WTF is the deal with US states banning masks? Are they going to ban washing your hands next?
Are they going to ban washing your hands next?
Washing your hands removes vital oils used by forensics to identify you at a crime scene.
/s
"if you haven't committed a crime then you have nothing to worry about!"
-some republican who has committed a litany of crimes
They’re not banning masks for the KKK, if that helps understand their thinning…
The non quippy answer:
Wearing masks other than theatrical or things like Halloween masks was prohibited in many places prior to covid.
Some places were explicitly anti protest from the 1900s (unions), others anti hate crime (KKK). Some just had it as a thing that can be tacked on to other crimes. My state has a law that makes it a misdemeanor to wear a mask to conceal your identity while commiting a crime.
These laws are not unique to the US.
When covid came along, most states that had restrictions passed laws adding exceptions for health related face coverings.
In response to people protesting Israeli actions in Palestine, North Carolina repealed their relaxation of the mask rules, and refused to add a health clause, arguing that even though it's illegal, it was illegal before covid and just never enforced, so it's fine.
They also included an exception that allows for secret societies to wear masks or hoods in a parade or demonstration if they have a permit. That's the KKK in a nutshell.
It's preposterous bullshit intended to work as an election year headline grabber, since it's anti mask, anti protester, and pro Israel all at once.
Not joking... There was a trend of "manly men" not washing their hands before they eat lunch.. like after their manly work was done ... Like hands covered in muck and they're like "look how awesome I am.". It's fucking gross
The point is to inflict suffering. So yeah, I wouldn't put it past Republicunts.
"But, muh freedoms"
Don't forget they're trying to end free school meals for poor families too!
They are trying to undo agency la wholesale. As in completely remove all corporate and industrial regulations through removal of the EPA, FAA, FDA, USDA, ect. Through plan 2025 they will undo life as we know it and send us back to the beginning of the labor movement in America.
The Republican mentality is that the constitution should be the sole governing document of America. No government agencies or regulation. It's an unhinged, uneducated plan that will kill us all.
It's actually quite crazy to see the amount of change Biden could get done even with out control of the legislative branch. Adding to that, the Republicans are in disarray too yet things still got done.
I'm surprised OP didn't include the largest climate legislation in world history
I want to see another country or region beat us, as this would be welcome competition.
I’m surprised OP didn’t include the largest climate legislation in world history
New Infrastructure Law to Provide Billions to Energy Technology Projects
The bill spends enormous amounts on carbon capture projects that have historically produced lackluster results. It throws even more good money after bad on "clean hydrogen", an absolute sinkhole of R&D over the last two decades. And then there's the large investment in battery technology that's... definitely better than the first two, but still relies on the kind of enormous strip mining and chemical processing projects that got us in the fossil fuels mess to begin with.
$12B on various kinds of carbon capture and $9.5B on hydrogen and another $6.5B on battery advancements, relative to the $0.4B spent on new renewable energy projects. Even our deplorable bankrupt nuclear programs get $2.5B, relative to technologies that have seen some of the best ROI on energy production since the ICE was invented.
Like, sure. Blah blah Trump Worse. But the Infrastructure Reinvestment Act is not a good bill by any other standard than "Better than what Republicans wanted". Its the same bad California Tech Sector pipe dream ideas we've been flushing money down the toilet on since Bill Clinton was President.
I want to see another country or region beat us
You'll find a line around the block. Spain's sinking $89B in a renewable overhaul of its grid. France has been doing donuts around the US on nuclear power since the 70s. Italy's completely overhauling its rail infrastructure (something Americans rip up more often than they rebuild) to use HVDC power.
Where the US tends to lead the pack is in private investment and that's largely because Solar and Wind power built using cheap foreign imported steel and photovoltaics, have turned our decrepid electricity infrastructure into a gold mine of overpriced retail power. (Something new trade war restrictions may curtail in the next presidency).
The paradox in this is the threat that public investment and efficiency improvements in the grid threaten those profits. If you go around hooking up the fifth-gen molten salt nuclear power stations to an updated smart-balanced American grid, you're going to tank the incomes of a litany of energy companies.
Nobody with a revenue stream coming from sky high auction-priced electricity coming of the Texas ERCOT system, for instance, wants us to slaughter the golden goose that is $3000 MWh peak electricity prices.
Only idiots are saying both sides are the same, but the only way to make Biden look good is to compare him to Trump. Such a low bar.
Lowering insulin prices is great, but its just another bandaid on the gaping, infected wound that is the US healthcare system. What happened to the public option that candidate Biden talked about so much?
Lowering cannabis to schedule 3 is a step in the right direction, now we can have legitimate legal studies on the drug. But this doesn't have to go in baby steps, he could have just descheduled it. We will still be arresting and prosecuting and jailing, ruining lives and wasting loads of taxpayer dollars.
The infrastructure bill is just clearing the maintenance backlog, we still have no real plans for high speed rail. Our infrastructure is 10-15 years behind China and falling further behind.
And it was Sanders who actually got the Insulin reduction through, Biden just kind of accepted it as a win once it became inevitable.
People's memory is so freaking short.
That's how all of this works. Trump would have refused to sign it had it been brought to his desk. The president at best can block bills or try to set an agenda as party leader. Everything else relies on the house and Senate. Which we should remember they gave Sanders more power and important committee placement just for this reason.
