Spyke

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Trump warns voters that his second term would get ‘nasty’ at times | According to Donald Trump and his allies, his second term would be "nasty," "bloody," and filled with "hardships" for many

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Just over half of those who voted said yes, there's still a lot of us who voted against this and watched in horror as the remainder proceeded to fuck us over. From those of us who voted against this: we tried our best and hate this as much as the rest of the sane world. Good luck trying to salvage things out there, it's going to be increasingly difficult for us to act openly against this soon. If you can, put the thumbscrews to us in whatever way you can. We'll suffer, but then again we're already going to be.

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Teacher pay needs to nearly double to afford a typical house

Let me pop in as a high school teacher in the US. I make decent pay, but it took me over a decade climbing the pay ladder to reach this point. It's only been in the last five years that I've made enough to afford the mortgage on a house (well, prior to all of the rate hikes, but that's another issue entirely). But there's another problem: You're expected to put in 10% of the value (even with first-time buyer incentives) as a down payment (I last looked with any seriousness in '22). I have yet to be able to put away 5% of the average costs in my region, much less 10%. Every time I start building back up, other costs drain most or all of that within a year or two. Unless the housing market bursts big time, I'm not likely to be able to afford a home anytime soon. Note: I would rather keep renting than take a variable-rate mortgage; the last three years have seen previously affordable mortgages with variable rates go sky-high.

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this town has been well known for a long time

As someone whose family is from Altoona, let me say that the abomination that is that pizza is not widely available in the city (a number of people in my family didn't even know of it's existence until the last decade or so) and most locals find it as baffling and disgusting as the rest of us. I'm also unsurprised that someone there would rat him out in hope of a reward, that city is the corpse of what it used to be, now stuffed to bursting with low-wage retail and healthcare jobs. It's also a conservative bastion, go figure.