That’s not something controlled solely by the executive branch.

Not entirely. Not solely controlled by the president for sure. But this is where we get into the question of law vs. regulation. Law gives DEA the right to regulate drugs and substances. DEA classifies marijuana as harmful, thus it becomes illegal. Law requires the 4473 form question on illegal drugs. Political decisionmaking and bureaucratic policy decide whether state medical marijuana registries should be imported into NICS deny lists. And Biden is of course responsible for the actions and communications of his own office.

So if Biden wanted to go hardcore pro-weed, he could simply order DEA to de-schedule marijuana, and if they refuse demand the resignation of the DEA head and replace them with someone who’d deschedule weed. That then effectively removes the federal prohibition on marijuana. As a softer action, he could order FBI to not import state MMJ registry lists into NICS. And he could direct his office that while he and they may be anti-gun, marijuana won’t be used against gun owners.

But it has been the position of various parts of the executive branch that marijuana users must still be prohibited…

XKCD #538: Security

Joe Biden could theoretically pardon all people in violation of this, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a blanket universal pardon involving guns

Nope. Biden’s DOJ was happily pushing the ‘weed users can’t have guns’ as one angle of gun control, while the administration was simultaneously pushing the ‘weed shouldn’t be persecuted’ angle. Quite hypocritical really.

China’s too smart to ‘invade’ Taiwan. There will be no tanks and helicopters invading. China / CCP may be assholes but they are also fucking smart.

Look at Hong Kong. There were no tanks or helicopters. Just steadily increasing political control. More or less the entirety of HK protested for weeks/months. It did fuck all.

That will be what happens with Taiwan. It won’t be an invasion. It will be a gradual slide.

Right now, USA officially supports the ‘One China’ policy to appease China even though we want Taiwan to be independent. It’s let us keep huge trade with China (which the Chinese also want/need) while we depend (and NEED) Taiwan for a lot of tech manufacturing especially computer chips.

Thing is, China has no desire to be dependent on us. They want us dependent on them for manufacturing, but don’t want to need that business. That’s why China is doing aggressive R&D on pretty much every high tech area they depend on the West for, trying to ensure that everything China needs can be made in China from Chinese tech. To do that they need to be able to design and manufacture the latest computer chips, which they currently can’t. But they’re pouring billions into figuring it out.

If China takes over Taiwan, either openly or covertly, they get TSMC. And that gives them all the chipmaking tech they need.

Don’t expect tanks. Expect state sponsored industrial espionage at TSMC and their own suppliers. Then expect Chinese chipmakers to flood the market with top-line or near-top-line hardware at low prices, which US won’t embargo and thus we’ll get even more dependent on China.

And to that I ask, why do the Democrats not also use the filibuster? Or when they have control of the Senate, rewrite the rules to disallow a procedural filibuster and make it so if you want to filibuster something you have to actually stand up there and read the phone book into the record for hours on end?
If the filibuster is the problem, why is there not a large public campaign for filibuster reform?

I’m sorry but this is an excuse plain and simple. The procedural filibuster, which I personally think should be abolished, can be used as a weapon by either side. If GOP filibusters the school spending bill, Dems should filibuster the defense spending bill. If GOP filibusters the medical care bill, Dems should filibuster the warrantless wiretapping bill (well, they should do that anyway, but you get the point).

Of course people are tuning out. Please keep in mind I am saying the following as a mostly liberal slightly libertarian.

What has passed for liberal culture over the last decade has included an awful lot of outrage over every injustice but not an awful lot of solid action to correct those injustices. The Democratic party has tried to harness that with a lot of identity politics that avoid the real issues. And so the result is you have a ton of people who are always upset but things never get better.

So of course people burn out. Or they get cynical and decide nothing is going to change so it’s not worth getting worked up over. You see a lot of that in this very thread.

To anyone angry at me, downvote me if you want, but if you want change actually fucking do something. Stop consuming short form content like Twitter and TikTok, start consuming long form things that make you think and expose you to different viewpoints. Lex Friedman interviews are a good place to start.