I voted for Sanders in the primary twice. I would have loved to see him as president. However I think he's been more productive as a Democrat senator than he realistically would have been able to as president.
What happened to the public option that candidate Biden talked about so much?
Pray tell, how would Biden get that passed with the current political setting?
Biden is a president, not a king, he can't just deschedule marijuana unilaterally without causing problems, he needs Congress to help. Look at your answer to my first question to see how that gets done. Some info: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/over-80-groups-urge-biden-administration-end-federal-prohibition-marijuana-and
Our infrastructure is 10-15 years behind China and falling further behind.
Again, look at your answer to my first question.
It feels like you want Biden to fix everything, while completely unaware of how our government works. Which brings us to why people compare Trump to Biden, because people will have to vote for one or the other in the election. Is you want better and more extensive changes, vote for the Democrats that can only take baby steps at the moment. When they get more control on Congress, they can make bigger steps.
When Biden was elected, Dems controlled both houses of congress. What stopped him from pushing his public option plan then?
What is stopping him from pushing to deschedule cannabis completely? Even if congress gets in his way, people would give him massive credit for actually trying.
You say we need to elect more Democrats to make bigger steps, but we did that in 2008 and 2020 and still we get baby steps. Why?
If the president is so powerless, then why are people worried about project 2025 and "dictator on day 1" Trump? Surely they must be confused, because the adults in the room like you know that the president is actually unable to pass meaningful legislation.
Please educate me since I'm completely unaware how our government works.
Dems controlled both houses of congress. What stopped him from pushing his public option plan then?
Manchin and Sinema, mainly, but also the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Forgot already?
then why are people worried about project 2025 and “dictator on day 1” Trump?
Because reasonable people don’t want the president to attempt authoritarian rule in order to progress his agenda. The fact that it is possible to do that is a big fucking issue and yet here we are, watching it happen with Trump. That doesn’t mean Biden should do it. It should not [and cannot be allowed to] happen at all.
Progress makes us realize how far behind we still are. But we still need to make progress, we can't just do nothing and pretend it's fine.
*terms and conditions apply, must be an election year to redeem.
This is not remotely accurate. The GOP has a second table for billionaires, bailouts, and the MIC piled high with cash.
spoiler
sdfsaf
Lemme guess - the state's representation is gerrymandered six ways from Sunday, all the people who could possibly be Democratic voters were tossed off the rolls about 30 minutes before the vote, and there's only one ballot drop off point in the biggest urban area. Right?
Did they also outlaw giving out water in long voting lines too? Cause that one's extra special.
The one that says
This Year's Ballot:
___ Fascism
___ Snooze (4 years)
sums it up.
Two of the three of these feel like nothing in the face of our broken healthcare industry. Mind you these 1/300th steps ARE THE COMPROMISE.
Id like to see meaningful change before I die pls. This rate wont cut it.
Fucking pro democrat propaganda is rampant lately. Anyone who dares to criticize the hillary clinton party is immediately a fascist. Your two party system is broken and this election is only a symptom.
Those are the best examples to reference their differences?
The infrastructure bill is ridiculously big, but also:
Make trans people illegal
Ban anything that's not "choose one" voting
Absurd gerrymandering
Trying to overturn elections
Deficit inducing tax cuts for the mega-rich
Trying to kill social security
Dictator for a day
Arguing the president can have political rivals assassinated
Trying to kill the post office
Trying to kill the IRS
Intentionally putting in incompetent leaders
Giving state secrets to Russia
Trying to hand Ukraine over to Russia
Trying to hand Ukraine over to Russia
i like how this one is thrown in here like we bought ukraine or something.
I like how they threw in the marajuna thing as some kind of economic help since there really isn't anything more to brag about.
They feed you table scraps and y'all loose your damn minds. How about forcing a seat at the table instead
How about forcing a seat at the table instead
Yeah, why aren't you doing that? I mean, if electoral politics are so unacceptable to you, surely you should be up in arms?
Oh, wait, what am I saying? You're not interested in change, you're interested in sabotaging all attempts at change that don't fit the mold you'll never work to see effected.
affordable for senior citizens and Medicare patients (medicare is for people 65 and up)
Marijuana reclassified from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3
Something that needed to be done, but it's still falls short. We have miles of lead pipe that's going unaddressed and population centers with contaminated drinking water.
These are half-measures, tinkering at the edges of problems.
The insulin is especially glaring. They had the will to pass a bill and chose to ignore most of the population. I'm not saying that it's not a net positive... buuuut, it's a pretty damn small positive. Compared to the harm insulin prices cause every day? It's, like, an exponential difference in scope.
For marijuana, they have the presidency. They could higher staff and dedicate a workforce exclusively to generating the paperwork needed to pardon marijuana convictions. I'm not certain, but I think the executive can also just... decide not to prosecute in the first place. They reclassified it for the sake of a headline that sounds nice, not because they're serious about this.
He could have descheduled it entirely with the exact same process that rescheduled it, but Biden still wants it to be illegal federally because it's a great tool for cops, border guards, human resource departments and other shitheads to fuck with people they don't like and preserving that kind of crap is a through line for Biden's whole career back to the 70s
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