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Brisketexan

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Everything posted by Brisketexan

  1. To some extent. Geography and transport creates difficulty. Central America is ripe for the picking -- actual ports, very close to American ports. Rail lines that already exist. Internal infrastructure (e.g., reliable power) is lacking....but that's part of the win-win. Guatemala gets better power supply and more and better jobs - both raising their living standards and removing the incentive to flee north for opportunity. We get goods assembled/manufactured 1500 miles away, in a country that is small and dependent enough that it CAN'T overly flex its trading partner hand. There are SMART ways to handle trade. Declaring "all trade deficits are evil, and we're willing to wreck our economy and the global economy to prove it" is the dumbest thing ever. We have a $30 trillion GDP. We have a $1 trillion goods trade deficit (I'm using round numbers....and if I wanted to be ACCURATE, I'd say we only have around a $700 billion deficit, as we run a $278 billion SERVICES SURPLUS, but let's just stick with goods for easy numbers). That's a 30-1 ratio. If we were a household with a $90k income, the equivalent would be a $3k "trade deficit" (more spent on goods than our trading partners, like HEB and Lowes, spend on us). Nevermind the absurdity of saying trade deficits are bad, period. The amount of destruction we're undertaking for something worth 1/30th of our GDP is insane. If you looked at any $90k household, and said "so, you spend $3k on goods that you don't get spending back on, leaving you with $87k in income".....the sane answer would be "cool....so what? And remember, I GET something for the $3k I spend -- groceries, hardware, what have you." There's not a single part of this approach that isn't utterly stupid, built on a foundation of stupid, and creating an eternal historical monument to stupid.
  2. I agree and disagree in part. There are definitely some strategic items on which we should disentangle and reshore (not just re China: see chips, and the CHIPS Act to do so). But when it comes to stitching shoes, and screwing iPhones together and such, that can and should happen elsewhere. Personally, I’d love it if we incentivized more of that happening in Central America, which would help on MANY fronts (easier shipping, less strategic vulnerability, and better employment there reduces immigrant outflow). But we are doing the opposite of strategic thing here. Everything is as dumb as possible. FFS, admin mouthpieces are saying BOTH that this approach will bring back manufacturing jobs…and that those factories will be fully automated, with almost no jobs….just so. Fucking. Stupid.
  3. It both is and isn’t. Take the slavery and over-the-top repression out of the mix, and China would have similar market power to what it has now. But that ship has sailed. The power to use commerce to disentangle from China or get China to alter its way is no longer really available to the rest of the world. We pissed away everything. Everything.
  4. Yet the US is providing ironclad proof that continuing to depend on the US will be even more painful, maybe fatal. The objectively interesting and ironic thing is that our idiot leadership is talking about how the US public has to "take its medicine and suffer to get us where we need to be." They are WRONG with respect to the US, but their actions are making that lesson RIGHT with respect to everyone else. In 10 years, the entire non-Chinese/Russian aligned world should be flying Eurofighters and Saab aircraft instead of F-35s and such, as just one example. It's going to take time for European development and production to get there.....but get there they will. Because it's the only rational choice. If a choice is painful....but it is the ONLY rational path....then people can and will endure pain. Our choice, inflicting great pain and much more to come, is completely IRrational. So nobody is going to join us on that path. And this: We have handed China a gift, and unprecedented opportunity. They can and will exploit it.
  5. Or, hey....free circumcisions!
  6. China will do two things: 1) Pivot away from the US as a trading partner. 2) Pivot TO the EU and others as a trading partner. All China has to do in that respect is "not be as shitty and batshit as the US." And that's a low fucking bar. Sure, there's some short-term pain for China. China can bear it, they are much tougher than we (Americans) are, and they play a long game. And China will have to be friendlier/more favorable than they would like in building new/enhanced trading relationships with others. So be it, that's short term. Once they get their hooks in, then they can start playing more hard ball . . . 10-20 years from now. We are squandering everything. And I don't use the term "everything" hyperbolically. I mean, literally everything.
  7. As a male, the primary item I use for emotional support is my penis. Because I am a shallow thinker and a simple man. So, I think we should all start shopping at HEB with our dicks out, and if anyone says anything, bristle and claim discrimination against our emotional support dong.
