Actually no, it's because American voters are driven entirely by fear. If you look at the last 3 presidential elections, Trump's numbers barely budged. That's because the same number of voters are terrified that Democrats are going to ruin the country. More immigrants voted for Trump in 2016 than Romney in 2012. It does not follow any rational basis of merit.

Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris fared poorly not because they were women, but because they were solid competent candidates. Democrats thought they couldn't lose to a misogynist madman, so they didn't lose those 4 hours wages to go vote. See in the US you don't get paid leave to vote, it costs you, and the voting districts in democratic regions are made as inconvenient to vote as possible. Biden won because as a senile old boomer they knew he needed all the help he could get.

So no, they actually made the climate change denial laws because they actually believed climate change to be liberal hogwash. That's how pervasive and entrenched propaganda is in the US. Not much better here in Canada sadly. We're about to elect a similar demagogue, Pierre Poilivre, and of course our former prime minister is the chairman of the IDU, Stephen Harper.

And then subsequently this in 2015, a North Carolina town quashed a solar farm because they feared it would take sunlight away from farms. I shit you not.

https://abc11.com/sun-solar-panels-energy/1122081

There are many US state laws that outlaw the consideration of climate change for various things. In 2012 North Carolina banned insurance companies from considering the impending rise in sea level for flood insurance. I'm going to hazard a guess that several reps in the state legislature had oceanfront property.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782

I'm also not American but I predicted these results based upon very simple factors that also worked against Hilary Clinton:

If you look at previous elections, the republican popular vote count barely twitches, no matter who's running. The only significant factor is whether or not the democrats show up or not, because their numbers are all over the place.

The two things that inhibit democrat voters the most are apathy and overconfidence. The attrition of the countless attack ads generates the apathy for politics in general, and then the thought that Clinton or Harris might possibly lose to Trump is unthinkable, so losing ~4 hours wages to go vote seems like a waste of time. That's why 81M voted for Biden, a weaker candidate felt they needed to show up for, 66M for Clinton, and 68M for Harris. I swear it's not sexism, it's "how could she possibly lose to a womanizing felon?"

Meanwhile employers are voting republican every time for the tax break carrot ever dangling ahead, and have every reason to prevent their employees from voting for worker's rights. Welcome to American democracy.

I drive a 2004 Toyota Sienna with 150k miles on it, so about 300k left to go

It's perfectly fair for a law to assume changes as the language does. Government became more regulatory as we now know it, why wouldn't that evolution apply to the language of the laws they're entrusted to enforce? It's not like anyone's suggesting an army regular be kicked out for having incontinence ;)

Stephen Harper is one of the most corrupt politicians to ever walk the earth. He is currently the CEO of the IDU, which is essentially an international neo-conservative cabal. But most curiously he was recently made an executive of Couche-Tard, the Quebec company that owns Circle K, which recently took over the majority of convenience stores in Canada. Here in Ontario, premier Doug Ford (brother of infamous crack smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford) recently spent $1B to terminate a contract early so that alcohol could be sold at convenience stores. Stephen Harper was appointed to the board of Couche-Tard DAYS after that deal went through. Does he seem like someone with a keen interest in schlepping corn dogs and Bud Light?

In fairness concerning countries that have higher gun deaths per capita, they're all overrun with drug cartels. The US has no such excuse.

I also live in Canada, and yes just last week in my city of 135k a small cache of guns was discovered during a wellness check on someone at the request of his family. Among the guns was an AK-47 with 7 50-round magazines. There's no rational defensive application for that amount of spraying power.

But the key thing is that criminals that aren't insane aren't expecting their victims to be packing, so armed robberies are generally with non-firearm weapons. Why risk an extra 10 years on your sentence when a knife or even just a baseball bat is enough to get a victim's cooperation?

Health care in conservative-run provinces is being sabotaged by the governments themselves, full stop.

