debates, nor would we have the abortion law that passed under him. I don’t think that’s on his list of concerns.
This is baffling to me. @twojarslave would you also characterize Abbott in this way? I can say pretty definitively that the ‘left’ in Texas fucking HATES Abbott, it shocks me to hear that people believe that he’s kowtowing to the left. If he is, he’s doing a terrible job at it, lol.
based on what? I would say their decades of voting history and policies they’ve supported suggest otherwise. But that being said, neither of them are going to run, so it’s not really worth discussing those two specifically.