Back in Waukee, Brad Remsburg was wearing a North Face puffy vest, sitting in a booth and explaining why he liked Haley — she was an alternative to the former president.

“I will not vote for Trump,” explained Remsburg, who’s in medical sales and was joined by his son, a former Iowa State offensive lineman.

The elder Remsburg said he was basically a Republican until Trump came along and is now hoping there’s a path back.

Same with Bruce Norquist, who was a table over and retired as an Army lieutenant colonel at NorthCom and now works in computer security.

“Trump is a fool, he’s too divisive,” said Norquist. (An Aberdeen, S.D., native, Norquist first came to Washington as an intern for Aberdeen’s own Tom Daschle.)

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/10/haley-iowa-2024-primary-trump-00134703

A Michigan businessman called Democratic Senate candidate Hill Harper to offer $20 million in campaign contributions if he agreed to drop out and instead mount a primary challenge to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, according to a source with direct knowledge of the call.

The source added that Harper declined the alleged Oct. 16 offer from donor Linden Nelson — which would have split the campaign money between $10 million in bundled contributions directly to Harper’s campaign and $10 million in independent expenditures. Harper declined to comment on the record about the alleged call from Nelson, a Michigan entrepreneur and past donor to candidates in both parties, but he recounted the call in the same terms as the source in a post on X after this story’s publication.

POLITICO reached Nelson briefly to seek comment on the alleged call to Harper, but he ended the call after a few seconds and did not respond to subsequent calls, texts and emails seeking comment… Harper also might not have proven the most ideal recruit to challenge Tlaib with a more pro-Israeli government approach. Harper called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza, largely echoing the ceasefire support from a few dozen congressional Democratic progressives; he did so on Nov. 10, well after the alleged call from Nelson…In addition, Harper’s Detroit residence is located in Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-Mich.) district, not in Tlaib’s. She has represented her district, which includes Dearborn and its large Arab American population, since 2019. Despite facing multiple past Democratic challengers, she’s handily won her primary elections since then.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/22/donor-20-million-tlaib-primary-00128443

Douglas Purcell, the cantor at St. Ignatius Loyola, said in an interview after the service that the lack of mention of the former president seemed to be in accordance with Judge Barry’s wishes.

“Judges are very careful about the words they choose,” he said. “Between the pastor and the son, they mentioned many of her causes — women, people in need — and that we all should be helping our fellow humans. And you wonder how that was being directed.”

Mr. Purcell, 60, added that Judge Barry had converted to Catholicism as an adult and had been a regular at Mass. Early in the service, he led the mourners in the singing of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” a hymn composed in the 16th century by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther that has in recent decades become common in Catholic services. Mr. Purcell, who said he had not voted for Mr. Trump, read aloud some of the words printed in the program:

“The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure;

One little word shall fell him.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/style/trump-sister-funeral-maryanne-barry.html?unlocked_article_code=1._kw.ozkq.QZfH_uqV8qSZ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

On Nov. 8, 1971, Led Zeppelin released its iconic fourth studio album, which was untitled but is widely known as “Led Zeppelin IV.” It features the band’s major hit “Stairway to Heaven,” and the wordless cover shows the image of a bearded, older man with a large bundle of sticks on his back against the backdrop of a decaying wall.

Now, 52 years later to the day, a minor mystery about that cover has been solved. Sometimes thought to be a painting, the image, it turns out, was a Victorian-era photograph of a man who made thatched roofs for cottages in Wiltshire, a rural county in southwestern England. His name was Lot Long and he was 69 at the time, according to Brian Edwards, a researcher who found the photo.

…As for how that photo ended up on the album cover: Legend has it that Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin’s vocalist, and his bandmate Jimmy Page were in an antique shop in Pangbourne, a village about 50 miles west of London along the River Thames, where they spotted a colorized version of the photograph that will be on view in the Wiltshire Museum.

Because the photographer, Mr. Farmer, was also a teacher, Mr. Edwards said, one plausible theory is that he used the picture to teach colorizing to his students. One of those versions may have ended up in a frame in an antique shop. That colorized version of the picture seems to have been lost.

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/arts/music/led-zeppelin-iv-album-cover.html?unlocked_article_code=1.80w.ED0Z.hh51OLNV6O9S&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

One of common refrains I’ve read in emails from TPM Readers in recent weeks is how much young people, often the children of readers but sometimes their friends and classmates, get their basic news and impressions of the conflict from TikTok. This comes as no surprise to me because this is the main source of information generally for my two teenage sons. Some of these readers speculate that those messages are being manipulated by foreign actors, perhaps by China, where the company’s ownership is based. Given the stakes and the track record, I would be shocked if this were not happening with various foreign players. But I’m skeptical that it’s a driving factor. For others it’s simply a medium of news, an aesthetic or kind of source which that generation is accustomed to. I’m agnostic on both those questions. But what is more clear is that there is a media and propaganda war about this conflict on TikTok and it is one Israel is losing.

But there’s another dimension of this I want to note.

Younger Americans are much less instinctively sympathetic to Israel and are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. This is a basic generational fact about American politics and culture. There many reasons for this. The Holocaust ended almost 80 years ago. The post-1967 occupation has dragged on for 56 years. For a generation of Americans their impressions of the conflict are not shaped by epic conventional wars, the terrorist campaigns of the 70s and 80s or even the mass casualty terror attacks of the Second Intifada. They are rather of repeated retaliatory bombing campaigns in Gaza and of a long-serving Israeli Prime Minister publicly disrespecting a black, Democratic President on his home turf, doing so in connivance with that President’s domestic opponents. Over the last decade and a half and especially during the Trump years Benjamin Netanyahu more or less openly acted as a foreign auxiliary of the US Republican party. That had vast consequences and consequences many in the US and Israel saw and warned about at the time.

This is not meant to diminish people’s reactions to what they are seeing on television and social media right now. But no one comes to news or imagery or arguments without a set of assumptions about who is right or wrong, who is more friend or foe. This cynical and malign gamesmanship had profound consequences which Israel itself is a paying a price for today.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/further-observations-on-the-israel-hamas-war