Look up the OECD data for tax and health care costs vs GDP in the US vs Canada. Canada pays 32% of its GDP in taxes at all levels, which includes health care. The US pays 27% plus another 17% for health care, 44% total. And that's with people being refused medical care and inferior social programs. Believe it or not, Canada is a pretty sweet bargain. We've just been pounded by propaganda from shill organizations like the Fraser Institute for decades. #1 contributor to the Fraser Institute is Koch Industries. I rest my case.

This is what passes for good news in the US apparently. Sounds like it was taken from the pages of prison riot protocols.

That 12% of GDP is Canada's entire energy sector. Canada exports a staggering amount of electricity to the US, mostly the northeast, representing about 3/4 of its energy sector revenues. Its fossil fuel sector is only 3.2%, for which is expels 40% of its GHG emissions burning coal to power the upgrading of bitumen from the oil sands into crude oil. Most of the coal burned is actually petcoke, the leftovers from upgrading bitumen into crude oil, which has even higher CO2 emissions than coal.

But good luck convincing oil companies to stop burning petcoke to power bitumen upgrading when the petcoke is produced exactly where the upgrading occurs. They would literally have to pay to remove the petcoke they rightfully own to make room for coal they'd have to buy and pay to transport from elsewhere.

That's Canada's dirty secret that its oil companies desperately keep quiet, that the oil sands cannot possibly turn a profit without an unconscionable amount of CO2 emissions. If it weren't for bitumen processing, Canada's CO2 emissions would drop overnight to the average of industrialized countries. Instead it rivals middle eastern oil producers. Most of Canada wants it stopped, but Alberta would sooner separate from Canada rather than stop killing the planet for a few bucks.

So it's more than slightly hypocritical for Canada to tax Chinese EV's on a punitive basis when it can't stop egregious environmentally damaging practices in its own backyard. Methinks they doth protest too much. I suspect they're simply caving to pressure from their oil and auto sectors, as usual.

Heads you drag a 2000lb steel chassis behind your bike. Tails your bike gets an AirTag. Pretty easy math, especially if you ever want to find your stolen bike.

Take Nickleback for example. I saw them in Vancouver before they were signed. They weren't bad, checked all the boxes, but nothing to write home about. Then they disappeared for 18 months, then suddenly a big label is hyping the crap out of the polished turds they became. That's not how art is developed, that's how the "Walmart rock" market was generated.

Touring sound tech here, currently about 2000mi from home touring with an indie rock band in the midwest US.

Something everyone's missing is that artists and promoters are helpless to set the actual ticket price appropriate to the fan base of the region of an event, which will vary extremely by region/country/continent.

Meanwhile TM sees an event starting to sell well, jacks up its fees, bot operators scoop up remaining tickets to sell off at a mark-up so high they come out ahead even if they only sell 1/4 of them. Take a wild guess how infuriating it is to perform a sold-out show to only 2/3 full audience knowing that scalpers made more than the band and prevented fans from attending and buying merch etc.

TM, LN, and streamers like Spotify are all cancers upon the music industry ensuring only the big dogs get to eat, and the gatekeepers control the content more than the artists.

Don't pretend you have any clue who Tay Tay is, what she believes in, what she wants to sing about, any of it. She and everyone else are actors playing exclusive roles that have been designed and made available to them by quashing any similar competition. You aren't fans, you are cattle who have been corralled by a lack of choice to get you to accept whatever fees they throw at you to satisfy your completely artificial desire.

Transparency in ticketing is a laudable goal so artists and promoters can better set appropriate pricing, but just the most obvious tip of the iceberg. The whole industry is an epic clusterf*ck. I make 10x more as a sound tech and motorhome owner than I ever could as a musician of over 30 years. At least I get to pick and choose who I work with and provide them with a substantial advantage I find very rewarding. I'm a stark minority in this sh*tshow, falling less of a victim to the c*nts in control.

Can I pay $20/mo for it to stop monitoring me from other people's phones? They know it's me...