Understand that not everybody who disagrees with you is bad or evil or malicious.
Very few issues are simple. There is rarely an absolute obvious right and wrong. And if somebody adopts a viewpoint you think is wrong, consider that maybe they have reasons they think it’s right and use those reasons to challenge your own beliefs. You may conclude that they are still wrong, but you must be open to the possibility that you might be wrong. If you aren’t open to being wrong, why should they be?
And in the world where nobody can admit they are wrong, nothing productive happens. You just have two sides shouting at each other.

Then take a step back from your own personal outrage and think about what is actually important. If you had to choose between ensuring every American has good health care, and ensuring every American has their pronouns recognized, which do you think is more important? So which one are you focusing your advocacy and speech on?

The simple fact is, if you (and I am addressing everybody on all sides here) stop getting riled up over wedge issues and start focusing on the things that The majority of the country can agree on, you might find there’s an awfully big agenda of problems we all agree should be fixed that aren’t even being discussed.

He was handed a company in a horrible strategic place and he did the right things to fix it. Reinvest in process technology mainly. Those investments do not bear fruit overnight. They take years. Whoever replaces him could basically be a stuffed suit and will probably have some success if only from his investments starting to pay off. It’s too bad he didn’t get a few more quarters to see it happen.

Or to change that stupid ATF form 4473 which basically requires anyone who smokes weed to either commit a felony by lying (checking the box for they don’t use illegal drugs) or tell the truth (checking the box that they do) and being unable to purchase a firearm. Unfortunately the war on law abiding gun owners had to continue so on a few occasions their position continued to be that marijuana users should not be allowed to buy or own firearms.

Hypocrisy+++++

An awful lot of regulations are written in blood. I am not suggesting we relax any of them. I’m talking about the endless supply of permits and forms and local government licenses and that sort of thing. There is an awful lot of regulation that does absolutely nothing to increase safety, it’s just bureaucracy. We could get rid of all that without impacting safety.

Yeah but throw some batteries on that solar, which you really should do anyway, and you’re good to go. IMHO the batteries are what really makes self-sufficiency possible. With a good size solar array and a good size battery, you can be not only a net exporter but more or less an always exporter, rarely if ever taking power from the grid.

Run on sunshine during the day and stored sunshine at night. Unfortunately a lot of places it’s not legal to have a house with no grid connection, even if one isn’t necessary.

Absolutely 100% Right now having solar panels on your house is ‘branded’ as some sort of green save the planet thing.

Putting enough panels that your house can go totally off-grid with a little cutback and usage, that’s as independent as you get. Save money too.

This is largely accurate unfortunately. A good example is Apple. They tried to make a high-end desktop computer manufactured in the US. To do this they needed a specific type of screw. In the area near their factory, they only found one machine shop that could make the screw and they could guarantee an output of 50 screws per day after a 3 week lead time to tool up. And that was the final offer.

When they finally moved to China, they submitted the same request. Multiple vendors appeared offering thousands of screws per day and if they wanted to place a bigger order the company would set up a new factory just to produce those screws and could output tens or hundreds of thousands per day depending on requirements.

Another example is the iPhone and Gorilla Glass. There were a few Chinese companies in the running to manufacture the glass panel that would go on top of the phone. The one that got the contract, in anticipation of getting the contract, had already purchased the machine to form the glass and had samples ready for inspection at the contract signing.

We have allowed our business climate to become so bogged down in red tape and liability and lawyers and insurance, that most American companies are simply unable to execute at the same speed as China when it comes to manufacturing.

I would absolutely love to get more manufacturing back in the US. But the process of outsourcing is not going to get unwound overnight. It took two decades to move everything to China, even if the whole country agreed that was a mistake it would take another two decades to bring it back. Because as the Apple screws demonstrate, it’s not just about the factory that produces the widget. It’s about everything that goes into that factory, the companies that make the parts and the screws and the plastic. When you deal with China, they are all right there and they are all ready to go. Same can’t be said for the US.

