Public support for stricter gun laws is substantial, and growing. This isn't surprising in a country as haunted as ours is by gun violence. As of December 6th, there have been more mass shootings in the United States in 2019--three hundred and ninety-one--than there have been days in the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a research organization that tracks these incidents. (The G.V.A. defines a mass shooting as one involving a minimum of four victims.) At the beginning of this school year, TuffyPacks, a company that makes "bullet-resistant" backpacks for schoolchildren, reported that its sales were up three hundred per cent. The C.E.O. told USA Today, "A lot of parents go, 'This is a great product and a great idea' and the other half go, 'What a sad world that we have to think about this for our children.' " And, after decades of increasing longevity, Americans are dying at younger ages, a phenomenon in which the rising number of suicides--made possible, in many cases, by easy access to guns--plays a key role.Despite the relentless efforts of special-interest groups such as the National Rifle Association to defeat virtually any gun regulation, many Americans will no longer accept a brittle and suspect interpretation of the Second Amendment at the expense of human lives. A Fox News poll taken in August, after the killings in El Paso and Dayton, showed that two-thirds of Americans favor a ban on assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. In a survey of likely 2020 voters, conducted earlier in the summer by the polling group GQR, more than one in four said that their views on guns had changed during the past five years, and, of those, seventy-eight per cent said that they had shifted toward stronger laws curbing guns. Asked if they would support a voluntary-buyback program of the kind that Australia instituted in 1996, encouraging people to give up their assault-style weapons, forty-two per cent of the likely voters said that they "definitely" would, and twenty-nine per cent said they "probably" would. Other polls have shown overwhelming support for universal background checks and gun-owner licensing.
In 1964, at the age of eighteen, Ronstadt moved to Los Angeles, where she joined the exploding folk-rock scene (the movie makes an excellent companion piece to Echo in the Canyon, featuring many of the same places and faces). With Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards she formed the Stone Poneys, quickly becoming known for her mini-skirted, barefooted performances at The Troubadour and other clubs. In 1967 the group did a cover of the Mike Nesmith song "Different Drum," turning it into a hit on their second album. The Poneys originally performed it to a slow-paced, minimal accompaniment that Ronstadt far preferred to the highly orchestrated, up-tempo version the record company released (she was wrong, as she admits fifty years later, with a laugh), and the difference in the two versions nicely glosses the era's transition from folk to rock, the song's mellow folky mournfulness (which echoed the original 1965 rendition by the Greenbriar Boys) transmogrified into pop exuberance.After "Different Drum," music execs clamored for Ronstadt. Leaving the group to go out on her own, she proceeded to become the first female mega pop star, racking up five platinum records and no fewer than ten Grammys, and was the first singer ever to be No. 1 on country, pop, and R&B lists simultaneously. Though hugely successful, Ronstadt spurned the personal craziness and decadence of the rock-star lifestyle; making music always remained the whole of it. Her brashness as a performer notwithstanding, she was in fact modest, and prone to persistent doubts about her ability as a singer. (Her manager, Peter Asher, recalls that if Ronstadt saw two people in the front row of a concert whispering to one another, she worried they were saying she wasn't good enough.) Yet once she started singing, those doubts disappeared, vaporized by her voice with its vaulting range, its flexible but always recognizable timbre, its intermittent adornments of vibrato, and its ability to imbue a pop lyric with fierce longing. She was the kind of powerful singer who filled the air and commanded the room.A rewarding turn in Ronstadt's career, and in the movie, comes at the peak of her fame, when she decided to drastically change her tune and explore interests outside the range of pop music--unexpected efforts that followed the lines of her parents' musical passions. She made three albums of songbook standards with Nelson Riddle, the famed bandleader she grew up listening to. She appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance in New York's