Minnesota looking good right now

it's not about the weed, it's about making more excuses to detain/arrest/murder brown people

this combined with them really pushing to make recording the police a felony
Legalized weed makes everything safer, crime goes down, people are dealing with addiction less, drinking even goes down, all of these things are terrible for the police
- billionaires, and by extension, the lawmakers they own, don't give a rat's ass about the police. police are little people. they just need to be controlled like everyone else. look the other way when they murder minorities, give them fancy swat gear and a tank, and they're happy. are they in danger? who cares? they don't make the policy, they enforce it
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional
to be exact, to fill up those 70+ for profit prisons in texas.
It has been all along.
True, but they DO still like denying fun to themselves and their same-race underlings as well.

As a Canadian, I can't believe how sad the US has become, and they're regressing in freefall mode.

That's Texas, it's different.
- Texas is the beta test for the rest of America.

Man, when even weed money can't move past your draconian and shitty religious doctrine. Conservatives are a plague on society's progress.

No way would I encourage anyone from that shitty state to move to my state. Stay there and deal with the mess you made.

A lot of people don't realize how rigged Texas is, or how recent it's redness is.
The Governor prior to Bush was a Democratic woman. Bush got elected off his name, then got the Presidency. In the Republican bump from that the Republicans got a majority in the Texas legislature for the first time since Reconstruction in 2003, which they used to massively gerrymander the state.
Prior to 2004, the majority of Texas reps.to Congress had never been Republican. Following the 2003 redistricting, it was over 2:1 Republican. They've locked down voting districts and attacked voting rights ever since to maintain their majority, while courting out-of-state conservatives to move to Texas and driving progressives away.
The reality is the Republicans got full control of the state government in a single legitimate election in 2002 and have spent the last 2 decades rigging the system to ensure they never lose that power.
- The blue print for what's come after across the country.
The people of Texas are gerrymandered to oblivion and this is well documented. They didn't vote for this. Billionaires came to Tx and bought the politicians, maga spread through and removed the old style Rs.
Not that I think anyone should try to run from these problems. They should be faced head on. But, it's important to not blame the wrong people.
You know that not everyone in Texas voted for this shit, right? Many people voted against it, and many can't vote because they were underage at the time, undocumented or disenfranchised.
So kindly, take your bad take and get fucked.
I have been doing everything reasonably possible to prevent and unfuck my local situation in Texas, but the state as a whole is absolutely screwed. I would argue that a very large minority is aggressively uninformed politically, and has no desire to educate themselves. They want to be sucked into the gravity well of their bigotry and hate and Christian window-dressing. It's disgusting and depressing and you would not believe the amount of people that I respected before all of this mess that I want nothing to do with anymore because of the ideologies they are willing to espouse. I barely interact with any of my family any more because most of them wanted this situation and still won't openly admit that they did this.
I feel completely powerless and like my only option is to run as far away from the place I have called home for my entire life.
- That's how I'm starting to feel about the USA as a whole, but there's no place that I can think would take my family easily.
you do realize people can't choose where they were born or what living situation they're forced into,, right?
- Like Guatemalans etal ?
I'm surprised you don't have idiots replying to you while locked in a loop of saying "But Austin is libral though!" over and over.
- I definitely have idiots replying though lol
We're still paying for their goddamned Feb '21 weather event on our power bills!

i love how joe rogan and elon moved to texas from california for "freedom"

Texas has rich person freedom though

May as well get used to the cold weather by moving north since we will have to run to Canada next.

That’s why Trump keeps talking about invading Canada
Easier to secede to Canada if you share a border

I’ve got some mates who live in MN and you’re limited to 10mg edibles and drinkables, no regular Delta 9 bud, and weak solvent vape pens (no resin or rosin)

Their shitty republican neighbor state has real bud and more than 10mg consumables…

MN is almost there re:pot, but not quite!

Come to Michigan. Help us go from a swing state to a solid blue, and enjoy some of the cheapest high quality legal weed you can find.
- Michigan dispensaries are the shit!
- I was down in the US for a festival and made some Michigan friends who had the best dabs I’ve ever tried in my life.
MN is a state where businesses couldn't sell alcohol on Sundays only until a couple of years ago. We're weird about very specific things.
- It's perfectly understandable. A Minnesotan mustn't be too joyful. "It could be worse" are the words for a Minnesotan to live by. Allowing alcohol on Sunday brings it uncomfortably close to "I'm doing great"
- Aren't there weird laws that require bars to have a pot of soup cooking during business hours, even if nobody ever orders it?
They made a shit show out of the licencing. First they sold permits, but then decided they were going to favor minorities in the licencing process. Royalty pissing off people who had already paid the huge fee. The new scheme got struck down in the courts. Now nobody knows what's happening with it. Except the tribes, who are the only people able to commercially grow at the moment. Total shit show, a Minnesota classic.
But you can grow your own.
- Playing games with people's freedom. The freedom the people voted for.
  And these are the so called "good guys?" Get fucked democrats, you find a way to fuck people over even when they vote to stop the fucking.
I live near a dispensary and they sell a lot more than that, I think it's only hemp that's restricted. Edibles and stuff you can buy the pound of you can swallow the taxes.
- My mate has to go to WI to get 20mg+. No shot of getting at Minnesota and it fucking sucks that it takes all of her break to go get it
That's because the DFL took advantage of a VERY brief Trifecta in the state government to pass legal weed, and now they've had to spend years waring through Republican jiggery pokery in order to even get an official management body to oversee licenses and regulation.

