Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“A decade ago, only a fairly small group of congressional Democrats voted to support President Barack Obama’s free trade agenda. Protectionism was on the rise, helping fuel the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Most of the “yes” votes for Obama’s trade program were Republicans.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/05/jared-polis-trump-democrats-campaign-free-trade-inflation-00592744
Tea partiers give Trump a higher proportion of their support than do non-tea party Republicans, but Trump has always had a significant amount of support from both. The tea party as a movement motivated by debt and government spending was a myth. Someone truly angry about debt and spending does not support Trump.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/05/16/trumps-staunch-gop-supporters-have-roots-in-the-tea-party/#:~:text=GOP%20tea%20party%20supporters%20were%20most%20likely,stands%20for%20in%20a%202016%20postelection%20survey
“President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on Republicans to redraw congressional maps across the country, going as far as weighing a primary challenge to New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte if she continues avoiding a remapping effort in her state.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/redistricting-republican-loyalty-test-trump-00584932
Sometimes, for wars to end, leaders on the losing side have to decide that they love their kids more than they hate their enemy. Hamas hates Israel more than they care about the lives of Palestinians, so Hamas refuses to surrender.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br3FD3Rt5-Q
When a shooter can be viewed as of the left, or is an illegal immigrant, or Muslim, Trump and Trump supporters talk about the shooter and jump to conclusions about what this means about their political opponents or groups in society they don’t like. When the shooter is a Trump supporter…crickets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMGNgIVXK-U
“What does shutdown theater actually cost taxpayers? Lost Productivity, for starters. The 2013 shutdown cost $2.5 billion in back pay to 850,000 furloughed employees who missed a combined 6.6 million work days. All that productivity was permanently lost, since they were paid for work not performed.
Shutdowns also result in special expenses specifically related to preparing for shutdowns. Before each shutdown, agencies must develop detailed contingency plans outlining which functions will continue and which will stop. This pulls hundreds of thousands of employees from their regular duties to document procedures that everyone hopes will never be used.
Shutdowns cause economic disruption. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 2018-2019 shutdown reduced GDP by $11 billion in all, including $3 billion that will never be recovered. The 2013 shutdown cost the economy $24 billion and 120,000 private sector jobs.
Finally, shutdowns cause a great deal of administrative drama. Beyond direct costs, shutdowns can delay tax refunds (almost $4 billion in 2013), halt fee collections, and force the government to pay penalty interest on late payments. These indirect costs often exceed the supposed savings from furloughing workers. (White House Office of Management and Budget, November 2013)”
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/5523992-government-never-shuts-down-heres-what-actually-happens-in-budget-standoffs/?tbref=hp
Why Voters Will Feel the Impact of GOP Health Cuts Before the Midterms
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/18/trump-gop-healthcare-cuts-00569743
“Over the last eight months, the Trump administration has run roughshod over Congress and its constitutional prerogatives. Trump’s decision to ignore the TikTok ban on his first day in office may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but it foreshadowed a series of far more aggressive moves to usurp much of lawmakers’ constitutional authority: dismantling congressionally-created agencies, redirecting congressionally appropriated funds and implementing a massive tax hike on the American public in the form of Trump’s chaotic tariff regime.
The vast majority of this was made possible by congressional Republicans, who have largely turned a blind eye to all of Trump’s gambits, and by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, who have handed Trump a series of victories this year in his wide-ranging efforts to both unilaterally slash the federal government while dramatically expanding the powers of the presidency.
The acquiescence to Trump’s TikTok reprieve this year has been a far more bipartisan affair, but it has been a constitutional farce all the same, and it is not over yet.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/19/tiktok-trump-xi-deal-law-column-00571832
Timeline of US Political Parties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6NUXKe65A
Senate Republicans barely defeat effort by Democrats to force release of Epstein files
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/senate-republicans-barely-defeat-effort-223120061.html