Shakespeare Festival. And in 1987 she released Canciones de mi Padre, a collection of traditional Mexican songs of her childhood, which became the all-time top-selling Spanish-language album in the United States. As Ry Cooder comments, these quixotic undertakings were brave moves for a pop singer to make. "Her career from then on," Cooder observes, "was music companies telling her she couldn't do it, then her doing it anyway, and the music companies jumping on board just as it took off." You have to love Ronstadt's sheer enthusiasm for music. As the singer herself says, many of her choices "didn't fit anywhere but my heart." We even see her singing with the Muppets on Sesame Street.Almost in passing, the film captures a quiet feminism, reminding us that Ronstadt rose to prominence in a male-dominated profession in which casual misogyny and the crass exploitation of women were rampant. Her collaborations with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris reverberate with shared pride and pleasure in their accomplishment: strong voices, strong women. And comments Ronstadt offered as a young singer--interviewed on the beach in front of her Malibu home by an even younger Cameron Crowe--include penetrating insights into both the strutting misogyny and the heedless self-destruction of the male rock-star persona. In a later scene, asked on a TV talk show about her willingness to perform in apartheid South Africa, she bristles, then launches into a notably astute analysis of the moral shortcomings of other nations, including the United States.The Ronstadt who emerges from The Sound of My Voice is not merely a supreme pop diva, but a fearless experimenter and a passionate lover of music. Though she eventually ran into health trouble (a closing and poignant scene shows a faltering attempt to sing in her living room with a musician nephew), she emerges as one of the least troubled pop stars ever, and confronts her setbacks with settled serenity. The film is worth watching merely for its parade of hits--"You're No Good," "When Will I Be Loved," "Blue Bayou," "Love is a Rose," "It's So Easy," "Heat Wave," "Desperado," "Poor Poor Pitiful Me"--many of which originated with other groups, and several of which I had forgotten. But for me the high point of the film is seeing Ronstadt sing one of her Mexican ballads, performing with a full orchestra, in a wildly kitschy mariachi outfit. As she belts the song out with fierce, delighted passion, nimbly mastering the complicated Spanish lyrics, you realize you are in the presence not only of a supremely gifted singer, but an irrepressible human being.
On paper, Loeffler is a GOP dream candidate. She's a successful businesswoman, hails from the vote-rich Atlanta suburbs, owns a WNBA team, and has the ability to self-finance an expensive campaign. A longtime GOP donor (including to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign), she hails from the establishment wing of the party. But the same credentials that make her more electable are also drawing hackles from the president and some of his top lieutenants.Trump wanted Kemp to pick conservative Rep. Doug Collins, one of his closest allies in the House, for the vacancy. Collins, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, had been openly campaigning for the seat. Collins reflects the Trump playbook: He's a partisan fighter defending the president from impeachment, hails from a heavily Republican rural district, and has a near-perfect conservative voting record in Congress.Loeffler's pathway to winning the special election would be through improving the GOP's standing with women and suburbanites, while making inroads with nonwhite voters. A Collins campaign would rely on rallying the base in a state that still leans Republican, despite recent Democratic gains. Trump, his son, and prominent allies like Sean Hannity have all been championing Collins' candidacy.What's ironic about Kemp's apparent decision to tap Loeffler is that he won his own election by running a Collins-esque, base-first campaign. Kemp ran as an unwavering Trump ally during his insurgent campaign last year, boasting about his support for gun rights and his hard-line stance on illegal immigration. He wouldn't have won the primary without Trump's surprise endorsement. Without strong GOP turnout in rural counties, he would have risked falling short of Stacey Abrams in the closely contested governor's race.But Kemp recognizes that Republicans can't win future elections in his diversifying state without appealing to suburban voters in the diverse, fast-growing Atlanta suburbs. He appreciates that deteriorating GOP support among women would be politically devastating to the party in Georgia.
The executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America told Salon on Sunday that President Donald Trump's recent comments about Jewish voters continue "what has been a very negative stereotype of Jews and money and power.""He has said in the past that he wants Jews to be the ones counting his money," Halie Soifer told Salon. "He has repeatedly made references to what has been a very negative stereotype of Jews and money and power." After saying that "I think that he must believe it, and that is why he continues to repeat it," Soifer noted that Trump was repeating claims that he has made when "typically speaking extemporaneously, and clearly he's speaking from his heart. It's clear that there's quite a bit of hatred in it." Soifer also criticized Trump for having "views of Jews as driven largely by money, which is why he said at this events that Jews have no choice but to support him, referring to tax cuts."She added that Trump said "those who don't support Israel, they should -- and this is not a direct quote -- but essentially, they should leave. And then we saw hateful figures like Ann Coulter retweet that video and suggest that Jews are unpatriotic, that they don't love America either. That is a good example of how the president's hatred is amplified by others in the media to continue to spread these anti-Semitic tropes. And this is exactly why anti-Semitism and white nationalism have grown during his presidency."
In February of 2015, Gallup data showed that more Democrats held a favorable view of Russia (26 percent) than did Republicans (19 percent). But by February of 2019, those numbers had reversed, with 30 percent of Republicans saying they held a favorable view of Russia -- an 11-point increase from 2015. And only 17 percent of Democrats said they had a positive view, a nine-point drop.
Reality check: During any insurance program's annual enrollment period, most people end up staying with the status quo, if it's an option, instead of picking a new plan.Fewer than one out of 10 seniors voluntarily switch from one private Medicare Advantage plan to another, according to new research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.The same holds true for Medicare's private prescription drug plans.Most employers don't usually change insurance carriers, often out of fear of angering workers, and keep plan options limited.Employees, after several reminders from HR, usually default to what they had.Fewer than half of people in the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces actively re-enroll in new plans, even though the market was designed for comparison shopping.Medicaid enrollees in some states have no say in the private plans they get.Between the lines: Buying health insurance -- a $20,000 decision for the average family -- is more complicated than buying furniture.
Fifty-three percent of Nevada voters rate the economy positively, including 22 percent calling it excellent. For comparison, 14 percent of voters nationally rate the economy as excellent.Meanwhile, more disapprove (52 percent) than approve (45 percent) of the job Trump is doing. His 45 percent approval roughly matches his 2016 vote share, as Hillary Clinton won the Silver State 48-46 percent.
It wasn't so long ago that you could read an article in Jacobin that argued, "If Bernie Sanders weren't running, an Elizabeth Warren presidency would probably be the best-case scenario." In April, another Jacobin article conceded that Warren is "no socialist" but added that "she's a tough-minded liberal who makes the right kind of enemies," and her policy proposals "would make this country a better place." A good showing by her in a debate this summer was seen as a clear win for the left in the movement's grand ideological battle within, or perhaps against, the Democratic Party. Even staff writer Meagan Day, probably the biggest Bernie stan on Jacobin's masthead, found nice things to say about Warren.No more. A selection of Jacobin headlines from November: "Elizabeth Warren's Head Tax Is Indefensible," "Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Finance Medicare for All Is a Disaster" and "Elizabeth Warren Is Jeopardizing Our Fight for Medicare for All." In October, a story warned that a vote for Warren would be "an unconditional surrender to class dealignment." Even a recent piece titled "Michael Bloomberg? Now They're Just F[****]g with Us" went out of its way to say that Warren is insufficiently confrontational to billionaires.
