Just curious but what is the typical percentage of a Presidential election that did not vote in the prior Presidential election? 2020 was the highest turnout in a century, BTW. This NYT poll suggests that 17% of 2024 voters didn't vote at all in 2020. Is that...high? Look in the right-most column for "did not vote in 2020".

A sudden reminder that the Republican Party was actually founded under an oak tree in Jackson, Michigan or at a little schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin or at a thousand "Anti-Nebraska" meetings in the Spring of 1854. Some in places like Berlin, New Hampshire.

https://twitter.com/MerylKornfield/status/1740184746733556055

They were former Whigs, former Democrats and former Liberty party people who agreed on one thing: slavery shall not extend any further. They organized against what they called "The Slave Power," which controlled the Democratic Party (thanks partly to a 2/3 nominating rule).

This is the biggest problem with a lot of the discourse around any one state plan in Israel-Palestine. Does the acceptable plan in the West - secular, binational, robust civil rights for all - have sizable support among either Israelis or Palestinians?

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1721148837467689282

Personally, I could accept this as much as I can a true two-state solution. But how many Palestinians want this? How many Israelis? As mangled and flawed as the Oslo plan was, there are still more people who support THAT in I-P than the Western-style secular lib/dem one state.

"Proportionality" in war: “expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”. ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treatie… Proportionality, thus, is not necessarily about comparing numbers of civilian deaths. It has to do with "direct military advantage anticipated" per Geneva Conventions Article 51. Sections 5-7 are instructive in full:

If Palestinians are to be liberated from the “settler-colony” that is Israel, you need to orient your message toward the metropole - which means the US public. The language matters. So if you have to explain why “From the River to the Sea” isn’t actually genocide, you’re losing. Nobody is going to settle this conflict through force alone. There is a propaganda war. And that means paying attention to different audiences. A Hamas slogan is going to backfire in the US - in fact, it’s a reason support for Israel keeps going up in the US weeks after Oct 7.

[Thread} We hear a lot about putting the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict in historical context. As a historian, I couldn't agree more. But, there is not one single historical context. I would argue that there are three, and all three affect the present: Old, Middle & Recent. The Old Context goes from Canaan to the Ancient Hebrews to the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and subsequent Jewish Diaspora. And then there was the the arrival of the Arabs, the Crusades and the Ottoman conquest of the Levant.

9 years ago, Sawworks brewery in Knoxville linked up with Terrapin in Athens to produce a special "35th Parallel Ale" in honor of the line between TN and GA just before the Dawgs played the Vols. That 35th Parallel is the site of an important dispute though. Georgia's James Camak was hired in 1818 to survey the line and, well, he got it wrong. So wrong that when the Tennessee River would be dammed up, a huge water source would remain in Tennessee. atlasobscura.com/places/camak-s…

Reminder that 43 percent of white Harvard freshmen in 2019 were athletes, legacies, families of donors or of staff (ALDS). 70% of those white applicants would not have been accepted if they were not ALDS. If the issue is fairness, there is your problem. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s… You can argue that Affirmative Action is also unfair to Asian Americans (and non-ALDS white applicants). But if you are going to jettison race conscious admissions policies because they are unfair, you really need to target the much bigger problem of white ALDS admits.

The assailant of Paul Pelosi is a reminder that a lot of political conflict today is horseshoes v. keystones. Horseshoes are the far left and far right mutually attacking "the establishment." Keystones are the defenders of the broad middle of the spectrum against both extremes. Horseshoe people can shift from far left to far right (as David DePape seems to have done), or maintain a pastiche of both extremes simultaneously. Or just stand on one extreme and repeatedly link up with the other end of the horseshoe.

