Personally, I find the idea that bringing manufacturing back to the USA with presumably higher labor expenses which is to say a degree of inflation to be, well, I was going to say hysterical but I'll leave it at ludicrous. A different way for workers to earn shit money while raising prices for everyone: Genius. Related and as funny is the establishment media ignoring this. Then again, failed economics reporting has always been their norm.
(There's the related fun fact that off-shoring with it's resulting low, low prices made lowering of wages possible.)
That said, reality made a high bar for Roy to leap over to make a post on onshoring funny. And he nailed it. It's very, very close to being as funny as reality.
No way it works in the short term - Drumph has burned all the capital. How can new factories be built when there's no money to build them and shit-scared bankers afraid to make loans that can't be paid for decades? It's willful self-delusion.
Long term: As a Southerner and a student of The Recent Unpleasantness, or less politely the War Of Northern Aggression, the sharecropper mentality will come into play. It will be difficult without an obvious Other to look down on, but the curse of Lewis Powell may achieve that level of propaganda and indoctrination, and the pitiful wage slaves will embrace being dirt poor and short lived as long as they have the (illusion of) pride, pride in the plantation owners, the super rich. That's the goal, Make America A Third-World Country again. People happy to sacrifice their lives to make money for the New Gods. All Orange Hitler wants is to be J.P. Morgan, although he won't have the sense J.P did when he bailed out the country's banks (yep, it's true), he just wants the power (and not pay taxes). We are caught in an idiot sociopath's fantasy.
The rest of the world won't go back to 1895, though, and the question merely becomes is it better to learn Russian or Mandarin?
ETA: tl, dr, The South Will Indeed Rise Again, and humanity will be the worse for it. I only wish it really was Gone With The Wind.
The PRC won’t have shit to do with us, Putin will be enough of a good guy to allow us to keep our language.
As money to build with ie credit, apparently rates are going up because bond sales kind of died. I don’t understand it either but NOT GOOD!!! TIA if you can explain this to me:
Explain bonds and the futures market? Look, I'm a mathematician. I understand the math of Quantum Mechanics and how supernovas explode. But that stuff is way over my head. I concede, sir.
When Goldman-Sachs created those bullshit sub-prime "instruments", deliberately based on incomprehensible derivaties of derivatives math so they could tell their customers "These bonds are great!" while simultaneously telling the hedge funds "these bonds are designed to be shit, so place your bets", the path was clear and the disconnect between real life and con games was complete.
No, as the Anti-Social Socialist, I watch as unbounded capitalism devours itself. Bwahahahaha!
For the record, Goldman weren’t the only grifters messing with packaging mortgages. Selling shit to clients while selling their own holdings of said shit, that’s what makes them special.
True dat. I chose that example because their flame-out was so spectacular.
A favorite old episode of Have I Got News For You, guest hosted by Jeremy Clarkson of all people, had to have him say the disclaimer "Goldman maintains none of these speculations are true".
Paul Merton, as ever sharp as a tack, immediately says "Yes, but what does Sachs say? 'Well when you get caught, you get caught, whad'ya gonna do?...."
I'm proud to say, nope, never. Nor the original British version (yeah, it's a rip off). Guy couldn't run a casino, a machine designed to print money. "Our pay-offs must be larger than everyone else's, so we get all the customers". Seriously.
I'm reminded of the old fake ad: "We lose money on every sale! How do we stay in business? Volume!"
You, dear friend, have nailed it. "Make America Manly Again". It's a dick fight as sure as the Cold War ("Our missiles are bigger?" "Nyet, our missiles are!") and all because these fragile white incel snowflakes are doubting their penii. I find it hilarious, or would if it didn't mean burning the whole damn country down in the process.
I truly believe, in my deepest heart of hearts, that if a significant number of white men could simply shrug off the fact they were "losers" in high school and move on with their lives, we wouldn't be dealing with at least 80% of what we are currently dealing with.
But instead we are living in a world where the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and even the Ten Commandments are being shredded, and are being replaced with the screenplay of "Revenge of The Nerds" as the law of the land and as the guiding template for our society.
Or maybe winners in high school and then nowhere else? Maybe they found that a position on the football team didn't translate into a life of fabulous wealth and lots of hot young girlfriends? For which they blame the wokeness.
In all seriousness, I can tell you from bitter experience that it is damned hard to shrug off the fact that you were a loser in high school; our whole culture is oriented toward high schoolers (except for that part occupied by Fox News--thus its popularity among the old), and your social position in high school is presumed to determine your whole life afterwards.
