The people still support their government, but are obviously very upset right now. They overwhelmingly blame the US Empire and their blockade, which is just an open tool of economic warfare.

That’s a great point that I forgot to include in my post!

Including some links in case anyone is interested in how elections in Cuba work.

Good Video on the History of Cuban Elections and how they work.

Some Cuban voters on Election Day

Someone else will hopefully have more specific details on the situation.

In general the economic situation isn’t great due to the blockade since as an island nation they have to Import anything (like oil) that isn’t a natural resource on the island. Blackouts and other energy issues have been a problem due to that.

Trump recently increased the blockade and I know due to COVID their tourism industry was hit pretty hard.

Some silver linings to the situation:

China has provided solar panels that should help strengthen their grid and provide them a source of energy that can’t be blockaded.

They recently became a BRICS partner member which should hopefully give them some ability to trade even with the blockade.

Vietnam recently has raised millions in an ongoing effort to send donations to Cuba.

Edit:

Also if anyone is interested in learning more about Cuba and its history I’d recommend the podcast Blowback season 2.

Adding some links to explain how democracy and elections work in Cuba and why the government still has such large public support:

Good Video on the History of Cuban Elections and how they work.

Cuban voters on Election Day

Also Some other links below on recent news:

Pension Increases to help with the economic situation

On how they defy sanctions and still lead in healthcare

If you ever want to see an Elk close up I would definitely recommend visiting Estes Park during Rutt (spelling?) season.

Lived in Denver for a couple years and my wife and I would always drive up there to see them!

Glad to see the Elk showing solidarity!

I get the hesitation since in US politics they often get conflated and I can’t say I’ve followed him very closely but someone else shared this. I know he’s also advocating for city owned grocery stores.

Yeah I doubt this goes through especially after the reports that the US agreed to different terms already and then is changing it again.

As others have said no one source should have blanket trust.

Understanding the bias the source may have by looking up who owns/funds it and understanding how that might skew what you’re reading is important.

For news based on studies I usually will try to directly to the study which should list the methodology which will help show how well done it was.

If I have time later I’ll put together a list of ones I use and what I’ve seen as their biases.

I’d recommend Ken Hammond’s “ China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future”.

There’s a mini series in podcast form that was done on it as well with him as a guest. First episode is here.

Kvaal said defaults can be “tragic” for borrowers. In some cases, Kvaal said, defaults can negatively impact credit scores and future student aid, and several states revoke driver’s licenses over defaults.

Wish there was a list of states in the article because that’s just terrible policy. Revoking drivers licenses in a country with terrible to non existent public transportation basically means you’re guaranteeing they won’t have the income to pay you back.

Guess cruelty is the point tho.

Saw this on another article lmao, did he just get a list of countries and start throwing numbers out at random.

Incredibly, it appears the Trump regime has imposed a 10% tariff on goods coming from the Heard and McDonald Islands, an Australian territory which lies in between Madagascar and Antarctica. Why is that incredible? Because the Heard and McDonald Islands are uninhabited.

Pseudoscience is always going to attract people who want to feel like they know more than others without putting in a lot of work on studying things.

Terrance Howard also believes 1x1=2 so wouldn’t put a ton of stock into his other theories but haven’t heard of this one specifically. Like the other commentator said if he at some point shows concrete evidence I’m happy to admit I’m wrong but he hasn’t had that for his other stuff so I’m doubtful.

I really hope Xiaohongshu doesn’t implement things to separate language users. I didn’t even use TikTok but have been using Xiaohongshu since it’s a lot more fun and unique seeing Chinese culture and memes even if I’m having to do a lot of translating.

Probably will push me to actually learn mandarin too

Yougov was tied for the highest pollster rating from 538.. If you feel like polls in general aren’t accurate or that’s not a good rating system feel free to add some support to the contrary ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Wish there was an easy way to use these in a mobile app like voyager.

Yeah pretty much all the issues in the country boil down to the accumulation of massive wealth in the hands of a few people and any solution that isn’t directly addressing the system that allows that is just a bandaid.

Unfortunately the answer is going to be organizing locally and working to educate people on what the actual causes of their problems are which is going to take time. The only silver lining is the systemic problems will become increasingly difficult to ignore which creates the opening for change, we just need to be ready to seize that opportunity.

I agree that the lions share of the blame is on the landlords for sure but think because everyone knows their gonna be terrible we’d hope government agencies would do a bit better job of policing it so when they don’t it also needs to be called out so it can hopefully be improved.

As @geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml said she turned on the left awhile ago.

Robert F Kennedy and Chase Oliver voters are peeling off votes from Trump not Harris.

If you look at the count of the RFK/ Oliver/ Libertarian voters they more or less cancel out the Green and socialist candidate/party voters

Lmao yes famous things leftists ask for like:

1. Stating your difference from Biden would be to have a republican in your cabinet.
2. Campaigning with Liz Cheney.
3. Enacting the rights border policies.
4. Walking back a commitment to ban fracking.
5. Walking back support for Medicare 4 All
6. Walking back support for the green new deal.
7. Supplying and funding the genocide leftists and Arab voters explicitly wanted stopped.

They can’t even blame third party voters this time around because from the current tallies it wouldn’t have made a difference.

They didn’t activate what should be their base enough and instead tried to court neocons and these mythical moderate republicans that would abandon trump in swaths for a righter wing democrat (hint: they will always prefer the actual republican).

If the democratic leadership takes this result as anything but an indictment of their attempt to abandon popular left policies to become the Republicans of 20 years ago they are hopeless. I’m not holding my breath though.

It’s wild to me that when she realized she had to somewhat distance herself from Biden she chose to say she’d have a republican in her cabinet. Not something about helping the working class more, or not supplying and funding a genocide that’s incredibly unpopular with what should be her base.

Stuff like that along with “having the most lethal military” and campaigning with Cheney alienated leftists, student, and Muslim voters which all could have been easy wins.

Economically people don’t feel better under Biden than they did 4 years ago which while the inflation largely isn’t his fault she still needed to meaningfully project she would be different than him to get working class voters and she didn’t effectively do that since she wasn’t pushing a populist message.

She clearly doesn’t know how to campaign well (pretty sure I heard she had Clinton staffers giving advice to her campaign lol) but that shouldn’t be a surprise since she was the first candidate to drop out of the 2020 primary.

Think it’s like the free space in bingo, don’t even need to mention it because it’s assumed that we’re to blame lol