It's f'in Pimento cheese so not even good cheese. I mean seriously that stuff is gross. I've boycotted pimento cheese my whole life.

And with 6-3 supreme court it might even stand up to legal challenge.

these cosplayers will retreat home, or be KIA by law enforcement.

The problem is a lot of those cosplayers are also law enforcement, or are supported by their local LEO's.

Still I agree with your overall point about comparing militia groups in the US to Iraq.

#5

Oh plenty of people believe it. I don't know how many of them would have even considered Biden but I'm sure some.

It's part of my beef with the Bernie can't win as a socialist argument. Any democratic candidate will be tagged as a socialist and that's been true as far back as I can remember.

#3

Marijuana decriminalization is off the table too.

The thread closed before I could respond to you. I did want to make a couple things clear though, I was being a bit flip as to legalization since the issue is pretty much DOA in my state. I am all for at the bare min. medical legalization and would prefer full legalization with retroactive purging of records for people convicted. That won't happen here heck even with the status change in Hemp nationally it took heavy pressure from the farming lobby to get full hemp production legalized and with that I don't think the farming lobby cares enough about marijuana to spend the money.

I am privileged being white middle-upper middle class, even when poor I dressed looked and acted like middle class, I am not someone likely to ever be targeted for possession. So yes I can afford to be a bit flip about it but that doesn't mean I don't want to see the laws changed, I just know it's not likely to happen here. I was scheduled to testify in the state house about the benefits of medical marijuana but the hearing got canceled when the bill died in committee. I have kept open lines to both NORML and my state representative should it ever get that far again with offers to testify. So I do try and use my privilege to improve things however it doesn't extend to millions for lobbying so it's of little use.

#29

Was in Vegas a couple months ago and frankly other than the easy access to edibles it wasn't much different. In fact here I get home delivery there I had to go and wait in line in the hot sun for it so it could be argued that I have easier access here although having smoked for years in the same location helps with the ease of access.

Also technically it is decriminalized here less than 7g and it's just a fine.

#27

Ahh it's not so bad 503. I mean sure edibles basically don't exist and carts are hard to come by but plain flower? ---- I can get that within an hour if I want. As far as getting arrested well don't be an idiot and you'll likely be fine. Jobs, when it comes to drug testing if it's just a pre-employment screen it's more of an intelligence test than a drug test, if it's a job that randomly tests then yeah a bit of a problem but I've never had one of those and the one time I had an employer trying to fire me they decided they would randomly drug test I had to drive myself there so kinda defeated the purpose they were trying to achieve.

What do you call a group of jerks in one place?

I believe just like the jerks of the bird world it would be a "murder" of anti-maskers.

The 2 term limit is an amendment not written into the constitution itself. So a new amendment could be written to nullify the 22nd. If the Republicans hold the senate and take congress then it would be up to the states to stop it.

Remember it's not just about the presidency this election down ballot will count as much or more.

It's why I've always enjoyed hiking. You get to see areas away from the parking lots.

Don't remember the name but there was a waterfall in the NC mountains that had a large rock at the very top in the middle of the river. If you were bold you could wade out to the it. The roar of the falls drowned out everything and the view was spectacular. I sat there for a good hour reading "On the Road" and just soaking in the solitude. Then I got in trouble apparently the year before someone tried to do the same thing slipped and went over the falls and died. That was the second time it had happened.

Still glad I did it as it is one of my fondest memories ever.

I was born in HI but left before I could remember anything went back at 11 and yeah the beach is just one long string of hotels. While I can't compare it to pre-hotels I do remember Waikiki being surprisingly well preserved despite the number of tourists.

#48

You forgot the Pink Hotel, Boutique and Swinging Hot Spot.

I hope you are right about both the effectiveness and about us returning to reality.

Very sad and had me scared for a moment I thought is might have been my mechanics and former next door neighbors brother. It's not so that's good at least.

My belief is if Joe Biden wins, he will immediately start the calm, scientifically based re-education of America on what needs to be done from that day forward

I hope that you are correct but in the current right vs. left environment we find ourselves in I don't think that has much chance of success. I fear that anything Biden tries to promote will be decried as leftist propaganda, fake news, etc.

Of course that is assuming that A) Biden wins and B) we have a peaceful transition of power.

Right now the right wing news is ripe with fears of a coup against Trump. Meanwhile Stone has said that Trump should declare martial law if he loses. The narrative is already being written that any election loss for Trump will be illegitimate and if the left tries to forcibly remove him from office it is a coup.