Not all nerds are libertarians. Libertarians are stunted minds that don't understand how systems work. Gault's Gulch is obvious bullshit to anybody with sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel. Great! Buy an uninhabited island in the Pacific and become a quadrillionaire. What's stopping you? Oh yes, the nature of fiat money, the need for infrastructure, etc. etc. I tell these folks to move to that vacation paradise, sunny Somalia, where as a warlord you can take for the rest of your life. All two seconds of it.
Geez, what is wrong with these guys? I'm autistic as hell, quite socially inept, but still the ladies like me. If I can do it, anybody can. And yet.....
yeah some nerds are smart enough to see libertarians plastic mask. I am still a huge nerd, but played football in both HS and college, played basketball in HS, played in the band and was rarely invited to parties, but I knew better than to believe libertarian dogma
Me boyo played that game for a while. He and I got much laughter out of the sign "Do Not Crawl In The Trash Compactor". We both know every sign like that has a reason....in this case, *squish*.
I wish one of the media outlets hosting Tubby's stans telling us he's playing 3D chess would have the decency to green screen them in front of footage of his casino in AC being imploded. https://youtu.be/8IwHZD8Qnv8?si=GI9DKaAu7RALiMb9
Bwahahahahaha! Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh some more. Bwahahahahaha!
Fucking idiots. One right-wing blogger had all his money wiped out, seven figures worth. Boy howdy does he have buyers remorse. And all the kow-towers (NBC, Amazon, Meta) are finding out they backed the wrong fucking horse and all their asskissing don't mean jack.. And the thing is, this is exactly what shitferbrains said he would do. "He's only joking". Fucking idiots.
We have a large greenhouse here at work but mostly we're a factory that processes, packages and stores bare root plant material. We have all the jobs that you described on your virtual factory floor except here, all the positions are filled by Hispanic women. They also fill most of the supervisor positions. They do great work.
And at least two days a week we have a terrific potluck lunch.
They also have what seems to be an unusually large percentage of the kids in college.
It's all right, a huge part of our business is selling bulbs from Europe and places like Thailand India and Brazil. I'm sure nothing will happen to that part of the business. And even if it does- our ownership has wisely diversified over the years. We own a very large puzzle company that sells mostly Chinese made jigsaw puzzles and games.
I foresee a huge market in tariff-themed products forMAGA men. “Tarofsterone” for those hard to get hard places. “Tarifoderant” for the man who wants to smell like napalmed money. “Tarifetamine” for when you’re feeling down, way down. “Tarifweiser” the 25 proof beer.
I hear R. Scott's "Powerhouse" in it's many C.Stalling arrangements in the factory sequence...
Everyone i know that actually did factory work (for Lockheed, Emerson Electric, and various textile and carpet mills) never romanticized the grueling and mindless side of the work: and were never paid enough.
And I wish some dark version of an undead JRR Tolkien would violently repossess the words he invented for his fiction from these technobros...
I've had several "manly" jobs in my lifetime. I did basement waterproofing for a few years in my late teens/early twenties. Nothing like digging a ditch ten feet deep and two feet wide, painting the wall with tar, and filling dozens of wheelbarrows up with pea gravel to push back to the hole and fill it up in the 85F sunshine. At the end of a 10-12 hour day we'd drink a 40, head home for dinner and a hot shower (fucking tar was next to impossible to remove without some sort of solvent), and fall into bed exhausted. Repeat six days a week, from spring to fall, with the occasional welcome day off due to rain.
A friend I worked with during those years bought the company after putting in decades of digging. Every season he bitches about the difficulty in finding dependable employees to do this backbreaking work. Plenty of room on one of his crews every year if any of these dildos are serious about manly labor.
Had a buckled wall in my basement a few years back. Despite hemorrhaging money, I made sure the work crew got enough of a tip for lunch or a stop at the topless bar.
Since I was already on a roll, I bought a nice couch for the refurbished room. When the delivery guys showed up, I asked "Do they pay you guys enough to buy any of the furniture you have to tote?"
Direct quote: "I WISH!"
They also got a sweet tip.
For all the blather about the dignity of work, I have yet to see many from the top of the food chain willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Odd, isn't it, to see the celebration of a return to manufacturing in America led by someone with such small, soft and well-manicured hands. Although, per legend, Tubby hung drywall one summer.
Big, strong men with tears in their eyes now understand: tariffs are a man-tax on foreigners. Tears also stream down the faces of said BS men, as they see what purpose MAKE iPHONE will give their lives.
