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In response to people protesting Israeli actions in Palestine, North Carolina repealed their relaxation of the mask rules, and refused to add a health clause, arguing that even though it's illegal, it was illegal before covid and just never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
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.
Not even the constitution. They literally break or say that "it was a mistake" for a majority of the constitution and pay judges to twist the meaning to fit their corporate donors' wishes.
They literally want corporate feudalism where the only laws are those made by daddy corpo.
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.
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.
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
And yet both are desperately needed
we’re already zooming past our climate goals for carbon emission, and rapidly approaching all the dangers that entails. While not putting fossilized carbon in the atmosphere to begin with is far better, it’s naive to think that will be enough. If there’s a practical way to recover some of that atmospheric carbon, we need to find it and scale up fast
while we’ve found better technologies than hydrogen for personal transportation and power generation, there are still too many places we still need energy, where wires can’t go, batteries aren’t sufficient. Think of industrial uses like metal refining or concrete manufacturing, flying, shipping, construction, long distance trains, etc, that we don’t yet have a good solution for. Yes, even for storage: current storage technology is fantastic, but it’s not clear that it can scale. We do also need a hydrogen economy
If it's not perfect we should do nothing you're right. /S
You want to address big problems? We need more Democrats in control of the Congress and executive branch. Republicans will always push us back untill their platform changes.
If you have more Democrats in power you can start to filter out the conservative and moderate Democrats. When we have the thinest majority possible, you can't be picky with what gets passed as you need agreement from the full spectrum of Democrats. Manchin sucked as a Democrat. But he was vital in getting legislation passed that a Republican in his position wouldn't pass.
Bringing this back to your original response,, you're complaining that any progress is bad if it doesn't address the core issue, and I still disagree with that. Any progress is better than none and isn't "lip service", this is just how US government in reality works, you keep making larger more incremental steps.
Our current steps aren't sufficient, in that I believe you and I agree, but there will hopefully be better, stronger legislation to address root problems.
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.
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.
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.
We do have plans for highspeed rail, we're building it in California, Navada, Florida, and the north east corridor right now, with plans to extend the network and add new lines.
Biden has also been funding renewable energy, and fighting inflation, forgiving student debt, and providing funding for first time home buyers.
We absolutely still need a public option for healthcare, and to decriminalize cannabis, but I don't think you're giving him enough credit. Biden has done more to help unions than Clinton or Obama. He's been getting a lot done with a divided congress.
In 2008, both China and the US announced competing high speed rail initiatives.
According to wikipedia, China now has 43,000 km of high speed rail. The US has 80 km of high speed rail.
Yes Cali has plans for high speed rail, its pretty much the same plan from 2008.
And going down your list- renewable energy, fighting inflation, student debt forgiveness, homebuyer assistance - all of these are tepid, surface level initiatives that do not solve the underlying problems. So you're right, I dont give Biden much credit.
Lowering insulin prices is great, but its just another bandaid on the gaping, infected would that is the US healthcare system.
We have completely lost to Big Business at this point. No leader is willing to attack them and make meaningful legislation to rein them in because (stupidly) wealth growth revolves around financial markets and not actual production of goods. If you mess with the stock market you ruin everything from retirements to people’s employment. So government’s hands are tied and all they can do is treat the symptoms instead of the disease.
Its easy to say Trump makes another presidential option look good, because that's absolutely true. But it's a little dishonest to say that Biden's not a decent president with a list of accomplishments that stand independent of Trump.
Personally, I believe Biden forfeited any claims to decency when he went on national television and lied to the American people about seeing pictures of 40 beheaded babies. This gruesome story, proved false by any serious accounting of Oct. 7th, was told to justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
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.
Like, the last time democrats had the executive and legislature, we got the Affordable Healthcare Act -- which, yeah did help some people. But didn't change any of the underlying rot in our healthcare - 12 years on, we're still having the same conversations about the same problems.
Vote, it's the least that can be done. But don't kid yourself about what that does. Our problems require far more, far more citizen participation and far more work than merely voting.
Who do I vote to end the suffering of the people in Palestine? Get universal healthcare? Decriminalize cannabis at the federal level? Ban new oil and gas leases? Revoke fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks?
Always being willing to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils ensures that nothing will change. You'll always have the choice of bad and worse, and the best you'll ever be able to hope for is table scraps instead of transformative, positive change. That's not a system I'm going to prolong with my participation.
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.
How many times they had the presidency and the congress and haven’t changed shit? They don’t want to improve your politics because they ate all rich fucks who got rich off of your hard work.
Voting blue is the best route to maintain it. It's likely it would get worse under Trump, sure, but the Democrats have no material interests in going against their donors.