So if Biden wins and tries to start "calm, scientifically based re-education of America" what are the odds of that flying when 25% of the country will be convinced that Biden staged a coup and is unlawfully the president? Even baring that we live in a country where you can be shot just for asking someone to wear a mask in public, do you truly see a scenario where those people suddenly accept science based policy?

Right wing news has had a rash of stories lately about a coup against Trump. What had me most worried is the history of right wing news accusing the left of what they are doing.

Now Stone confirms my suspicions.

I agree and I agree that it was always going to be a multi year thing. My point which you touched on was the more normal. I know that no matter what we did normal was not coming back for a long time. However more normal would allow people to adapt without completely changing their lives. Instead because of slow response, aggressive anti-mask campaigns, and almost 0 effort at extensive testing and contact tracing we have the same multi-year issues but the impact is magnified.

I know how you see what I'm saying as being Trump like but I'm pretty good at reading people and seeing trends. What I am saying is what I am seeing, the corona fatigue is real and is in a large part due to the botched initial response.

Serious measures should have been needed for only a couple months while we ramped up PPE production, testing and a system for contact tracing. Then we could have settled into a new normal. Instead we did next to nothing and now we don't know if the guy behind us in line will be the one to give us Covid or not. We can't be afraid of everyone so we end up afraid of no one. Or we crack up.

We need an endgame, I don't know if it's too late to do what we should have in March or not but if not we need to do it before people just quit caring. If you think I'm just talking like Trump you couldn't be more wrong. However if something doesn't give soon the attitude of just ignore it will get to common and we really will no way to end it until it just burns out with a million or more dead.

Tony,

Intellectually I get all of that. The problem is human nature, we are simply not equipped to stay vigilant against an unseen threat that for many Americans doesn't even have the second hand visibility of knowing someone who was impacted.

IMHO that is why more concrete and drastic steps should have been taken earlier. If we had really smooshed this at the beginning then mild steps would suffice now and people, even well informed people, wouldn't be running into Covid alertness fatigue. Instead we have a situation where we are going to be expected to stay vigilant for the foreseeable future and I don't believe that will work. There will be another spike as people just quit caring. Not because they are selfish jerks but because humans are not built for this prolonged standoff with no enemy in sight. Either that or suicide and stress related health issues will spike.

I must just be one lucky SOB.

Flew to Vegas ate out there came back been going to a bar once a week for Trivia and still no Covid. Didn't quarantine at home at all through this yet still no Covid.

While I do take precautions, masks, only the one time a week in restaurants, only grocery shopping once a week and avoiding stores for anything I can get online, I'm starting to appreciate the republican view that this is overblown.

I mean I see the statistics about numbers of cases and deaths and I don't think they are made up it's just extremely hard to internalize when my life just doesn't bear out what they I'm reading.

What I wonder about is why Barr (among others) hasn't taken steps to distance himself from Trump's political funeral.
Why are they still clinging to diminishing returns?

To quote the late great Leonard Cohen

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows"

#7

It's even a minority of republican voters who are against legalization. Only 48% of Republicans oppose legal marijuana.

If you take in account the medical marijuana supporters legalization is at 90% nationwide. My state mirrors the national numbers yet bills for medical marijuana can't even get out of committee.

With such broad public support yet no policy movement I can only think that lobbyists are doing their jobs extremely well.

#13

It means whatever the user wants it to mean. We are living in the post-concrete age.

Vote early, vote often!

Trump never said such thing.

I don't think we can definitively say he did or didn't. We have people who were there who say both that yes he did and that no he didn't.

The problem for Trump is that he has a history of saying similar things, which makes it easy to believe he might have done it this time. I don't know if he did but Boaz you know darn well that it is 100% in character for Trump to have said this. I won't roast him about it because all the sources are either current or former members of his admin. and at this point none of them are trustworthy to me. However letting the past inform the future makes me very leery of your definitive statement that Trump never said such thing. I find it amazing that as a military man you are willing to give Trump so many passes about his behavior to your brothers in arms. This is not the first time he has been accused of similar comments and many of them have been recorded.

Never heard of Sturgill Simpson before but his cover of Nirvana's In Bloom is amazing!

#55

While I agree there probably aren't too many Hillary voters who will vote Trump this time what I see is the same apathy in Biden voters that I saw in the non-die hard Hillary voters last time and without the benefit of being "with her" it might be worse.

I know that you expect a large turn out of Black voters but I don't know that Biden really inspires them. I will bow to your deeper knowledge of the demographic than me though. Getting black turn out in PA and MI to flip those two and Biden only needs 1 more pick up to win.

I also feel that folks are over estimating how many Trump women will flip to Biden, in my area I'm just not seeing it but my area is not the whole nation.