Plus, once all the foreigners are gone, The Blacks get their black jobs back, everybody's happy.
Oh yeah, the other ethnic cleansing. Horrible as this is, it sounds like "self-deport" over again (plus, no more "Biden-era app" allowing the dusky hordes to stay and be processed). $6M is going to Bukele for torturing just a couple hundred kidnapped guys, so figure 900,000, plus the ICE labor cost... that might subtract from Tubby's take of Fed dough. Still, mass deportation was the promise. Whatever the body count ends up being, it's a win for unleashing more terror against these people.
A bill that progressed this week through the Republican-dominated state senate seeks to remove numerous existing protections for teenage workers, and allow them, in the Florida governor’s words, to step into the shoes of immigrants who supply Florida’s tourism and agriculture industries with “dirt cheap labor”.
Can we trade them for troublesome US citizens to be housed in El Salvadorean prisons?
"Speaking with reporters on Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he plans to discuss with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele his offer to take in and house American prisoners. 'Well, I love that,' Trump said."
Anybody ask him about Kilmar Garcia, the man sent to the torture-prison in what even the Trump administration admits was an "administrative error"? Or would that have been considered impolite and grounds for Emergency Exit?
I know their argument in court is, "It's outta our hands now, what can we do?" But it seems like our big strong Manly-Man President should be able to tell the President of El Salvador to send back ONE guy, unless he's some kinda soy-boy President who lets himself get cucked by Bukkake.
(Sorry, this is now the way you need to talk to the President to get him to do something.)
If only. Dear Leader's thumb is up for Bukele's owning US libs and the judges ordering Garcia to be returned. Didn't you know it's now expected for crimes against humanity to be accompanied by gloating about them on social media?
Even so, the history shows that once these rulers were in power, there might be effort to hide or minimize some crimes. The Nazis wanted to present the Red Cross a prettied up Theresienstadt, for instance.
The American public got a look inside Abu Ghraib only because Lyndie England's photos were leaked. That was 25 years ago, and at least the Army responded to torture and abuse of prisoners with court martials and prison sentences for a couple people. It's a sign of where we are since then, seeing our outsourced torture advertised by a slickly produced CECOT video. Post MAGA beauty makeover Noem poses in front of captives, while Bukele posts sneers at outraged Americans, including judges ordering return of kidnap victims.
“Well, it can both be true,” Trump responded. “There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations, because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders.”
When your planning is so meticulous that you demand payment from penguins and send Howard Lutnick to do comms, this Jesse Watters pitch is inevitable.
I have to admit to being distracted by visions of cowboys, construction workers, policemen in The Garden of American Heroes. For that matter, Jesse Watters gets a spot. Maybe Palantir Zephyr can be the lucky model to pose for the Statue of Man Liberty.
“Bringing back manufacturing” wouldn’t be a bad goal in itself—Biden tried to do it!—because during the pandemic and other disruptions like we’re currently seeing, it’s actually a good idea for us to be self sufficient in key areas. Not “cheap plastic crap from China,” mind you, but things like microchips, pharmaceuticals, steel/construction supplies, etc.
Of course these tariffs have nothing to do with that; they’re just baby-brained lashing out, trying to assert dominance. You can’t magically construct a factory and have it running in a week. And of course there’s no plan to pay workers fairly, let alone commensurate with the shit jobs they’ll be expected to take, or to have safety standards. We just have the 1950s fantasy of “man work at factory, have nice house and wife-servant,” along with the revenge fantasy of punishing “other countries.” Oh, and one of our greatest hits dating back to our founding, Free Labor to exploit.
Some lefty in the Guardian with the familiar "Democrats out of touch with the working class" thing helpfully suggested some kind of program to promote manufacturing within the U.S. Uh, dude, Joe Biden, ever hear of him?
The Bidens of the world are the real enemy of the committed leftier-than-thou. Keeping the Capitalist System propped up and tamed merely postpones the Great Proletarian Revolutionary Awakening.
Seems like a lot of manufacturing now uses electronics more than brute labor. So you need people who can fix and program that stuff. Which means training and a basic level of intelligence. Not sure how that squares with Tubby's Employment for Happy Dipshits program.
Exactly. And if you still have jobs that need brute labor (and there’s nothing inherently wrong with physical labor!), a modern economy should compensate the workers very well, implement needed safety measures, and limit the hours they need to work at backbreaking drudgery. But of course we wouldn’t do that; we’d just use up the human widgets and discard them.