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
Right, there's a much better pool of things for juxtaposition. Though most of that is stuff Republicans have done since long before MAGA. A couple are a little too bipartisan.
Nonetheless I am glad the reclassification of Marijuana was announced yesterday to complete the list.
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.
They feed you table scraps and y’all loose your damn minds. How about forcing a seat at the table instead
Just the perpetually cucked liberals who live in an NPR fever dream. Its at least better than reddit in this regard where its all libs engaged in an MC Escher circle jerk with Rachel Maddow at the center.
We at least have some commenters in touch with reality here.
Just the perpetually cucked liberals who live in an NPR fever dream.
Fucking lmao.
It's horrifying how the rhetoric of MAGA and some self-proclaimed leftists is almost identical at this point. If I hear someone talk about the CUCKS in the DEMOCRAP UNIPARTY being unwilling to stand up against the ZIONIST LIBERAL ELITE PEDOPHILES of the DEEP STATE who direct policy against the REAL will of the people, it's a 50-50 whether they're open fascists or fascists pretending to be red.
The blame lies entirely with the party if Trump gets elected. Maybe another 4 years of that lunatic will make them learn. Doubtful.
Try selling this Biden or bust shit to the Muslim-American community who may not turn out in droves to vote for him. Are you going to insult their collective intelligence and question their integrity if Biden fails to get another term? Democrats just take their votes for granted and don't think they have to earn them.
Coming from someone who has been on several weeks of mandatory leave from work because I started self harming in public after listening to yet another fucking horror show coming out of Gaza. I had to be sent home because I was crying and hitting myself.
How do you live with yourself? I'm genuinely curious, because I can barely do it. I've had to stop listening to news in the car or I'll drive into traffic. I'm voting for Aaron Bushnell because they're far braver than me. I hope Trump has a heart attack.
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
R doesn't even take legislative action that helps their own voters. Meanwhile, all the shit they fight against Dems doing would help plenty of R voters, too. Their entire platform is taking things away from people, culture wars, vilification of education, and making voting as difficult as possible.
If you are voting R at this point, it can be for no reason other than one or more of these labels applies to you: Bigot, Unrepentant Misogynist, or can't think any further than your own team winning.
Pic unrelated, because they didn't just allow, they helped. They insisted.
Also, their much touted climate change bill is almost entirely just handing out money to wealthy for profit companies (including fucking oil and gas companies for carbon capture programs that probably won't work) and hoping they do good things with it, instead of just prohibiting them from doing bad things like we should be doing
Biden used emergency powers to bypass congress on shipping missiles to Israel before. This resolution is in range of veto, also holy shit what a title.
I resent this notion: when the tax evaders pumped money into trump with the humble request of practically no longer paying taxes, Trump was there for them in an instant. When the arms industry was about to ask for an even more ludicrous cut of the national budget, he diverted even more their way before they could even finish the sentence. When the companies cutting up the carcass of the environment for money at the cost of a livable planet asked for the removal of any sort of environmental protection laws, Trump was there for them. When the monopolist student loan providers, private hospital operators, or private prison complex slavers were asking for unfettered access to all their victims' money, Trump gave them the go in a heartbeat, so I will not stand for anyone saying that Trump doesn't care about Americans. They just have to be the couple super-rich lobbies bribing him and his cronies.
I love how you have to whatabout Biden to make him seem like an acceptable choice rather than the ‘just not the shitgibbon’ corporate despot that he is. I see a ton of middle ground here and licking the Biden boot’s pretty lame 😒
A table full of money would be things like "government-provided healthcare" and "drugs legalized", not "one specific healthcare need made affordable" and "one of the most mild illegal drugs made slightly less illegal".
It doesn't matter what Democrats do (or attempt in a politically hostile environment that tries to sabotage anything and everything they do), the bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe assholes will ignore it, or flip it and force-jam it into their always lazy, cynical and oh-so-savvy, mediocre narrative.
The thing is, you're not wrong, the problem is, the alternative would gladly do more genocide.
It's a shit system, two parties gives you little voice for change, but you are currently stuck with picking a bad version of a worse version.
At least Joe has made threats to withdraw giving infinite resources to Israel, even if it's too little too late, it's still, sadly the better than the alternative.
First off: Bush was President in 2008. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (the bank bailout that started the Troubled Assets Relief Program) was signed into law on October 3rd, 2008 - 2 months before Obama was elected into office and 4 months before he took office.
Second: Obama reduced the bailout by over 30% after taking office and the money was spent a little more wisely on reinvestment instead of simply giving the banks free money, which lead us to...
Third: in the end the government actually profited over 120 billion dollars.
So, yeah. Democrats handled the economy better. Just like they have since (checks notes) all of modern history.