In such a government, the ultra-Orthodox parties wouldn't be able to deliver on their campaign promises of gender segregation and ending public transportation on the Sabbath. The secular majority in the Knesset could make regulations for civil marriage, and possibly undo the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on religion in the country.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was charged with bribery, fraud and breach in late November, wouldn't be able to secure immunity and might even have to resign. Policies regarding Palestinians could be decided by those outside the settler enterprise.Even though the center-left bloc has much to gain, while the right has more to lose, the heads of the right-wing parties are doing all they can to form a unity government. In speeches, interviews and press releases they describe it as the need of the hour, the people's will, the reasonable and right thing to do. Netanyahu even agreed to be a member of such a government under the leadership of the head of the Blue and White party, Benny Gantz, merely five months after its establishment. [...]As far as Israel's right is concerned, the "demon" -- the urgent concern they will present to their voters -- is this: the now very real possibility that the country will be led by a Jewish-Arab partnership. Such cooperation can begin with limited support from the Joint List, the majority-Palestinian party, and continue with an agreement on base lines, then manifest in achievements on the ground, and so on. This is the very development that would collapse the right's empowerment in Israel.Such a partnership signals a new political agenda: it undoes the segregation and animosity between Jews and Palestinians. It brings light after many years of political darkness that resulted in poor Jews, occupied Palestinians and fearful ultra-Orthodox, mediated by those seeking conflict and oppression. Jewish-Arab partnership is the highlight of the September elections, and it's what's preoccupying right-wing leaders now.The daily war against such partnership is in full swing. It's taking place on billboards with Arabic letters removed, in hospital departments, in student groups, in colleges and universities, in acceptance committees and cultural events, and in the enactment of the Jewish Nation-State Law.For right-wing parties, there is a direct link between the cycles of violence in Gaza, the settler enterprise, and quashing any hope for peace; and between supporting authoritarian leaders around the world and the racial segregation against Palestinians here. A Jews-only politics is one in which the right always wins. Striving for a unity government -- even at the expense of stopping annexation and laws on religion and "loyalty" -- is worth it for the right, even if just to slide the possibility of Jewish-Arab partnership off the table.
For more than a decade, leading urbanists and their media disciples have touted the idea that a resurgence of cities was occurring at the expense of suburbs, a trend that amounted to a historical reversal of American living preferences. The revival of some central business districts and the gentrification of old industrial neighborhoods into hip new urban enclaves fed a back-to-the-city narrative, while an exodus of the poor into nearby suburbs and a Great Recession-era plunge in housing values sparked conjecture that the classic suburb was in decline. Much of this narrative is anecdotal, however, or relies on selectively chosen data. Comprehensive research on hundreds of urban and suburban neighborhoods over the last four decades, published earlier this year, tells a different story. While the demographics of cities and suburbs are changing, the suburbs have continued to outperform urban neighborhoods on multiple economic and demographic variables, solidifying their hold on American wealth and status. The good news is that the urban revival in many places is real. The better news is that it hasn't come at the expense of other communities.The terms "city" and "suburbs" are often used imprecisely. To get at the heart of the way communities are changing, Harvard researcher Whitney Airgood-Obrycki examined the nation's 100 most populous metropolitan areas in detail--classifying census tracks within each area as either urban, inner-ring suburb, or outer-ring suburb. She also subdivided suburban communities based on when they were developed: pre-World War II, postwar, and modern. Airgood-Obrycki then graded each neighborhood on factors like income levels, education, occupations of residents, and housing values, and tracked communities' progress over time.What the data yield is illuminating. Most of the nation's "high-status" communities--neighborhoods in the top quartile of economic and demographic performance--are suburban. And the suburbs' advantage over cities has increased over time, from 68 percent of the top-performing neighborhoods in the 1970s to 74 percent by 2010. Incomes are considerably greater, moreover, among suburban communities that rank among the highest-status neighborhoods than among city districts that also fall into that category. At the same time, the suburbs have done a better job of holding off decline. Among areas that have seen average household incomes shrink, the declines have been deepest in city neighborhoods, not struggling suburban areas. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the suburbs maintained their advantage to some degree because of development. Some of the biggest gains recorded in the study came in newer suburbs. By contrast, older suburbs--typically, inner-ring areas closest to cities--accounted for fewer gains.
VIDEO: Watch as thousands of Hong Kong protesters thronging the city's streets create a display of lights by holding aloft their mobile phones pic.twitter.com/QD2K7jITJh
— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 8, 2019
"There are good people here, but also bad people, drunk people and people on drugs. Each person does what he likes," said Mohamed, a protester at a bookstand near Tahrir Square. "It's the same with the Molotov cocktails being used by some protesters, which is really wrong, especially because some of us just want to carry the Iraqi flag."Mohamed accused troublemakers at the demonstrations of increasingly using what started out two months ago as largely peaceful protests as a cover for their own ends."At night, some people come with knives and light weapons and try to destroy the protest from within," Mohamed said. "We don't know what to do, and there's no one here to say what's wrong and what's right."