"[...] limit the hours they need to work at backbreaking drudgery."
Well, the problem is the people who would be making the rules that would let that happen are so out of touch with actual manual labor thay'll never get that. It's why they keep trying to up the retirement age. They don't understand that a guy won't be able to do roofing (as an example) at age 70.
For someone who's a dedicated computer geek, I've done loads of manual labor in my life, the few behind-the-screen jobs have still dealt with the public, and what I'm presently doing, i.e. high-volume pharmacy, is essentially factory work, and let me fucking tell you, I would have strangled a Doge to have had an office job at any point, or - let me tell you my Theory of Labor Personalization, where you can place people on the work hierarchy based on whether or not they have a dedicated space they work in that they can decorate with plants and pictures and tchotchkes and such. Never had one of THOSE jobs.
You didn't miss much...highly overrated, in my experience. Even tho I had a private office with a window I could climb out and ramble over to the cafe when no one was looking...
Personally, I find the idea that bringing manufacturing back to the USA with presumably higher labor expenses which is to say a degree of inflation to be, well, I was going to say hysterical but I'll leave it at ludicrous. A different way for workers to earn shit money while raising prices for everyone: Genius. Related and as funny is the establishment media ignoring this. Then again, failed economics reporting has always been their norm.
(There's the related fun fact that off-shoring with it's resulting low, low prices made lowering of wages possible.)
That said, reality made a high bar for Roy to leap over to make a post on onshoring funny. And he nailed it. It's very, very close to being as funny as reality.
No way it works in the short term - Drumph has burned all the capital. How can new factories be built when there's no money to build them and shit-scared bankers afraid to make loans that can't be paid for decades? It's willful self-delusion.
Long term: As a Southerner and a student of The Recent Unpleasantness, or less politely the War Of Northern Aggression, the sharecropper mentality will come into play. It will be difficult without an obvious Other to look down on, but the curse of Lewis Powell may achieve that level of propaganda and indoctrination, and the pitiful wage slaves will embrace being dirt poor and short lived as long as they have the (illusion of) pride, pride in the plantation owners, the super rich. That's the goal, Make America A Third-World Country again. People happy to sacrifice their lives to make money for the New Gods. All Orange Hitler wants is to be J.P. Morgan, although he won't have the sense J.P did when he bailed out the country's banks (yep, it's true), he just wants the power (and not pay taxes). We are caught in an idiot sociopath's fantasy.
The rest of the world won't go back to 1895, though, and the question merely becomes is it better to learn Russian or Mandarin?
ETA: tl, dr, The South Will Indeed Rise Again, and humanity will be the worse for it. I only wish it really was Gone With The Wind.
Neither.
The PRC won’t have shit to do with us, Putin will be enough of a good guy to allow us to keep our language.
As money to build with ie credit, apparently rates are going up because bond sales kind of died. I don’t understand it either but NOT GOOD!!! TIA if you can explain this to me:
https://www.apolloacademy.com/what-is-the-basis-trade/
But “Little Pig”? Are you actually a Wall Streeter undercover in the heart of the beloved Confederacy aka the real America?
Curses! Foiled Again! (I'd twirl my mustache, but that's tough with hooves).
Explain bonds and the futures market? Look, I'm a mathematician. I understand the math of Quantum Mechanics and how supernovas explode. But that stuff is way over my head. I concede, sir.
When Goldman-Sachs created those bullshit sub-prime "instruments", deliberately based on incomprehensible derivaties of derivatives math so they could tell their customers "These bonds are great!" while simultaneously telling the hedge funds "these bonds are designed to be shit, so place your bets", the path was clear and the disconnect between real life and con games was complete.
No, as the Anti-Social Socialist, I watch as unbounded capitalism devours itself. Bwahahahaha!
For the record, Goldman weren’t the only grifters messing with packaging mortgages. Selling shit to clients while selling their own holdings of said shit, that’s what makes them special.
True dat. I chose that example because their flame-out was so spectacular.
A favorite old episode of Have I Got News For You, guest hosted by Jeremy Clarkson of all people, had to have him say the disclaimer "Goldman maintains none of these speculations are true".
Paul Merton, as ever sharp as a tack, immediately says "Yes, but what does Sachs say? 'Well when you get caught, you get caught, whad'ya gonna do?...."
"No way it works in the short term" -- wait I was told this is a business genius. Have you not watched The Apprentice???
