Would be funny if Russia turned Venezuela into the US Ukraine. Flood the country with weapons and aid and make them slowly bleed in a quagmire that their pride won’t let them leave.

Doesn’t look like Russia has the spare production capacity though because of the quagmire.

Wouldn’t they just be shooting themselves in the foot here? Even with all the talk about decoupling and tariffs, the European and American economy are still heavily intertwined and a recession in the US will almost certainly spread to the EU.

Look at what happened in 2008, some wall street crooks made some stupid bets on mortgages and then the euro-zone got sent into a debt crisis.

At least he isn’t tied to the totally real cartel of the sun like the evil Maduro who deserves to be bombed. This guy just got wrongfully convicted of trafficking drugs and has the support of ms-13 because he’s just a good guy, no narco-state here folks.

Or just VPN, I assume that’s what most people are doing in those states.

make prices higher for consumers

Per the article:

The agency last year said the rule for passenger cars and trucks would reduce gasoline consumption by 64 billion gallons and cut emissions by 659 million metric tons, reducing fuel costs with net benefits estimated at $35.2 billion for drivers.

were temporarily transported to heaven

Makes sense, the japanese monarchy is one of the few that still claims divinity and Shintoism still says they should be venerated.

I could see it being a good way to support artists, if that’s where the money is going.

Probably not, the way Russia is right now it’s more likely some nationalist military commander fills that power vacuum then a sane democratic regime.

I guess she’s leaving with some integrity. Hard disagree with most of her beliefs but at least she stuck to them and didn’t just kowtow to the pedophile president.

Guess I have some of the same sort of respect for her that the right shows to Bernie, sort of a don Quixote lunatic with honor.

Anyone about to go to college, this classification will determine how much financial aid you’ll be eligible for.

That’s how you get more apathy and less people voting. Yes democrats have a problem with playing nice and not getting anything passed but they also have a larger identity problem of what they stand for and why people should vote for them, this is way more the reason Kamala lost then soft democrats as shown by the lack of turnout. If democrats don’t stand for democracy, what are they standing for?

Also the more prevalent this becomes the more they will use it against there left flank as well. The less there is a threat of a third party emerging due to gerrymandering, the more centrist the democrats can go and the more they can ignore the left.

Ok, then prosecute him for racketeering or murder for hire.

If the point is to just take out the kingpin, for the sake of taking out the kingpin, I don’t think that’s an effective strategy for public safety. When the kingpin goes to jail violence goes up as their underlings usually fight for the throne. Availability of drugs and other illegal services may go down temporarily during the war and reconsolidation but long term they’ll return to antebellum levels. The only thing taking out the kingpin does is boost cops egos.

How am I framing it like he got caught with an ounce, my original comment mentioned the amount. Why should the amount matter, it’s legal now, a dispensary is probably moving tons of marijuana a year, should the owners of those dispensaries be prosecuted simply because of the volume of the operation?

I will make the argument that all marijuana charges should be pardoned expunged in legal states because we as a society decided it’s a relatively harmless substance and that we shouldn’t be locking people up for possessing or selling it.

Yeah he’s not the best poster boy, and Willie Horton isn’t the best poster boy for furlough programs, and the guy who killed laken Riley isn’t the best poster boy for immigration reform, hell kilmar garcia has charges equivalent to this guy. That’s the thing about criminal justice reform, you don’t choose your poster boy your opponent does. That’s why you have to defend it on principal not individual cases, because there will always be someone who uses that reform and goes on to commit some atrocious act which your opponents will use as “proof” that the reform is dangerous.

Trump blowing up boats is bad

Trump commuting non violent drug offenses is good

You can hold these two opinions if you’re mature enough to understand no one is a pure hero or villain and can do both good and bad things

Do you think this guy should still be locked up for smuggling weed in a state where its now legal? I don’t and I’m not going to compromise my morals just so I can disagree with trump on every issue. If you are taking the stance that anything trump does is automatically bad then your letting your politics be defined by him and becoming a sort of reactionary. Your politics should be defined by what you believe in, not what the other side says.

I also believe that trump pardoning his co-conspirators is wrong because it’s corrupt, not just because Trump is doing it. Criticize an action on its substance, not just who is doing it.

Are we really doing Willie Horton style “look at this monster our opponent let back on the streets” tactics. This is how we end up with every politician being afraid to pardon anyone or even let them off on parole because there opponent or the press will yell at them if they ever so much as run a red light.

This guy wasn’t even sentenced for rape or murder or anything violent:

Braun was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2019 for smuggling 220,000 pounds of marijuana.

Trump was right to pardon him, marijuana offenses are BS. Yeah the guy fucked up after he got out but that’s not Trump’s fault. There’s a million things we can criticize trump for, this isn’t one of them.

I’m not saying to always take the high road, play dirty when it actually helps people and will make you more popular. Pack the courts to reinstitute roe, deschedule Marijuana with an executive order, release the epstein list and start prosecuting trump for his connections to it, prosecute and fine the oil billionaires funding the GOP.

Taking billionaire pac money and redistricting just to win elections isn’t popular, at best people view it as a necessary evil, at worse people become apathetic and view both parties as corrupt and not worth there vote.

with further gerrymandering in Texas, they’ll probably not get a majority

The gerrymandering in Texas is expected to give the gop 5 seats and they currently have a 6 seat majority, so the dems would have to flip 11 seats, that should be dead easy in a midterm with an unpopular president to play off of. For reference the dems flipped 41 seats in the 2018 midterms.

The reason the democrats are worried is because they know they’re polling at 30 year lows in approval and that will counteract the inherent advantage of the opposition party in a midterm. Playing dirty with the Republicans will only make them more unpopular while obfuscating that unpopularity with a couple more house seats for bland centrist dems.

It’s just like the dems taking billionaire pac money and pointing to the Republicans doing the same and saying they wouldn’t be competitive without it. When really they could turn down the money and run on a campaign of getting money out of politics and gain way more voters than they’d get from running more TV ads.

No this isn’t them doing what I want. I want democrats to use there power to stop Trump from bombing and abducting whoever he wants. I don’t want them entrenching there power for the sake of power. I want them to explain how they’re gonna use there power to stop fascism to justify them taking away people’s democratic power over disrricting.

I’ll give them props for holding out on the shutdown for Healthcare subsidies people need, that’s standing up for your constituents, but this redistricting is just a power grab.

Idk, a basement is starting to seem like the best place to put RFK Jr now.