  8. Yes to all of this. Also, I still want to see her RATs.
  9. China is not erratic and insane. China is asshole. Strategic asshole, but not insane and unpredictable asshole. China is Houston drivers: homicidal, assholish, but with a purpose -- hauling ass from point A to point B at all times. The US under Trump is Austin drivers: will stop in the middle lane of the freeway because they just now decided their exit is the one three lanes over. I much prefer dealing with Houston drivers, because "strategic homicidal asshole" is predictable, and that allows ME to drive strategically. This also offers opportunity. If everyone knows that "deals" with Trump are just words you say to make his ego feel good, then fuck it, make a "deal" with him, and don't keep it. What's that, Donnie, you'll drop tariffs on me if I promise to move my shoe factories to the US? Sure thing. I am commissioning a blue-ribbon panel to study the proper formation and composition of the committee to evaluate how to make that happen, with a plan to be developed in the next 4 years. Walla. Trump proclaims victory, and he brought manufacturing back. And I go about my business as usual, except maybe I set up some pointless panel to issue periodic reports with pretty pictures and graphs to make Trump happy, and those reports mention the "Donald J. Trump Shoe Factory of American Victory" a few times.
  10. All China has to do is "not be an erratic and insane fucking asshole." Seriously. That's the play. They don't have to be trustworthy. They just have to be "the most trustworthy large economy that others can deal with." And they do that by simply....not being the US. China has a massive opportunity right now. Helping us destroy ourselves even more is a great long-term play for China, which actually CAN weather some short term pain for long-term gain (market share, relative credibility, reliability, etc.).
  11. There is a 100% chance that he will threaten to do that, repeatedly. There's a 90% chance he does so within the next week. He is -- quite literally -- a fucking insane madman with a 100 or lower IQ. He's an insane moron. And we've given him full and unchecked control of.....the planet.
  12. Just substitute "The United States" for "TMTG," and you have a dead-on, balls-accurate disclosure there.
  13. How long until multiple countries simply ban travelers from the US, or impose hefty (read $$$) visa requirements on American travelers?
  14. Added the emphasis that makes this so fucking horrific. It's just goddamned tragic. This country and economy is being wrecked, never to fully recover.....for no sane reason whatsoever.
  15. “Quietly wondered” if he’s insane. I guess they also “quietly wonder” if gravity makes objects fall to earth. Jesus fucking Christ.
  16. This. Which is one of many reasons why the GQP is a terrorist organization.
  17. This is America, 2025. There's not much in the glass, but what is in there is pure poison.
  18. It won't be. We may be eating leaves out of our hats, enjoying electricity for 1 hour per day on a rotating schedule, and dying in droves from a viral illness that has a vaccine but our government banned it, and Fox News will run wall-to-wall stories about a trans kid who appeared in one girl's community basketball league game in Peoria, and it'll be a GQP landslide across the board.
  19. Fuckin' Andean foxes, always thinking they're better than everyone else. Elitist assholes.
  20. That wall at La Brea is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Shit, La Brea is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I'd been reading about it since I was 4, and I visited it for the first time in my late 40s...and I was agog like a little kid. And yeah, your summary is pretty much what I suspected here - lots of hype, but not lots of great science.
  21. Sigh. I am a pretty damned good prognosticator....and a terrible investor/actor on my predictions. I told myself a month ago "better dump as much as I can into cash/fixed return stuff, because shit's about to get wild." Yet....I didn't, so the equity portion of my portfolio has taken its lumps. I told myself two months ago, when it became apparent that we were shitting on our ties with NATO and the EU, "I bet european defense stocks will take off." But I didn't do anything about it. And sure enough, every one of them I'd looked at has taken off -- some have doubled, even tripled. Do I have any prediction right now? Not really. Just that shit is going to be volatile and messy and unpredictable. And I'm really not sophisticated enough to take advantage of it. I know a good bit about many things, but my investment savvy is pretty basic. So, in summary, I hate myself.
  22. QFFT. That's it.
  23. quien?
  24. This. Something you feel comfortable with. Keep it simple and mainstream. A basic semi-auto, probably in 9mm for ammo availability.
  25. Yep. Remember how all the Trumpers wouldn't shut up about how we all need to be armed, because "that's the last line of defense against an authoritarian state - disarming the public was how them Nazis were able to run roughshod and kill all those people!"??? Turns out, the fuckers were right about that. They just didn't tell us that they were the authoritarian state we'd have to worry about. We're getting pretty goddamned close to "last line of defense" territory.
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