timapplesauce

It’s pretty easy for gangs to acquire cocaine and that’s illegal pretty much everywhere.

Even if you could wave a magic wand and disarm the American populace gangs would still be able to get guns from dirty cops, military arms dealers, or just get them from war zones. There’s virtually no accountability of the military aid that we send overseas to support our side in proxy wars.

I do. It’s a big country so maybe your corner of it is as you describe. I have personally lived in 5 different states and visited most of the rest and never encountered anything like what you describe.

Much like all over the world there are lots of bigoted idiots, but they are very much the tiny minority of Americans and they do not represent this country or its values.

If this country is so terrible why do we struggle to keep people from coming here to live illegally, or “undocumented” if you prefer that term?

> Supreme Court turn to the batshit insane side of reality.

Following the Constitution as written instead of legislating from the bench is batshit insane?

Federal protection of abortion rights should come from Congress, not an overreaching activist Judiciary. Also, if you’re in California nothing has changed about access to abortion and nothing will change for the foreseeable future.

What are you talking about?

The establishment and mainstream media led by Hillary Clinton pushed the completely fabricated “Russian Interference” narrative that included the fake Steel Dossier, an FBI investigation, and undermined Trump’s Presidency as illegitimate for the entire 4 years!

Now we have people calling the Conservative members of the Supreme Court illegitimate as well because they disagree with the Dobbs ruling.

I’m just not seeing evidence of a widespread Conservative bias, and plenty of evidence of widespread Liberal bias.

Your comment about fuel is definitely valid. However, what is so special about COVID as it currently stands now in 2022? There is zero hope of containing it, as it has become endemic so lockdowns are pointless. There are several vaccines and effective treatments available. It is not significantly more deadly than several other common ailments like typical influenza variants. I understand why we all did what we did in 2019-2020, perhaps even early 2021, but why are we still treating COVID like it’s a special case?

I hate tip culture. It’s just a way to hide and then pass on the true cost of employee wages to the customer. I agree with you, expecting a tip by default is an anti pattern. If someone is feeling generous or really impressed with the level of service provided, they should be free to offer a tip, but I hate feeling compelled to do so even if the service provided is mediocre at best.

The other fatal flaw of Wayland is that it’s support on anything other than Linux is abysmal. I can run an X server on Linux, BSD, Commercial UNIX variants, Minix, macOS, OpenVMS, and even Windows. Heck at one point there was even an X server for DOS!

None of these were being weaponized by the Chinese government.

I’m shocked that an app linked to the Chinese military would be harmful to our society and our children.

For real though get your children off social media, nothing good will come of it for them. Tiktok is particularly scary.

I think that's the point. The idea is to come up with every reason to deny people. It's a backdoor handgun ban unless you're wealthy and well connected enough to deserve one.

The NY Post got their Twitter account suspended for daring to cover Hunter Biden’s laptop. That story in particular was heavily suppressed.

What the media, both the social and traditional varieties, did to Trump is disgusting and goes way beyond bias. It was a targeted campaign with the goal of undermining and removing him from office from the moment he won the election. Propping up and protecting Biden was a means to an end.

I would argue in 2020 Biden had more of the passion votes. It was passion AGAINST Trump of course, not FOR Biden.

The entire media apparatus with only a few notable exceptions worked tirelessly to undermine Trump at every opportunity and suppress negative stories about Biden. There was almost no media coverage of Biden’s obvious mental decline, lack of energy to campaign, low rally turnout, his son’s incriminating laptop, blatantly racist comments made by Biden both during his decades serving as a Senator and even during the campaign (such as the infamous “you ain’t black” comment on Charlamagne tha God’s show.

How much of our food supply comes from New York City and Los Angeles?

Your comment implies that the needs of these states is somehow less important in the governance of our nation.

The Electoral College exists because popular vote would lead to just a handful of our largest cities holding all of the political power. Switching to popular vote would lead to presidents completely ignoring or worse enacting policies that harm smaller cities, suburbs, and rural Americans.

Nothing you mentioned would have overthrown the country. Violent regime change happens almost exclusively via military actions or widespread popular uprisings.

The top brass of the military would not have supported a coup by Trump and the group that protested that day was not large enough to effect regime change.

> Look at how freaking close an incompetent reality show star came to overthrowing the country.

Not very close at all. Unless you think American democracy is so fragile that a few dozen unarmed protesters that walked into an unlocked Capital building and caused a bit of mischief and vandalism is enough to overthrow the country.

Gun registries only exist to support eventual confiscation via further erosion of 2A rights, such as red flag laws, assault weapons bans, and other restrictions on ownership.