Had a fun time in my early America class this morning discussing the Carlisle (PA) Riot of 1787-88, re: opponents of ratification of the Constitution. The primary documents, filled with invective, sarcasm & semi-ironic accusations about "process" say much about political culture. Here are the documents if you want to read them. The enclosed map below of Federalists and Antifederalists in Pennsylvania reflects some interesting settlement patterns. csac.history.wisc.edu/document-colle…

Other than typical midterm patterns, the biggest liability for Democrats this cycle is the set of pandemic restrictions and mandates that were often poorly conceived, unduly harsh & unfair, imposed undemocratically (and in Dem areas), lasted far too long, and overly moralized. The reason this matters is that they can't be chalked up to forces largely beyond our control. Yes, some policy choices made inflation and crime worse, but those are *mostly* issues that can't be fixed by simple policy choices. But the *response* to the pandemic was a choice.

Where have we seen this before? One candidate relies on analytics - "cyphering" - and preaching to the converted, while the other goes out and rallies voters wherever they are. In this case, it was two candidates stuck in their numbers. The third? Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC. "Fernandy Wud" was the product of the Mozart Hall faction of the Democratic Party. He was too much of an ass even for Tammany Hall. But he won when Tammany's candidate and the Republican candidate each got cocky. Wood ended up being as atrocious a Mayor as expected.

Reminder that surgical masks don't work against Covid - AT ALL. As in, they are not "better than nothing." They ARE nothing.

https://twitter.com/ToshiAkima/status/1553768627186597889

I'm agnostic on whether properly fit-tested N95+ masks work. I'll stipulate that they do, IF they're properly fit-tested & worn ALL the time. If a mask mandate envisions anything less, it is guaranteed to fail. And most people cannot - or will not - wear fit-test mask constantly.

Discuss: Also discuss: Proposed "Charlotiana", beyond "Vandalia" and "Transylvania."

Can somebody with more legal expertise weigh in on this? I've long feared that abortion bans will mean all miscarriages must be investigated as potential "murder" charges. More immediately, what will this mean re: insurance/legal implications for OB/GYNs with miscarriages.

https://twitter.com/the_powerbroker/status/1541416190752481284

The abortion bans were mostly written to try and get around Roe or be a test case for Roe. They were rarely designed to be a functioning legal regimen, where post-miscarriage care is a regular procedure. Fear of prosecution could destroy OB/GYNs offices in all trigger law states.

I mean this as a genuine question here: What is the end game for the "pro-life" movement? Is it primarily legal - to ban abortion - or is it to "change the culture such that people would not even want or feel the need for an abortion"? The difference btw the two is important. Why is it important? Because it will define how rigorously states with bans actually enforce these laws (or expand them). Or how seriously those states will promote alternatives and/or funding for women who have unwanted pregnancies.

Let's be honest here: The trigger anti-abortion laws pose a legitimacy crisis - esp. the total bans or 6-week bans. They were passed while Roe held things in abeyance. They were passed by gerrymandered legislatures. They will be openly undermined by numerous other states. I can't think of any parallel here- esp. bc of the Roe situation. But it's obvious that the laws will be broadly defied, and the local/state prosecutors of these laws (if they are actually enforced) treated like Torquemada and not like legitimate prosecutors.

There are a lot of potential political effects of Dobbs. Let me suggest one: A broader civil libertarian movement fueled by blue staters who moved to red states in the pandemic to escape restrictions and violations of bodily autonomy, and who will vote for pro-choice candidates. The partisan politics of pandemic restriction and abortion rights have pitted the two against one another. I.e. supporters of abortion rights who backed tighter pandemic restrictions and vice versa. But not everybody falls into that alignment - especially those who moved.

Is there a meaningful difference between a washateria and a laundromat? Apparently the first laundromat was opened in Ft. Worth, TX in the 1930s and was called a "Washateria." So the name "Washateria" has persisted in Texas and much of the South.

colorized.com/first-laundrom…

Who is this man, and what is his relationship to this day?

Your irregular reminder that "Outerbridge Crossing" between Staten Island and New Jersey is not called that because it is the "outermost bridge crossing" btw NY & NJ. It's called that because it is named for Eugenius Outerbridge, first Chair of the Port Authority of NY/NJ. Also, the "Holland Tunnel" is not so-named because New York City was once New Amsterdam. It is named for Clifford Milburn Holland, the main engineer who developed the first Hudson River car tunnel. He died just two weeks before the tunnel opened in 1924.