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Brisketexan

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Posts posted by Brisketexan

  1. Just now, Vegas64 said:

    I suspect it's a blindspot for many of us, but what you described as being a virtue of agrarian society (i.e. being unskilled and not very smart, but being able to lift things or carry things or just do things physically) is very ableist. And I know that might make me sound namby-pamby around here, but ableism is a thing and the move of society to use your brains and skills versus just having two working legs or otherwise not being disabled in some way, was very equalizing for a lot of people.

    It shouldn't be lost that while, you are right, the future of AI and devaluing of skills is a risk for all, it's the differently abled who are hurt the most.

    Unquestionably.  We can't design ANY element of ANY system that won't have outsized advantages/disadvantages for some subsets.  The virtue of agrarian society sucked for the disabled.  The virtues of our new information economy suck for those with a below-median IQ.

    I'm really smart, and process information well and quickly....and also have lousy vision, and was never, ever going to be the most athletic/strongest man around.  In early agrarian societies, I would have been far from a "top performer."  Today, that same mix of attributes puts me in the top performer category.  A society that prized warriors and strong laborers would not be a great society for Brisket, or anyone physically disabled.  A society that prizes intellectual skills is much better for us....and is worse for Steve Strongman.

    And my bigger point is that we shouldn't make broad value judgments, like "strong manual laborers are better" or "high-IQ people are better," or "fully abled [or disabled] people are better."  A high-functioning society has a place and mechanism for ALL of those people to live a relatively secure, dignified life.

  2. 2 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    In my opinion one of the most important things we could do to improve the health of the US economy (and ultimately corporate America by improving and streamlining price discovery the labor market) is for national policy to encourage most companies and businesses to organize.
    Most non-management workers should be members of a collective bargaining entity, working on an hourly rate. 

    Bozo, seen here as I WISH he actually looked:

    sally1979.jpg

  3. 1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Robots/automation may never replace skilled workers entirely, but they've already replaced a lot of unskilled jobs in manufacturing.

    Old-time manufacturing provided lots of jobs for halfwits and morons.  Now now so much.  We're still gonna have the moron problem.

    The first sentence is key.  To the extent manufacturing is "coming back" to America, it's not going to bring many unskilled jobs with it.  You don't get a good job at the chip fab with an 8th grade education.

    And the second sentence is the much bigger picture.  Historically, all human societies have had plenty of work for "unskilled" type people.  And I mean, actual work.  First, societies were largely agrarian, and much of farm labor (as that labor existed in the pre-large scale mechanized farming era) could be done by unskilled/uneducated folks.  You don't need a high IQ and fancy learning to plow fields, thresh grain, gather eggs, etc.  Sure, you didn't make much or have much, but it was a living.  Then, as societies transitioned to early industrial, it was similar -- most manufacturing jobs didn't require high intelligence or lots of training.

    The US is no longer an agrarian society.

    It is also no longer an unskilled labor-heavy manufacturing society.

    Those ships have SAILED, and they aren't EVER coming back.  That's true for most such societies (western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc. etc.).  

    So the question is, now that many countries have economically moved beyond having lots of jobs for unskilled types....what do we do with our unskilled types?  Yes, there will always be a real number of such jobs (putting on a roof in the summer sun, cleaning out stalls at the dairy farm, all that stuff), but not nearly as many jobs as there are unskilled people to fill them.  And, we can't just tell that guy with a 100 IQ  (or lower -- remember, 100 is the MEDIAN IQ - half of people are below that, as a matter of statistics) "learn to code!  Or be a stockbroker!  Get a degree in engineering!"  He's not cut out for those things.  He will fail.  Just like if you'd told Brisket "if you want to make millions, learn to play football like VY!"  It wasn't ever going to happen -- I don't have the tools in me.

    So, what does that guy do?  What do economically advanced societies do with the 50% of their population with an IQ of 100 or below?  We haven't even come close to working up a well thought-out answer to that question.  And until we do, we're flailing, faking it, and getting it very wrong.

  4. 13 hours ago, HenryJames said:

     

    Let me re-write that headline in accurate terms:

    Legislators who are owned by and do bidding of oligarchs pass law forbidding regulation of main financial activity of said oligarchs.

    This is straight-up bought-and-paid-for legislation, delivered to please their paymasters.  But, you know, we've definitely "drained the swamp."

  5. 3 hours ago, dcbc said:

    My mom made her kids and grandchildren a cookbook of all of our favorites growing up.  Another tasty treat was "Hamburger Chili Rice.  Basically, a pound of ground beef (browned), onion, green bell pepper, can of chopped tomatoes (she didn't do spice, but this is where I would sub Ro-Tel), 2 cups of rice, 3--4 cups of water, lots of seasoned salt, chili powder, cumin, boil, cover, cook until done.  I know this thread has taken a turn into damned tasty stuff our parents threw together, but like other easy recipes mentioned above, this one also is pretty solid, weeknight fare.

