Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The AfD is heavily supported by Russian propaganda. The AfD is against stopping Russia from conquering Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwgFeOJH6tk
“After Republicans in Congress let enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans expire in January, millions of Americans including Button had to decide whether to keep insurance that often doubled or tripled in cost — or risk going without it.
Months later, with no action from lawmakers to replace the lost funds, they’re facing the consequences. Some are dealing with strained budgets and exorbitant medical bills, while others avoid the doctor in fear of the cost.
Florida, whose large population of gig workers, entrepreneurs and small business owners relies heavily on the federal health insurance marketplace, has become one of the nation’s most visible epicenters of that impact.
Figures first reported by The Associated Press showed that about 440,000 Floridians dropped their Affordable Care Act plans this year — more than in any other state. Thousands more who kept coverage are struggling to get by, as prices of necessities like groceries and gasoline remain steep, and health insurers project another year of double-digit premium hikes.
While Florida had the most affected residents, its struggles are reflective of broader nationwide concerns over rising healthcare costs and a lack of meaningful policy to address them.
In the deep-red state where congressional districts were recently redrawn to strongly favor Republicans, the cost of healthcare is a major campaign issue. Republican midterm candidates have been promoting fraud crackdowns to protect federal health programs, while Democrats have been urging voters to help Congress change hands so they can restore subsidies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/us–healthcare-florida-fallout-104138342.html
“the president and his political allies flooded the ordinarily sleepy state legislative primaries — where the spending is typically in the tens of thousands and primary votes cast number about 10,000 to 12,000 — with millions of dollars in advertising casting the incumbents as disloyal to Trump and blaming them for voters’ various frustrations, particularly property taxes.
Trump’s approval rating has slipped nationally, and his support among independents has evaporated. But very conservative voters — those who make up his base — are still with him. And they are the voters who decide contests like state Senate primaries in deep-red Indiana.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-gets-revenge-other-takeaways-031835956.html
“Wage growth has caught up with inflation on average. But wage gains haven’t been uniform: The lowest-paid workers saw some of the biggest gains, particularly in the leisure and hospitality sectors, but other industries, from advertising to chemical manufacturing, saw their wages decline relative to inflation.”
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“Even if workers received raises that outpaced inflation, that doesn’t help with sticker shock. Research has shown that consumers have an internalized “reference price” — a conception of what constitutes a fair price for a good they routinely purchase. If that imagined price doesn’t match up with reality, consumers feel short-changed.”
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“Consumers also often misunderstand how inflation works. The important thing to know is that it only goes one way: When inflation decreases, that just means that prices are increasing less quickly, not that they are going down. (That can happen, though rarely.)
Prices going down, a phenomenon known as deflation, would be a potentially worrying signal about the health of the economy. If consumers pay less for a good, that can translate to less money to pay the workers who produce and distribute it, leading to less consumer spending overall and slower economic growth.”
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“people are staying unemployed for longer: 1.6 million Americans were unemployed for a period of at least 27 weeks in October, compared to just 1.3 million the same month last year.”
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“After a brief spike in savings rates during the pandemic due to a series of stimulus checks, Americans are now saving less than they were pre-pandemic. This creates a cycle where Americans have less money, so they borrow more. Because interest rates have been high, borrowing has become more expensive, leaving them with even less money.”
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/383397/economy-inflation-2024-election-democrats-trump
Harris played it like she was protecting a lead, but it appears she never really had one.
Biden quitting late, removed the possibility of a real primary to get the best candidate, and left Harris with little time to run a campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7RtPQvJfl4
Jon Stewart on Trump’s McDonald’s Shift & His “Enemy Within” Threat | The Daily Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5KWZL1blWc
Fox Host Gets CRANKY With Harris And It Backfires BIG TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC3Ps1fzVP4
“Vance repeatedly downplayed the radicalism of Trump’s agenda by saying things that were not strictly untrue but which conveyed a (beneficially) false impression of the ticket’s positions.
He used this gambit most shamelessly when defending Trump’s commitment to democracy. Confronted with his running mate’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — in part, by fomenting an insurrectionary riot at the US Capitol — Vance declared that Trump told the protesters on January 6 to protest “peacefully,” and that he “peacefully gave over power on January 20th as we have done for 250 years in this country.”
On January 6, 2021, Trump did call on his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But also told them to “fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And while the former president did eventually leave office of his own volition, he first attempted to coerce election officials in multiple states to help him retain power by nullifying results.
Similarly, in defending Trump’s proposal to put a 10 percent tariff on all foreign imports, Vance suggested that the policy was bipartisan common sense, observing that Joe Biden himself had preserved some of “the Trump tariffs that protected American manufacturing jobs.” But this was virtually a non sequitur: Imposing tariffs on a select number of goods that one deems to be of strategic importance and imposing a 10 percent duty on all imports, including agricultural products that the United States cannot possibly produce domestically — are dramatically different propositions. Vance’s line is a bit like suggesting that it isn’t controversial for the government to nationalize all industries because both parties support the existence of public schools and veterans hospitals.
Finally, and most subtly, Vance muddied the waters on abortion by expressing empathy for his adversaries on the issue. The GOP vice presidential candidate said that a dear friend of his told him that she felt that she needed to have an abortion because carrying the pregnancy to term would have locked her into an abusive relationship. Vance said that he took from that conversation that Republicans needed to earn “the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us. That’s one of the things Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.”
To an inattentive voter, this could make it sound as though Vance was calling for the party to regain the public’s trust by rethinking its opposition to abortion rights when, in actuality, Vance was merely saying that Republicans should make life easier for the women whom they force to give birth — such as through public spending on child care, a policy Vance endorsed during the debate but which has scant support among other Republicans.”
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“Vance also utilized the more straightforward and time-tested technique of making stuff up.”
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“Finally, Vance attempted to steer the conversation away from policy proposals and toward various good things that happened while Trump was president and bad things that happened with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in power. Voters may be lukewarm on Trump’s economic proposals, such as cutting corporate taxes, but many do remember his tenure nostalgically, due to the fact that his first three years in office saw relatively low unemployment and low inflation.
Vance sought to spotlight this fact by saying that “Donald Trump delivered for the American people: rising wages, rising take-home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans.” And he asked rhetorically, “When was the last time an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out” on their watch, before answering, “The four years Donald Trump was president.”
In reality, unemployment was already trending lower and wages were trending higher for years before Trump took office, and they did not dramatically accelerate upon his election. Meanwhile, Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian official, thereby nearly triggering another Middle Eastern conflict.
It is unclear why Kamala Harris bears responsibility for, say, the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine but Donald Trump does not bear any responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic. Neither had direct agency over either of those events, and Harris was not even president when the former occurred.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/375316/vp-debate-vance-walz-abortion-health-care
Mark Cuban & Reid Hoffman Explain Why Kamala Harris is the Key to Economic Growth | BLFH Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECmEdk8-iYU
Vance won the debate on sounding better despite his lies and his evasion of questions. However, he couldn’t say that he would accept an election that Trump lost. Democracy doesn’t work if our leaders can’t accept lost elections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhe2NeZQ250