I'm proud to say, nope, never. Nor the original British version (yeah, it's a rip off). Guy couldn't run a casino, a machine designed to print money. "Our pay-offs must be larger than everyone else's, so we get all the customers". Seriously.
I'm reminded of the old fake ad: "We lose money on every sale! How do we stay in business? Volume!"
How are the factories going to be built when the stuff to make them out of, like, um, STEEL AND ALUMINUM, are tariffed to Make America Manly Again?
You, dear friend, have nailed it. "Make America Manly Again". It's a dick fight as sure as the Cold War ("Our missiles are bigger?" "Nyet, our missiles are!") and all because these fragile white incel snowflakes are doubting their penii. I find it hilarious, or would if it didn't mean burning the whole damn country down in the process.
Wonderful, the acronym perfectly fits the man-babies squalling about how they want titty and can't have it.
Whoa! Good eye. Heh heh heh.
There will be no labor. The robots might cost some initially but not paying them pays off in the long term
That's a whole other nightmare 😳😬
I truly believe, in my deepest heart of hearts, that if a significant number of white men could simply shrug off the fact they were "losers" in high school and move on with their lives, we wouldn't be dealing with at least 80% of what we are currently dealing with.
But instead we are living in a world where the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and even the Ten Commandments are being shredded, and are being replaced with the screenplay of "Revenge of The Nerds" as the law of the land and as the guiding template for our society.
I get the feeling we’ll soon be wishing those nerds - basically a good-hearted bunch, if socially inept - were our leaders.
They are a smallish proportion of our leaders, but a LOT of our voters.
Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples, or some quote like that. Just ask her out, Sport.
Yeah, but when he did, she didn't act like the women in the pornos.
What, ask a WOMAN out?
Ewww, talking to women is GAY, dude!
but she might reject me
Or maybe winners in high school and then nowhere else? Maybe they found that a position on the football team didn't translate into a life of fabulous wealth and lots of hot young girlfriends? For which they blame the wokeness.
Either way. However you slice it, the so-called "Crisis of Masculinity" is that too many men simply can't get over themselves.
Yuppety YupYupYup.
But Myself is FASCINATING! Why would I pay attention to anything else?
If only coach had put Uncle Rico in in the 4th quarter!
https://www.tiktok.com/@streamonmax/video/7168963739205618987?lang=en
In all seriousness, I can tell you from bitter experience that it is damned hard to shrug off the fact that you were a loser in high school; our whole culture is oriented toward high schoolers (except for that part occupied by Fox News--thus its popularity among the old), and your social position in high school is presumed to determine your whole life afterwards.
(Reminder that said Nerds had to get help, and muscle, from an all-Black frat. They'll do anything not to have to do *that* again.)
EDIT: this is essentially the Rabbit Angstrom story arc.
Sir, I resemble that remark! HARRRRUMPH.
Not all nerds are libertarians. Libertarians are stunted minds that don't understand how systems work. Gault's Gulch is obvious bullshit to anybody with sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel. Great! Buy an uninhabited island in the Pacific and become a quadrillionaire. What's stopping you? Oh yes, the nature of fiat money, the need for infrastructure, etc. etc. I tell these folks to move to that vacation paradise, sunny Somalia, where as a warlord you can take for the rest of your life. All two seconds of it.
Geez, what is wrong with these guys? I'm autistic as hell, quite socially inept, but still the ladies like me. If I can do it, anybody can. And yet.....
yeah some nerds are smart enough to see libertarians plastic mask. I am still a huge nerd, but played football in both HS and college, played basketball in HS, played in the band and was rarely invited to parties, but I knew better than to believe libertarian dogma
Will we follow the Chinese model and have "PLEASE DO NOT COMMIT SUICIDE" seminars for our model factory employees? Or is that to woke?
If we simply follow the Triangle model of locking the factory doors, suicide will be less of a problem.
Reminds me of when they locked us in during third shift at Walmart, before they went 24 hours.
Yoicks.
Me boyo played that game for a while. He and I got much laughter out of the sign "Do Not Crawl In The Trash Compactor". We both know every sign like that has a reason....in this case, *squish*.
Aw damn girl, I just got it. Kudos (?) I'm one dark SOB, but wow. I tip my hat to you.
So why is it none of the people currently telling you everything is fine told you this was coming?
They told you everything would be fine.
Like they’re doing now.
I wish one of the media outlets hosting Tubby's stans telling us he's playing 3D chess would have the decency to green screen them in front of footage of his casino in AC being imploded. https://youtu.be/8IwHZD8Qnv8?si=GI9DKaAu7RALiMb9
It's not inflation, it's trading a piece for POSITIONAL GAIN.
