Moms For Liberty paying off their friends It’s all one big grift: A Pennsylvania school board that banned books, Pride flags and transgender athletes slipped a last-minute item into their final meeting before leaving office, hastily awarding a $700,000 exit package to the superintendent who supported their agenda. But the Democratic majority that swept the conservative Moms For Liberty slate out of office hopes to block the unusual — they say illegal — payout and bring calm to the Central Bucks School District, whose affluent suburbs and bucolic farms near Philadelphia have been roiled by infighting since the 2020 pandemic. “People are really sick of the embarrassing meetings, the vitriol, they’re tired of our district being in the news for all the wrong reasons. And … the students are aware of what’s been going on, particularly our LGBTQ students and their friends and allies,” said Karen Smith, a Democrat who won a third term on the board.
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Thanksgiving menu at the Plaza Hotel 1899, courtesy of Michael Beschloss: I would have loved to watch that kitchen in action.
On Monday one shot 4 people in Ohio The mass shooting on Monday garnered hardly a mention in the news because the shooter only managed to wound four people before he killed himself. No biggie in America’s shooting gallery. But it is worth noting that it appears he had an ideological motive: The man suspected of shooting four people at an Ohio Walmart earlier this week was inspired by racially motivated violent extremist ideology, according to authorities. Benjamin Charles Jones, 20, of Dayton, Ohio, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart after he shot two Black females, a white female and a white male Monday, the FBI stated. One victim remained in critical condition, while three others suffered from non-life-threatening injuries.
The ones who love him anyway Brian Beutler on this new “relationship” between Trump and Univison. If you haven’t read this already, you’ll want to. It’s left Democrats deeply unsettled. They were surprised as everyone to see Univision offer Donald Trump a fawning, hour-long, primetime interview earlier this month, particularly after the abuse he heaped on the network during his presidency and first campaign; they were stunned when Univision summarily canceled ads the Biden campaign had purchased to run during the interview, citing an undisclosed policy the network, by all appearances, adopted special for Trump; they’re aghast that Univision tried to create the false impression that it approached the Biden campaign with the same offer; and now they’re really worried, because they see Univision prevailing on local affiliates to pull popular programming off the air to carry Trump rallies live. They’re upset, and understandably so, about the effect that transforming the most watched Spanish-language news network into a pro-Trump propaganda outlet will have on the election.
Not yet Kevin Drum has an interesting observation: How is Joe Biden doing these days? Courtesy of CNN, here are his approval ratings from a variety of national polls over the past few months: From August through October Biden’s approval dropped about 1.5% per month. Since the Israel-Gaza war broke out a month ago, his approval has improved by about half a percent. I’d like to generate a chart like this just for young Democrats, but I can’t find the data to do it. My suspicion is that Biden has been hemorrhaging approval from young voters for a long time and the Israel-Gaza war hasn’t really had a big effect. But I don’t know that. In any case, even if it has had an effect, it’s apparently been counterbalanced by increased approval from older voters. Taken as a whole, the war has rather surprisingly had only a very small effect on Biden’s approval, and probably a positive one.
It’s all part of the Republicans’ cunning plan At this point in election season the political press starts making forays into the wilds of Real America to try to find out what the voters are thinking. It can be an interesting exercise in the hands of journalists who have a feel for more than the usual “breakfast crowd at the diner” type of stories and find some insight that’s helpful to understand the cross currents that shape the electorate in a particular cycle. All too often, however, it’s just a series of cliches and conventional wisdom, unfortunately. We always see tons of coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire, for obvious reasons. But when it comes to picking the brains of swing voters they always seem to head up to Wisconsin, the quintessential swing state. Back in 2020, just before the election, the NY Times sent a couple of reporters there to take the temperature of voters in the state that former president Donald Trump barely won in 2016 to see what undecided swing voters were thinking four years later.
Here’s one to make your hair stand on end Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) bashed President Biden Tuesday for the recently negotiated hostage deal between the militant group Hamas and Israel. “No, because we have nine Americans held hostage right now by Hamas, [who] have been there for six weeks, including at least one child.” Phillips, who is also challenging Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president, said on CNN when asked about if he would accept the current hostage deal. “And by now, I would have expected American special forces to perhaps play a hand in extracting them,” Phillips continued. “I think it’s absurd, shocking and dismaying, that six weeks later, we still have American hostages held by a terror organization in Gaza.” He wants to send American troops into Gaza. I don’t think I’ve heard even Republicans suggesting that (yet.) This is super hero comic crapola and it says everything about this fool who really shouldn’t even be quoted anywhere because he’s just a silly gadfly with some kind of personality defect.
This country is insane Sometimes I think that if I were young I’d vote with my feet and go somewhere else. This is lunacy: More than half of American voters — 52% — say they or someone in their household owns a gun, per the latest NBC News national poll. That’s the highest share of voters who say that they or someone in their household owns a gun in the history of the NBC News poll, on a question dating back to 1999. In 2019, 46% of Americans said that they or someone in their household owned a gun, per an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. And in February 2013, that share was 42%. “In the last ten years, we’ve grown [10 points] in gun ownership. That’s a very stunning number,” said Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that co-conducted the poll with members of the Democratic polling firm Hart Research. “By and large, things don’t change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun,” Roberts added. Gun ownership does fall along partisan lines, as it has for years, the poll finds.
A few years back on Thanksgiving eve I ran this recipe for Pumpkin Cake and received a very nice note from journalist Karen Tumulty saying that she’d been tooling around the web for something to bake and tried it and liked it very much. Ever since then I’ve called it Karen Tumulty Cake.It’s easy even for non bakers and it really is very good. Karen Tumulty Pumpkin Cake For cake * (3/4 cup) softened unsalted butter.* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan* 2 teaspoons baking powder* 1 teaspoon baking soda* 1 teaspoon cinnamon* 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice* 2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped* 1/2 teaspoon salt* 1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin* 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk * 1 teaspoon vanilla* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar* 3 large eggs Icing * 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk* 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, * 1/4 cup chopped walnuts* a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously. Sift flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, ginger and vanilla in another bowl.
Tim Noah at TNR: Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of “divisive concepts” about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers. The precise effect of all this on the brain drain is hard to tease out from migration statistics because the Dobbs decision is still fairly new, and because red states were bleeding college graduates even before the culture war heated up. The only red state that brings in more college graduates than it sends elsewhere is Texas. But the evidence is everywhere that hard-right social policies in red states are making this dynamic worse. The number of applications for OB-GYN residencies is down more than 10 percent in states that have banned abortion since Dobbs.