    Would smash.  Then and now.  

    Honestly, stuff like that was one of the first things I learned to cook when I started cooking at around age 14.  Mom had a mid-life crisis then, and kinda stopped cooking.  Coincidentally, I was 14, so that was when I was consuming food like there was no tomorrow.  One of the first things I learned to cook for myself was a pot of white rice.  Soon after, I started coming up with ways to jazz it up.  Started simple -- ground beef, browned and then onions sauteed in the fat in the pan.  Add various seasonings (Cavender's, maybe chili powder and similar spices), then add appropriate cheese (parmesan, or sharp cheddar, depending on the theme).  Big pot o food is what I ended up with, and that was mi-t-fine for 14 yr old Brisket.

  6. 1 hour ago, Fastbreak said:

    3d6cc9b6efd83852f4bef72ef1143838.png

    "Mike Lee, seen here demonstrating the average penis size of a Republican male voter, noting that porn really upsets them because it often 'contains unrealistic depictions of penis size, often larger than 4 inches,' urges for its ban to save GQPers from hurt fee-fees."

  7. 3 minutes ago, royiv said:

    we have attorneys patting themselves on the back and telling us that everything is fine

    I don't see either one of those things happening.

    I'm an attorney, and I'm pretty sure I have a pretty well-settled reputation around here for reporting that things are very much NOT fine.  And part of my lament, for that entire time, has been that the "not fine" is due in large part to the fact that lawyers, with pens and paper, are ill-equipped to even slow down a society dead-set on ditching the rule of law.  We can file the best cases, motions, and briefs, we can get all the writs and judgments you want....at the end of the day, they are LITERALLY just words and ideas.  When a society has opted OUT of words and ideas, and INTO brute force, then what the fuck?  You think all the lawyers in the world standing in front of the mob, saying "but I have a writ!", will make 1 billionth of a shit?

    Lawyers are indeed becoming irrelevant.  Because that's how society wants it.  And if that's what society wants, no amount of lawyering will make a difference.

    That is very, very, very bad.  Society shouldn't choose that, because the alternative is horrible, violent, unpredictable, and is inevitably completely coopted by those with the most power at the expense of everyone else.  But that message falls on deaf ears.  It doesn't matter if we follow that message with "Respectfully Submitted, Brisketexan, Bar Card # 12345" or not.

  8. 7 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

    we great yet?

    Depends.  Are you one of the handful of people who have made hundreds of millions/billions from Trump memecoins and insider stock trading?  If so, fuck yeah, we're fucking AMAZING.

    If you're not one of those 100 or so people....get fucked, peasant, you don't matter anyway.

  9. ·

    Edited by Brisketexan

    Bozo is both not wrong.....and wildly wrong.  Lemme esplain...wait, there is too much...lemme sum up.

    Yes, the legal profession is in an ethical crisis.  That is because the legal profession is a REFLECTION of society, not aside and apart from it.  Its crisis is society's crisis.  People ignore the one thing that every "slimy, unethical" lawyer has: a client.  Lawyers go as society goes, in large part.  That means I'm not holding lawyers up as anything particularly exalted.  They don't deserve it, they really aren't much better or worse than society as a whole.  SOCIETY is in an ethical crisis, because we've abandoned any notion of a common set of rules that should apply to all (in groups who the law protects, but does not bind, vs. out groups who the law binds, but does not protect).

    ALSO, this matches up perfectly with the alarm bells Brisket has been ringing for a decade-plus: the Rule of Law is a tissue-paper-thin veneer.  It is only a set of gentlemen's agreements, that society across-the-board will agree to a set of objective standards.  Once a material segment of society opts out of those standards, and has the collective power to do so (and it's a shockingly small percentage.  Like, think 10%, so long as it's the right (white) 10%), then it's over.  I can go down to the courthouse and argue what the law IS, and be dead-right....and if either 1) a shameless political appointee says "sure, but see, the law doesn't apply to people named 'Trump,'" or hell, maybe I even get the judgment, but the other side simply ignores it and says "come and make us follow it," and that other side has armed troops/ICE/etc. at its disposal....it's over.  It doesn't matter how many suits I file, how many show-cause proceedings I initiate, etc....it's over.

