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

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.

Trump hasn’t sent troops to sf yet you stupid fuck.

*except class war

Idk about the Washington part but the Oregon part would be Jefferson, so not exactly progressive, until you hit the Willamette valley which I’ve never been to but assume it’s like the central valley here in CA and full of the most annoying conservatives constantly complaining about the big cities.

Interesting that Newsom didn’t say anything when colleges were forced to send the names of any professor or student who doesn’t support genocide. I guess he has very specific concerns about academic freedom.

the vice presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss

- John Nance garner, former vice president to FDR (before truman)

The only thing that’ll improve attendance in Sacramento is if they put a giant shade over the stadium. No one wants to sit in 100 degree Sacramento heat to watch a team lose.

The quote in question in reference to AIPAC:

Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA.

You were so close MTG , if you just dropped the Christian nationalist shit I’d agree with you. I guess this is the best you’re gonna get on the right, though, and most of the other right wingers are supporting Israel for other Christian anti-semetic reasons, so lesser of two evils, I guess

She’s referring to AIPAC. She seems to think Charlie was opening up to allowing other perspectives on the issue of Palestine besides unequivocally supporting Israel before he was shot. Now she’s afraid they will take control of tp usa and shut down any debate on the issue.

case in point, in reference to some people who made edgy memes on bluesky

Twice, she’s surprisingly pro-palestine and a lot better then most dems on calling it a genocide and for an arms embargo to israel.

Horrible on almost everything else though…

I agree with you that there are certain issues that will require long incremental complex change that is hard to sell to a populace addicted to short simple sound bites. I also believe there are a lot of issues that can be implemented in a congressional term that can be summarized easily, but dems refuse to do them because it would require large systemic change that there donors don’t want. Messages like Medicare for all, free childcare, student loan forgiveness all funded by a wealth tax on billionaires. This is a very popular, simple message you can give to the masses while at the same time laying out those long term complex technocratic plans for those who care.

The dems are only giving those technocratic plans though, and it shows as less and less non-college educated people are voting democrat. We can say theyre just stupid sheep but those sheep are a majority of the population and if we don’t cater to them, we’ll never win another election.