Tim Walz is fucking killing it.

If he'd been the nominee they'd have had a much better chance of stopping Trump and fascism.

Alas, they don't want to stop Trump or fascism.

Given the Democrats' long history of picking the worst possible candidate at any given time, I'm genuinely confused as to how Harris landed on Waltz instead of Shapiro.
Alas, they don’t want to stop Trump or fascism.
Republicans move the country to the right. Democrats stop the county from rebounding left. A beautiful political ratchet that's been marching us further and further towards full blown fascism since the Nixon Era.
- I was legit shocked to learn that Walz championed free school lunches as governor.
Fuck, it's so great to have you here as the only person in the planet to be able to timetravel and have that amazing 20/20 vision. You should use this powers for good and go back in time and kill Hitler or whatever.
- If only I had the technology. I would make an Arya Stark List.
- Respectfully, your behavior is what's killing the Democratic Party. Do you think this kind of tone and engagement attracts voters?

Ban THC but allow alcohol, tobacco, and guns?

BHA-HA-HA-HA!

THC can let people have introspection of themselves and the world around them.
Alcohol is a downer than dumbs you down. And a lot of it can weigh you down for if you need to fight against something.
Tobacco is an upper that you can do with other tasks, and is addictive. Tobacco is heavy in use in red states and the military.
Guns can be aimed at anyone for any reason no matter the justification.
So if you're a government wanting to keep the working class poor, dumb, distracted, and needing to work for their fixes along with rent, food, anything medical, why give them acess to something that could break this?
Maybe I'm thinking too much on this.

We had a local place near me selling red "make weed gas again" hats. I've been in one time since and it has been completely dead during normally heavy traffic times.

Like these idiots don't know or even cared what they voted for other than "I'm a dude, I can't vote for a woman"

make weed gas again
I can't figure out what this means
- "High grade"
- It means all the stuff they can buy under the farm bill isn't very strong and they want the real stuff
- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gas
- I assume it means smoking the weed (turning it into gas).

Why is Texas so communist? Freedom haters the lot of them.

I feel so bad for normal decent Texans. Their politicians are among the worst in the world. I can’t think of a single Texas Republican who doesn’t deserve the death penalty.

The situation tells us that there are very few decent Texans.
Even the most vile Southerners are polite in the company of others.
- The situation tells us that there are very few decent Texans.
  The state is comically gerrymandered and rigorously disenchrancised. We have majority black counties where a single voting location will have a seven hour queue, sky high incarceration rates intended to disenfranchise huge swaths of the public, and some of the most reactionary public TV and radio combined with the most poorly funded and badly administered education.
  This is a controlled population. People will talk shit about Russia and North Korea. But Texas is running right along beside them.
  Only question is how long until Texas fully embraces the kind of ethnic cleansing common to Israel.

I moved to Minnesota from San Diego 5 years ago and it feels like a better decision every single day

Aiming my way there from Ohio within the next year, any recommendations?
- Get to know other transplants to Minnesota ahead of time or find a way to meet some once you move. Native Minnesotans are notoriously tough to befriend; many Minnesotans have friend groups that go back to primary school and can be kind of standoffish at first.
- The cities are cool, and like any major metropolitan area, every neighborhood has its own vibe. Duluth is a REALLY cool city, and totally worth a look. But I ended up in this small, off the freeway, city called Northfield. It's really nice. There are plenty of jobs, lots of services, the rent is okay, and there are two liberal arts colleges here, which means that this tends to be a really progressive area
- Come fly into the twin cities and take a look around. There's tons of different neighborhoods and you can drive to the major other cities in a day. Duluth is great and got a whole different biome from the Twin Cities. You can go to Rochester which is growing fast and has the Mayo Clinic if you need or want to work medical care. I love stillwater since it's a small town close to the twin cities but not really a suburb. You can't really go wrong.
  Also to note Minnesota has three different ecological biomes in it. Prairies, coniferous forest and deciduous forests. So you can pick your landscape and see others nearby

What’s Minnesota like? I grew up in snow but now reside in the southern heat and I don’t like it.

We have more snow and northern, humid heat. Summer average is 80s but peaks over 100 few times a year. So humid you can shower on Monday and still be wet behind the ears come Tuesday. And the mosquito is the state bird.
I like living in MN. Yes, the winters can get long. But during the winter, it's not necessarily snowy all the time. Yes we get storms. But for most of the time, it's too cold to get snow. Mainly sunny days that look nice out, but are actually -20 F - 20 F. Sometimes snow, sometimes gloomy and cold. January average temp is 10 F.
Summer, we do have humidity and heat.
Snowy
- Kinda. It's not snowy in terms of sheer snow fall like the West Coast or the Rockies, but it's cold and once the snow falls, it's there till spring.

Anyone still listening to JRE know what he thinks about it? I wonder if he went full hypocrite at this rate or still has some principles.

he went from weed to horse ROIDS.

Is Tim Walz Canadian?

That's Tim Horton.
Tim Walz is the governor of Minnesota. (Wikipedia)

I like the cold…

Texas is Gilead

They just banned them here in Alabama last week

But it snows in Minnesota. Fuck being cold.

The houses are warm and insulated (in general). The clothing keeps one warm between buildings. Friendly people.
Snow is around for less than 6 months a year.
- “Snow is around for less than 6 months a year.”
  I’ve seen snow maybe 4 times in my life enough to disrupt traffic and that was too much. 60° is pretty cold