    Finally, even presuming that lawyers ARE truly essential, be really, really, really fucking careful of setting standards that amount to "action that undermines the Rule of Law" as being subject to sanction by ANY body that can be manipulated and controlled by political forces.  Because legal positions like "black people should be treated equally, per the 14the amendment," and "interracial marriage should be legal, per the Constitution" are positions that absolutely undermine and go against society, the long-standing social order, the long-understood interpretation of the Constitution, and the very fabric of our Republic (all arguments used against lawyers asserting those exact positions).  Building a system that makes it easy to sanction lawyers for "acting against the Rule of Law" is tailor-made for a system run by a despot who says "I AM THE RULE OF LAW, and therefore, any action against what I decree is an act against the Rule of Law" - I'm not making that up, this admin is literally saying that shit right now.

    I take legal positions that are/would be opposed by Trumpists.  If you want to set up a system where I risk losing my license, being imprisoned, etc. for doing so, then the nebulous vision you propose would do just that.  This admin is not shy about going after attorneys for the "against the Rule of Law" action of taking a position contrary to the admin's preferences - they've already done it, repeatedly.  I cannot envision any further mechanisms for legal accountability that would not promptly be taken over and used by the admin to go after their legal enemies.  Be careful about the "accountability" you wish for.  In a world with no objective legal realities (the one we live in now), you've just handed the fascists all the tools they need to complete their coup de grace.

  10. 7 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

    Hell, they don't give a shit if your feet fall off.

    The ones who have the inside scoop on making and selling prosthetics care.

    Everything comes back to one singularity: oligarchs with the inside track in this admin will profit.  It is exactly like the Russian system.

  11. 42 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

    I can't believe I just read someone call dotard "a genius with word delivery."

    Being fluent in stupidity does not make one a genius. 

    Counterpoint: as "stupid" is the lingua franca of this millennium....yeah.

  12. 19 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

    Tariffs have still increased, meaning the average citizen will pay more... but they have not increased enough 1) for any company to move manufacturing stateside or 2) to eliminate income taxes.

    This.

    Will tariff revenues be large enough to meaningfully offset income taxes?  NOPE.

    Will tariffs be high enough to truly force companies to move meaningful volumes of manufacturing back to the US?   NOPE.

    Will tariffs be high enough that John and Jane consumer will see additional price inflation on countless goods they offer, likely in the range of 10-30%, when we were told that 8% inflation at the height of the supply chain crisis was "the worst thing ever?"  YEP.

    Nothing but losing, as far as the eye can see.

  13. 31 minutes ago, mdmost said:

    But it's free. What are you, some CROOKED DEMOCRAT?

    29 minutes ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:

    Remember in Trump's first term when he accepted a fucking soccer ball from Russia that had an NFC chip in it? I 'member.

    Texasgs: "You fucking stupid libtards. It is a giant, wooden horse, being given to us for FREE!  Only stupid dumbocrat wouldn't take such a generous gift to save the taxpayers bazillions!  The fiscally responsible thing to do is to wheel it inside the city gates right away, so nobody else can take it!"

  14. 40 minutes ago, GenXer said:

    Nope. Just to the billionaires per usual.

    But, think about what we are getting for it.  We are getting a certificate for a "Platinum Preferred" place in line to lick the boots of our oligarchs!  Where is YOUR spot in line, libtard?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  You losers aren't even going to GET to taste their delicious boots!

  15. [mention=593]Brisketexan[/mention]
    Si usted es capaz de sentir indignacion por las injusticias cometidas por todo el miundo, somos companeros.

    No puedo hablar por [mention=593]Brisketexan[/mention] pero todos los que luchan por la justicia son mis companèros de armas. 

    I feel those injustices. Deeply. Empathy is one of my weaknesses.
    But I no longer feel it for those for whom the injustice is self-inflicted. Wanted to hurt the least among us because you thought that just meant brown people and Haitians? And now the leopard is eating your poor white trash face? GOOD. FEAST, LEOPARD.
  16. realistically, what does this mean?
     

    Nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s propaganda to keep the cult happy. TFG will be pocketing some money on this somehow, but Americans won’t see any benefit. It’s kinda how he has operated for his entire adult life. 

    My guess? He's going to ensure that pharmaceutical prices around the world are elevated so that a) American prices are the lowest (in spite of not changing), b) 'those people' will be deprived affordable medications, and c) his donors in the drug industry will continue to profit 

    NW gets it. What will happen will be a perfect combo of a) not much, b) some drugs will go way up in price around the world (killing people elsewhere), but wont come down a penny here, and c) some drugs will become unavailable here (because the company simply can’t sell it for the same price they charge elsewhere), harming/killing Americans.
    Everything he does hurts people. It never helps people. Because his understanding of economics is on par with Greg Davis’s understanding of how to use DJ Monroe.
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