Obviously I have no proof for this, but the timing would definitely suggest malice.

The Supreme Court just handed down an opinion that essentially struck down California's concealed carry law, not to mention Dobbs. This smacks of childish retaliation for not getting your way.

> What the supreme's did in practice was look for abstruse excuses to justify changing.

Roe v. Wade was the abstruse excuse to justify the desired outcome. It was effectively legislating from the bench.

> First, all the republicans claimed they would follow precedent unless there was a really good reason.

I think a prior court precedent being unconstitutional is a really good reason.

> They now claim the limits of our rights were set in 1868.

Where did get this idea? From the actual opinion of Dobbs:

> In arguing for a constitutional right to abortion that would override the people’s choices in the democratic process, the plaintiff Jackson Women’s Health Organization and its amici emphasize that the Constitution does not freeze the American people’s rights as of 1791 or 1868. I fully agree. To begin, I agree that constitutional rights ap- ply to situations that were unforeseen in 1791 or 1868— such as applying the First Amendment to the Internet or the Fourth Amendment to cars. Moreover, the Constitution authorizes the creation of new rights—state and federal, statutory and constitutional. But when it comes to creating new rights, the Constitution directs the people to the various processes of democratic self-government contemplated by the Constitution—state legislation, state constitutional amendments, federal legislation, and federal constitutional amendments.

What it says is that the Supreme Court is not authorized by the Constitution to grant new rights. This is 100% correct. Legislative processes are the means that should be employed to accomplish this.

Despite the merits of abortions, the Supreme Court’s job is to determine the constitutionality of laws, not create new laws or twist existing laws to say what they wish they did.

The concept of “legislating from the bench” should terrify everyone in America as it is a sidestep of the checks and balances among the 3 branches of government.

It is the job of Congress to enshrine the right to an abortion into Federal law.

Yes and because there is no law banning abortion at the federal level, you are free to get one unless your state or local government has a law restricting it. This is the system working as intended.

I think this is a major factor. The enlisted pay scales are publicly available knowledge and for the lower enlisted ranks especially they really don’t look very appealing.

Although military pay goes up every year, it has not kept up with inflation. The proposed pay raise for next year is 4.6% despite inflation being 8.6%. There are already a lot of military families that qualify for public assistance and one can expect this problem to only get worse.

I think it was overturned because there’s no actual Constitutional or legal basis for protecting abortion at the federal level. Roe, while absolutely well intentioned was a gross overstep of the court’s authority.

It is Congress’s job to legislate, not the Supreme Court’s. Be upset at Congress for never codifying these protections into law even during several years where the Democrats held Congress and the Presidency giving them ample means to do so.

> I have a great deal of compassion for genuine hardship.

The rapid increase in gas prices is causing a lot of genuine hardship. Not to mention the follow on effects of higher consumer prices for essentials like food.

I meant secondary as in a second vehicle so as long as you own an ICE vehicle already. I’m sure if I had an EV it would absolutely get the most usage of the 2. If I dropped $35-50,000 on a car you bet I’d drive it a lot! :)

That’s a very “let them eat cake” attitude that doesn’t serve anyone well. EVs are simply not an option for the majority of people in the world until their cost decreases and their range increases.

Fossil fuels need to be phased out but forcing gas prices up this fast is a very cruel way to do it.

> By the end of this year, Tesla's Giga 3 Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds 50% of what Mercedes sells annually.

Unless China locks down the plant due to a COVID outbreak.

Unfortunately, in the United States all of our major news outlets are extremely biased and have been caught red-handed manipulating or outright lying about the news.

The only approach I've found is to consume a few news sources through the lens of their known biases in an attempt to get something resembling the whole picture.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you take an EV for a long road trip across America today, your choice of route will be very dependent on where charging stations exist. With an ICE vehicle, it's barely a consideration. For the few areas where you know you'll be too far from a gas station the solution is simple: A cheap gas can or two filled with fuel. What's the reasonable and cost effective equivalent for an EV?

The other issue is that even a fast charger takes considerably longer than a gas pump to refill your car. This, coupled with the relatively low availability of them overall, means that you are more likely to have to wait in line for your turn and you spend even more time not on the road traveling to your destination.

With all this being said, I think an EV is very compelling as a secondary vehicle for 90%+ of use cases so long as you also have an ICE vehicle and a sufficient way to charge your EV at home.

I'm curious, what is a "credible" news source these days?

I don't think any of the major news networks have much credibility any more, it's just that some may seem better than others simply because they align more with your particular personal opinions and biases.