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.
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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.
Note those headlines. They are unusually … direct. Paul Campos at LGM notes this phenomenon as well, taking a look at one of the most jarring from Tom Edsall in NY Times today headlines “The Roots Of trump’s Rage:: Edsall specializes in long think pieces for the NYT, in which he interviews experts who try to understand the Trump phenomenon in, what up until now, has been a kind of “even handed” way, i.e., yes Trump is a disturbing figure, but let’s try to understand why nearly half the country elected him and wants him to be president again. Today’s edition of this series, published on a notable anniversary in American history, goes in a different direction right from the top: This is a long piece, but there’s never any gesture towards “on the other hand” at any point within it.
$29.99 is very affordable My relations are generally cool. But for those less fortunate….
Judd Legum’s great newsletter featured this look at Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a dedicated MAGA warrior who gladly does Stephen Miller’s bidding: Stephen Miller, the notorious advisor to former president Donald Trump, suggested on X yesterday that a “conservative state Attorney[] General” should pursue civil and criminal charges against Media Matters. Miller claims that Media Matters committed “fraud” by reporting that X was displaying ads from major brands next to white nationalist and neo-Nazi posts.
“It was a magical evening” Trump doesn’t believe in any of this religion stuff. But he believes in MAGA and if they love him, he loves them. They can have whatever they want as long as it benefits him personally. It works out great for everyone — except the sane, decent people of this country and the world: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS WERE out in force at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, once again demonstrating their proximity to MAGA power. Lance Wallnau — the chief promoter of a “Seven Mountains Mandate” for right-wing Christians to seize control over government and culture — was dressed in a tux and streaming live to his 1 million Facebook followers. The black-tie event was the America First Policy Institute gala at Trump’s Palm Beach estate, where the former president was soon to speak.
“Unrelenting, top-to-bottom negativity” Philosopher Linus van Pelt famously lamented, “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential!” It’s a burden Democrats carry too. Supporters and leaners are easily upset. Not so with Republicans. They anger us, sure, but because we expect so lttle of them they cannot disappoint us the way our friends can. It is a dynamic David Roberts, a.k.a. Dr. Volts, wrote about in a thread on Sunday. A Washington Post profile of voters in Door County, Wisconsin (pop. 30k) finally pegged his P.K.E. meter. Roberts writes (bolding mine): This article is worth examining closely. It’s a classic “visit a swing county to hear about politics” piece, so it forces itself to be even-handed & “pox on both houses,” but if you read closely you can glimpse something else. washingtonpost.com/nation/interac… Why are they upset?
Hold fast We’ve reached “the end justifies the means” chapter of our American experiment. Peter Wehner runs down in The Atlantic a by-now familiar accounting of the fascistic things Donald Trump says and his MAGA audience applauds. Trump’s rise to the presidency began with, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best.” (The Republican Party took that as candidate recruiting advice.) He’s gone from declaring Mexicans drug dealers, rapists and criminals in 2015 to telling crowds today that immigrants from south of the border are terrorists and escapees from mental institutions who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Wehner pointedly begins by sketching out the dehumanizing rhetoric that prededed the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I still remember just where I was when I heard that news on the radio.
I’ve been Disney fan since I donned a Davy Crockett buckskin jacket and coonskin cap when I was 3 years old, and I’ve been a fan of The Beatles since February, 1964. It’s amazing to me, though, the number of … Continue reading