A large portion of the personal wealth in America is concentrated in real estate (mortgage debt).
When Obama became president, he could have easily bailed out the 9 million American homeowners (predominantly low income black and Hispanic families), but instead he chose Wall Street, effectively facilitating the largest transfer of wealth from the black community to private capital in history.
In this sense, Obama prevented future generations of black communities from ever becoming homeowners again.
Similar trends are also happening under Biden’s policies today, the so-called “Bidenomics” where black unemployment has risen much faster than other demographics. These are all austerity measures designed to make poor minorities bear the brunt of the economic impact if only to slow the crumbling of the system itself.
But since "the government actually profited" it's all good, right?
Tankie economics: it's not Democrats fault! Bush did it! He signed a law a few months ago and as we all know it's impossible to overturn laws! Good thing we all elected the Democrat because we didn't want Bush's laws!
You know the federal reserve turned a profit from their intervention during the Great Recession era, right? Like, you don’t actually think it was just Obama throwing helicopter money, right?
But but but Biden had control for two whole years! And we don't have the Jetsons' lifestyle! Why can't they get their act together and do something??? (/s)
I know it's sarcasm, but I think people would have been a lot more cool with Biden if the accomplishments were more spread out. Yeah, a lot of really great stuff has happened in the last three months, but now it looks like pandering instead of a culmination of effort. Not to mention, most of it is being buried under Israel's genocide, making it easy for disconnected voters to miss the recent good news and just remember all the old nothing that happened for the past 3 years.
Cool, there's still plenty of covid out there, my issue is with how the Biden regime "ended" covid with plenty of cases still out there, because it was politically convenient to do so.
The dems are much better at rolling out the republican agenda tbh, it just takes a splash of blue paint and their diehards will go along with full on border walls, immigrant concentration camps, unlimited support for Israel, riot cops beating down protestors.
Biden even "ended covid" and did what Trump recommended - just stop testing!
Biden handling of COVID and the acceptance of it is wild. He just swept COVID under the rug, cut monitoring and said it was over when it's not over at all. It was a shitty move and Dems ate it for lunch when they not months before and been wild with anger over Trump's handling of COVID which wasn't good but better than Bidens.
They're the ones you can't get to admit they're getting one of these whether they like it or not and try to convince others the worse of the two is more desirable for some fucking reason.
I’ve never seen anyone who thinks neither candidate is acceptable try to argue for one over the other.
I know personally plenty of people who advocate sitting this one out and some like myself who say we ought to vote third party (psl in my case) though.
I’m really surprised the dyed in the wool true believer dems aren’t pushing for ol genocide Joe to step down at the convention.
Unwanted pregnancies comes from volountary actions as i already stated. Being less bitchy contributes to society. Giving away unwanted children through foster helps society. Not killing babies and selling the parts to military and pharmaceutical complexes so they can research ethnobioweapons. Safe, dig more you will discover it is not safe as many using abortion practices become sterile, effective, dig more and you will discover that many of the cancers now women fights stems from abortion practices.
ok so if we're being political accurate with this meme, here.
Technically the "both sides are the same" thing should refer to the fact that both sides are focusing on getting power in order to further their agenda (usually policy)
But, i also hate centrists, so fuck both sides. Everything sucks. Nothing is doing it's job, though admittedly, one is doing a better job than the other.
usually this statement is interpreted in a broader, literal manner, which is interesting to me. Generally, it seems to be a very polymorphic statement in my experience. Sometimes referring to shit like "they're both slow, and they both suck" sometimes it's just people coping, because coping. Most of the time i see people say it, it's with regards to "how much bullshit they engage" and to some degree, they have a point. The problem here, and the reason i don't like it. Is because it's incredibly dependent on the way you define things, i.e. dems bad because joe biden or whatever the fuck. Usually, people saying this, particularly center right people, are fucking stupid. And don't seem to understand that while they complain about other people having implicit bias, that they also, inherently have implicit bias. Which they then further when they see people bitching about them, because "clearly, you're all assholes" or something. Centrism is fucking dumb. You're center right or center left. Sometimes you like dem policies, sometimes you like repub policies, it's that fucking simple. The only people who should be capable of calling themselves centrists are people in the government who get nothing done across their whole career. That's a true centrist.
if you're still reading this, politics isn't fun. Go learn a skill, seriously, i'm not joking, go learn to weld or something. It'll be fun.
Technically the “both sides are the same” thing should refer to the fact that both sides are focusing on getting power in order to further their agenda (usually policy)
shocker, really. Now if only there were a way to push like, specific policy type legislation through the government.
My point there was mostly that it's less about policy and actually doing things, and more about securing power. Because of how the US government works.