POSITIONAL GAIN is one of those genius terms that only a genius like our genius POTUS, whose uncle was an MIT genius, can understand. Trade imbalance!
Bwahahahahaha! Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh some more. Bwahahahahaha!
Fucking idiots. One right-wing blogger had all his money wiped out, seven figures worth. Boy howdy does he have buyers remorse. And all the kow-towers (NBC, Amazon, Meta) are finding out they backed the wrong fucking horse and all their asskissing don't mean jack.. And the thing is, this is exactly what shitferbrains said he would do. "He's only joking". Fucking idiots.
Losing money during a Republican administration: Just some temporary adjustments that need to be made on our way to America: The Engreatening
Losing one tenth as much money during a Democratic administration: THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD
"Rapid scheduled disassembly"
And look what's happened in Atlantic City since! A virtual Renaissance!
Hearted, as long as they don't bring back the morriss dancers...
It warms the cockles of me dark widdle heart. It's called rocket science for a reason.
We have a large greenhouse here at work but mostly we're a factory that processes, packages and stores bare root plant material. We have all the jobs that you described on your virtual factory floor except here, all the positions are filled by Hispanic women. They also fill most of the supervisor positions. They do great work.
And at least two days a week we have a terrific potluck lunch.
They also have what seems to be an unusually large percentage of the kids in college.
Not anymore!
It's all right, a huge part of our business is selling bulbs from Europe and places like Thailand India and Brazil. I'm sure nothing will happen to that part of the business. And even if it does- our ownership has wisely diversified over the years. We own a very large puzzle company that sells mostly Chinese made jigsaw puzzles and games.
We're golden!
Glad to hear!
We're pretty convinced we're fucked.
I'll be okay though. I'm going to retire soon. I just started collecting social security and I'll be fine!
Little Mister Sunshine!
If you send your kids to college, they will come back woke or even transgendered. Don't do it.*
*does not apply to Vance kids, who will be Yale legacies
I foresee a huge market in tariff-themed products forMAGA men. “Tarofsterone” for those hard to get hard places. “Tarifoderant” for the man who wants to smell like napalmed money. “Tarifetamine” for when you’re feeling down, way down. “Tarifweiser” the 25 proof beer.
Will these be Trump-branded products? Yes they will. Will they go the way of Trump Water, Trump Steaks, Trump University? Also yes.
Oooh! Oooh! Hear me out: Trumptosterone.
I hear R. Scott's "Powerhouse" in it's many C.Stalling arrangements in the factory sequence...
Everyone i know that actually did factory work (for Lockheed, Emerson Electric, and various textile and carpet mills) never romanticized the grueling and mindless side of the work: and were never paid enough.
And I wish some dark version of an undead JRR Tolkien would violently repossess the words he invented for his fiction from these technobros...
Ahhhhhh, a cultured person. Raymond Scott. And yes, 'Powerhouse' is one of Carl's standard motifs. Ahhhhhhhhhh. You hit me where I live.
ETA: Obligatory. The Raymond Scott Quintet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfDqR4fqIWE
Groovy visual effects!
I've had several "manly" jobs in my lifetime. I did basement waterproofing for a few years in my late teens/early twenties. Nothing like digging a ditch ten feet deep and two feet wide, painting the wall with tar, and filling dozens of wheelbarrows up with pea gravel to push back to the hole and fill it up in the 85F sunshine. At the end of a 10-12 hour day we'd drink a 40, head home for dinner and a hot shower (fucking tar was next to impossible to remove without some sort of solvent), and fall into bed exhausted. Repeat six days a week, from spring to fall, with the occasional welcome day off due to rain.
A friend I worked with during those years bought the company after putting in decades of digging. Every season he bitches about the difficulty in finding dependable employees to do this backbreaking work. Plenty of room on one of his crews every year if any of these dildos are serious about manly labor.
Had a buckled wall in my basement a few years back. Despite hemorrhaging money, I made sure the work crew got enough of a tip for lunch or a stop at the topless bar.
Since I was already on a roll, I bought a nice couch for the refurbished room. When the delivery guys showed up, I asked "Do they pay you guys enough to buy any of the furniture you have to tote?"
Direct quote: "I WISH!"
They also got a sweet tip.
For all the blather about the dignity of work, I have yet to see many from the top of the food chain willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Odd, isn't it, to see the celebration of a return to manufacturing in America led by someone with such small, soft and well-manicured hands. Although, per legend, Tubby hung drywall one summer.