Quantity isn’t everything

That right there hits the nail on the head. There is a certain critical mass, an activity level that makes satisfy most discussion needs for most users. It’s a tiny fraction of the total traffic of a place like Reddit or Twitter.
But if we have that, and keep the quality level up, we can succeed.

Success to me doesn’t mean killing Reddit and Twitter. It means creating a place where smart people can come and find enough content and discussion that they don’t need Reddit and Twitter.

If she was actually using that message, which I never heard, no wonder she lost. People don’t want the absence of something, they want radical change. They want a country that works for the middle class rather than just for the 1%. That’s why Obama’s message resonated. And that’s why Trump’s message resonates. He at least acknowledges that shit’s broken and he promises to fix it. He may be the wrong person to fix it and he may have no interest in fixing it, but his message at least acknowledges that there is a serious problem.

Harris had some policies, but not a real underlying message. She could have made a message like ‘bring back the American dream’ and that might have gotten her a win. Obama’s message was ‘yes we can’. Trump’s message is ‘make America great again’. You need a theme message like that, if you only talk positions you get lost in the noise of our shitty media.

In a sense, you’re right. And there’s a bit of magic involved. If you cut a certain special rock into slices, engrave runes on one side of it, and inject lightning, the rock starts to think. I don’t see how you can describe that as anything other than magic.

This is exactly it. A lot of people are struggling. They see less jobs, less pay, meanwhile the rich get richer. They see a system that benefits everybody except them. So Trump comes along and says he’s going to fuck up the system. That sounds pretty good. And if he can make a decent excuse that he’s been fucked by the system too, people are willing to overlook a lot.

Plus, let’s not forget Harris had very little real message. Obama had a message- hope, change, yes we can. Hillary was as status quo as you can get, and people wants to reform. Kamala’s message was basically ‘I’m not Trump’ but unfortunately that’s not good enough to get you elected. Especially not when, before Biden dropped out and she got anointed, she was polling in the single digits.

Or, an awful lot of Americans are angry, they see the world passing them by and they see a line of politicians that have all promised to do something and done nothing. So they are angry. They are pissed off at the establishment, at the status quo.
Donald Trump may be a liar and an asshole but he is definitely not establishment and definitely not status quo.
So they vote for him, hoping that maybe he will actually do a little bit of what he promises if only because when he speaks it doesn’t sound like a PR department is talking.

If Democrats want to win, they need a real message. Obama had a real message. Hope, change, yes we can. That was a real message. And he was, by and large, an excellent president. I don’t regret my vote for him. But he made one big mistake. He ran on a platform of radical reform, and then delivered only moderate reform. Still a very successful president.

And who does the DNC put forward after him? Hillary. About as radical as soggy toast. And they shunt Bernie to the side, the one who actually could have won. Let’s not forget that before this election started and Biden dropped out, Harris was polling in the single digits among Democrats.

If you want to win elections, you need a stronger message than ‘I’m not Trump’. THAT is why Kamala lost. She did not have that strong message. To say otherwise is to deny reality and ensure that history repeats itself.

Okay Trump is recent, but his whole change of focus since buying Twitter is where public opinion on him shifted. That started a shift in public statement more toward the libertarian or perhaps conservative and that made him unpopular with a lot of the liberals who previously liked him for pushing environmental causes.

Now that he pushes conservative and libertarian ideals, supports a Republican candidate, he becomes persona non grata. That may well be valid, but it should not take away recognition of his other accomplishments. If he’s now an asshole, he can be a visionary asshole. Becoming an asshole doesn’t mean he isn’t or wasn’t a visionary.

I’m not saying he’s not an asshole. But he is a visionary.

And right now, if he wasn’t up Trump’s ass, you’d probably be saying he’s a visionary without sarcasm.