It wasn't the content of White House adviser Stephen Miller's leaked emails that shocked Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, Texas, but the silence of her Republican colleagues that has followed.Miller is the architect of President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies that have separated children from parents, forced people seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico under squalid conditions, instituted the Muslim ban and poured money from the military into border wall construction. The administration is currently under fire for the deaths of migrant children and teens who have died while in government custody.In a trove of emails provided to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, Miller cited and promoted white nationalist ideologies of white genocide, immigrants as criminals and eugenics, all of which were once considered fringe and extreme. White nationalists embrace white supremacist and white separatist views.Three weeks after the emails were made public, Miller still is in the White House. Only Democrats have called on the White House to rid itself of white nationalism."It really has been jarring (that) the president's enablers and Republicans have not stood up and said, Mr. President, this is unacceptable," Escobar said in an interview. "I would implore my Republican colleagues to join us in calling for Stephen Miller's resignation," she said.
...Mitch just wants election help.Because Trump has completely taken over the Republican Party, so has Putin. His GOP lackeys are going around repeating the discredited propaganda that Putin must have whispered into Trump's ear: that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Earlier this month, on NBC's Meet the Press, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), insisted that Ukraine had meddled in the 2016 election to assist Hillary Clinton. Newsman Chuck Todd, the astonished host, pointed out that U.S. intelligence experts had given lawmakers a briefing to warn them that the lie about election interference by Ukraine was "a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine."Kennedy told Todd he had not attended that briefing. It probably would not have mattered, anyway. Kennedy already had his directive: Go forth and spew the lies that Russia has given Trump and Trump has given to his lapdogs. If that isn't treason, what is?Putin could not have wreaked so much havoc without help from other sources -- some, perhaps, unwitting. During the 2016 presidential campaign, American journalists enthusiastically spread details of stolen emails that were damaging to Clinton and to Democratic Party elites, though it is now clear that some were likely stolen by Russian hackers. Then there is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who ignored President Barack Obama's warnings that Putin's propagandists were abusing his internet infrastructure. Still, of all Putin's accomplishments inside our country, his takeover of the Republican Party is the most staggering -- and the most dangerous.
The giant Menin Gate in the Belgian town of Ypres echoes with the mournful tune of the Last Post played by buglers from the local fire brigade.The ceremony, watched by hushed school groups, has been repeated every night at eight o'clock since 1928 apart from the years of German occupation during the Second World War. It commemorates soldiers who fought and died for Britain in the First World War.The walls of the gate are covered with the names of 54,607 soldiers who were killed in Belgium and have no known grave. Among them are 412 soldiers from India including Muslims such as Bahadur Khan of the 57th Wilde's Rifles, who fell during the First Battle of Ypres on October 28, 1914, and Nur Alam of the 40th Pathans, killed on April 26, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres.The role played by these soldiers and their 2.5 million fellow Muslims who fought for Britain, France and Russia in a war not of their making has been under-researched in comparison with the extensive accounts of Western troops in poems, diaries and histories.
Israel is prepared to attack Iran militarily if sanctions don't force it to curtail its nuclear program and attacks on Israel, Foreign Minister Israel Katz told an Italian daily over the weekend.Asked by the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera on Friday if a military strike on Iran were a possibility, Katz affirmed "it's an option. We will not allow Iran to produce or obtain nuclear weapons. If the only option left to us is the military option, we'll act militarily."
Documents refuting claims by Britain's Labour party that it is adequately dealing with rampant anti-Semitism within the party have been leaked and were reported Sunday, days before the country's general election.The leaked files from the main UK opposition party's internal disciplinary department show that many Labour members, several of whom had called for the extermination of all Jews, remained in the party for months and even over a year and were given a lenient punishment or none at all, according to The Sunday Times.
President Donald Trump slammed American Jews who he said did not sufficiently "love Israel.""So many of you voted for the people in the last administration. Some day you will have to explain that to me because I don't think they like Israel too much," the president said Saturday evening at the Israeli-American Council's annual conference.