Hung 'like' drywall...flat and chalky.
5/8" thick, sounds about right.
I am grateful that I managed (for now) to gather enough money so's I can tip appropriately.
There are good arguments against tipping, but it is a way to pay workers directly without your money passing through the sticky hands of the boss.
not true in every establishment or if you put the tip on a credit/debit card
I always tip cash. Try to pay in cash, too, but sometimes it isn't an option.
Manly labor requires a manly recompense and Irish Spring soap
Big, strong men with tears in their eyes now understand: tariffs are a man-tax on foreigners. Tears also stream down the faces of said BS men, as they see what purpose MAKE iPHONE will give their lives.
Plus, once all the foreigners are gone, The Blacks get their black jobs back, everybody's happy.
The Blacks will be saying Sir, I have so much money I don't know what to do with it, sir, thank you.
"We're gonna remove Black kids from school and make them work in the fields."
America: the first time as history, the second time as farce, I mean forced labor
Long-range plan, no doubt. For now, there's no need to bother about Those People (aside from mass DEI-branded purges).
BBC: "Migrants who used Biden-era app told to leave US 'immediately' "
900,000...
Oh yeah, the other ethnic cleansing. Horrible as this is, it sounds like "self-deport" over again (plus, no more "Biden-era app" allowing the dusky hordes to stay and be processed). $6M is going to Bukele for torturing just a couple hundred kidnapped guys, so figure 900,000, plus the ICE labor cost... that might subtract from Tubby's take of Fed dough. Still, mass deportation was the promise. Whatever the body count ends up being, it's a win for unleashing more terror against these people.
A bill that progressed this week through the Republican-dominated state senate seeks to remove numerous existing protections for teenage workers, and allow them, in the Florida governor’s words, to step into the shoes of immigrants who supply Florida’s tourism and agriculture industries with “dirt cheap labor”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/florida-republicans-immigrant-jobs-child-labor
He's creating jobs for the tiny-fingered.
That was inspired!
I wonder if our new factories will attract people from Central and South America.
Can we trade them for troublesome US citizens to be housed in El Salvadorean prisons?
"Speaking with reporters on Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he plans to discuss with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele his offer to take in and house American prisoners. 'Well, I love that,' Trump said."
Anybody ask him about Kilmar Garcia, the man sent to the torture-prison in what even the Trump administration admits was an "administrative error"? Or would that have been considered impolite and grounds for Emergency Exit?
I know their argument in court is, "It's outta our hands now, what can we do?" But it seems like our big strong Manly-Man President should be able to tell the President of El Salvador to send back ONE guy, unless he's some kinda soy-boy President who lets himself get cucked by Bukkake.
(Sorry, this is now the way you need to talk to the President to get him to do something.)
If only. Dear Leader's thumb is up for Bukele's owning US libs and the judges ordering Garcia to be returned. Didn't you know it's now expected for crimes against humanity to be accompanied by gloating about them on social media?
"Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones."
Hannah Arendt
To which I say "I moved on her like a bitch."
Even so, the history shows that once these rulers were in power, there might be effort to hide or minimize some crimes. The Nazis wanted to present the Red Cross a prettied up Theresienstadt, for instance.
The American public got a look inside Abu Ghraib only because Lyndie England's photos were leaked. That was 25 years ago, and at least the Army responded to torture and abuse of prisoners with court martials and prison sentences for a couple people. It's a sign of where we are since then, seeing our outsourced torture advertised by a slickly produced CECOT video. Post MAGA beauty makeover Noem poses in front of captives, while Bukele posts sneers at outraged Americans, including judges ordering return of kidnap victims.
if you're a star they "let" you do it
“Well, it can both be true,” Trump responded. “There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations, because there are things that we need beyond tariffs. We need open borders.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cognitive-decline-trump-calls-open-202617475.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADNYKBokHXF6SX5Jn_nnOrVo2zkIRnKVNgPCk5NF20TcKc0_tRPlahMpHoZ1fcdPD7TwSdis-e4oL9Uzmvcd9pLJ6Vo_X0CRcwXOURPZNknzEhb362xcN6KlNkLbKyYixzuCJ4GP0Rr9TB1ecXW7zlvkSALKsW4F9MrjisAV_DxK
Nice little country you got there...
This is more like Sheriff watsisface holding himself hostage in Blazing Saddles.
“We need open borders”
This has been another installment of What If Biden Said That
"it can both be true"
Which ones are true? ALL of 'em, Katie!
Although, usually, none of it is true.
When your planning is so meticulous that you demand payment from penguins and send Howard Lutnick to do comms, this Jesse Watters pitch is inevitable.
I have to admit to being distracted by visions of cowboys, construction workers, policemen in The Garden of American Heroes. For that matter, Jesse Watters gets a spot. Maybe Palantir Zephyr can be the lucky model to pose for the Statue of Man Liberty.
Cowboys in the Garden of American Heroes? But of course, John Wayne will be represented! (I doubt you will say the same for Henry Fonda.)
Dangerously introspective, that Henry Fonda. Hell, even the cowboy movies of Jimmy Stewart are too thoughtful for these guys.
With the chains repaired.
Make America Spread Slavery Again, or MASSA for short.
Lack of hearting (so far; will attend to redoubtagain's insight).
But yeah, Oof.
I got my Oof, my work here is done.
Carry On Oof.
“Bringing back manufacturing” wouldn’t be a bad goal in itself—Biden tried to do it!—because during the pandemic and other disruptions like we’re currently seeing, it’s actually a good idea for us to be self sufficient in key areas. Not “cheap plastic crap from China,” mind you, but things like microchips, pharmaceuticals, steel/construction supplies, etc.
Of course these tariffs have nothing to do with that; they’re just baby-brained lashing out, trying to assert dominance. You can’t magically construct a factory and have it running in a week. And of course there’s no plan to pay workers fairly, let alone commensurate with the shit jobs they’ll be expected to take, or to have safety standards. We just have the 1950s fantasy of “man work at factory, have nice house and wife-servant,” along with the revenge fantasy of punishing “other countries.” Oh, and one of our greatest hits dating back to our founding, Free Labor to exploit.
Some lefty in the Guardian with the familiar "Democrats out of touch with the working class" thing helpfully suggested some kind of program to promote manufacturing within the U.S. Uh, dude, Joe Biden, ever hear of him?
The Bidens of the world are the real enemy of the committed leftier-than-thou. Keeping the Capitalist System propped up and tamed merely postpones the Great Proletarian Revolutionary Awakening.
Crap. Just when I thought I was woke enough...
Yeah, but he did it all CULTURAL MARXIST, unlike Schitzenführer who will do it bigly and beautiful, like nobody's ever seen before.
Tax-free!!!
Of course it's wrong, Biden Democratted it all up.
NUH-HUH ALL DEMOCRATS CULTURAL MARXIST
Putting words together is fun! PHALANX AERODROME
Seems like a lot of manufacturing now uses electronics more than brute labor. So you need people who can fix and program that stuff. Which means training and a basic level of intelligence. Not sure how that squares with Tubby's Employment for Happy Dipshits program.
Exactly. And if you still have jobs that need brute labor (and there’s nothing inherently wrong with physical labor!), a modern economy should compensate the workers very well, implement needed safety measures, and limit the hours they need to work at backbreaking drudgery. But of course we wouldn’t do that; we’d just use up the human widgets and discard them.
That's what dusky immigrants are for! Work 'em hard then throw 'em out!
"[...] limit the hours they need to work at backbreaking drudgery."
Well, the problem is the people who would be making the rules that would let that happen are so out of touch with actual manual labor thay'll never get that. It's why they keep trying to up the retirement age. They don't understand that a guy won't be able to do roofing (as an example) at age 70.
I fucking tell you, work camps. Reichsminister Miller is probably wanking over the blueprints as we speak.
No doubt. The PPI* is gleefully planning its expansions as we speak...er...write.
*Private Prison Industry
OK, we know who will be cast as Tom Tariffic in the new series. Must we assume who will play Mighty Manfred the Wonder Doge?
"three enormous industrial robot arms"
So Amazon can further break what's in your package
For someone who's a dedicated computer geek, I've done loads of manual labor in my life, the few behind-the-screen jobs have still dealt with the public, and what I'm presently doing, i.e. high-volume pharmacy, is essentially factory work, and let me fucking tell you, I would have strangled a Doge to have had an office job at any point, or - let me tell you my Theory of Labor Personalization, where you can place people on the work hierarchy based on whether or not they have a dedicated space they work in that they can decorate with plants and pictures and tchotchkes and such. Never had one of THOSE jobs.
You didn't miss much...highly overrated, in my experience. Even tho I had a private office with a window I could climb out and ramble over to the cafe when no one was looking...